MEDITATIONS ON EMPTINESS Archives

January 9, 2017 By Admin

Vipassana Meditation – Journey 4 Emptiness

Vipassana Meditation – Emptiness

One of the great insights from regular, long-term vipassana practice is the experience of emptiness. The actual knowing of it by the experience of it. This is not your typical conceptual emptiness of the West; it is not total void, negative beings, or nihilistic pit, or suffering in endlessness. It is a more positive emptiness. This experience is a sense of being in ultimate
boundlessness, where nothing concrete exists – not even impermanence, not even dependent origination, not even no-self – just being in endless space (as some interpret it). This experience is without egocentric and samsaric-conditioned mind filters. No desire for positive sense-door experiences over negative experiences. Again, emptiness experiences may not be good for people suffering from serious mental health of addictions problems. Like no-self, perhaps you would be better off letting this one go. Here is our guided vipassana-like meditation on emptiness.

Begin by settling into your cushion for chair. Take a few deep, slow, calm breaths and notice the emptiness that exists at the end of the in-breath and at the end of the out-breath. There is a feeling of nothing there. Continue to breathe and noticing. Focus stronger and stronger concentration on the experience being experienced without evaluations.
Ancient, sacred people practiced approaching absolute truth, one aspect of which is emptiness. This comes after you let go of self and conceptual perceptions. No self-narratives; no self-referencing, no self grasping. Do your best to let go of all experience-conditioned ego. Just be. If you are fortunate you may already obtain a small glimpse of emptiness. Meditate on this!
Continue to meditate with an intention to come face-to-face with
emptiness. If you reach even a glimpse of it, you may experience luminosity in the present moment. Perhaps your personal experience by now begins to enter a state of subtle boundlessness. Meditate on this! Use more mental energy to concentrate on the experience at hand.
In the mind-only school and aspects of shambhala, the experience of being in emptiness is an experience of perceiving no space, no difference between the entity that perceives and the object/experience being perceived. This is quite “heady” stuff. Meditate with an expectation to experience an ultimate holism between subjects and object, between perceiver and that being perceived (emptiness). Meditate of this! Again, strengthen your meditative energy via concentrating.
In the middle way or madyamaka view, emptiness may be understood as the dearth of isolation between events/experiences. All experience and all phenomena are totally inter-dependent in nature. Our wholesomeness affects others in a strongly karmic manner. Everything is connected to everything, thus there is no one thing that exists independently – a form of emptiness in experience. So be certain to “let go” of conceptual awareness and expectancies. Meditate deeply on this!
Remain open as much as possible and “let go” of self-cherishing and fixations of self-desires. No more craving; no more clinging; no more attachment. Just be and do not avoid emotional realities involved in your personal experience of emptiness. Avoid what Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche called “shunyata poisonng.” Do not be cognitively analytic or deeply interested in your desire for a new self-narrative or positive/negative realities in relationships. Just be with the emptiness; just be the emptiness. Meditate deeply on this!
Sit there an enjoy any glimpse of emptiness you may have within this present moment. Enjoy, but do not analyze, the bliss you may experience.
William James noted that true mystical experience via spiritual practice is beyond verbal and conceptual definition. This illuminated experience may imply a “superior power,” depending on your own views of spiritual experience. When Walt Whitman discussed the universe of souls, he along with James may have implied that such experiences come with both blessings and burdens. Now that we know a more true reality via personal experience, what good will be do with this knowledge and new being? What about the suffering of others as well as our own?
Now take a few breaths and prepare to return your experience back to this room. Prepare to rise, paying attention to the feelings in your legs and feet. Move slowly.

For more information refer to Nichtern, E. (2015). The Road Home: A Contemporary Exploration of the Buddhist Path. New York: North Point Press, pp. 138-146. See also James, W. The Varieties of Religious Experience. In William James: Writings 1902-1910. New York: Library of America, 1987, pp. 343-344.

By Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont

Author of Mindful Happiness

New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon!

March 10, 2015 By Admin

Meditations on Emptiness

An Advanced View on Meditations on Emptiness

An earlier post on the Dalai Lama’s book, Meditations on the Nature of Mind, ended with suggested meditations (my own personal contemplation’s) about emptiness. I will first review those contemplations. Contemplate deeply on what emptiness means personally to you. Contemplate about a time when you received a glimpse of personal emptiness. Contemplate on your experience to see if it was positive, neutral, of negative (happiness, neutral or suffering). Why do you think you experienced it the way you did? Contemplate on ways you may be able to use the experience of emptiness to reduce personal suffering and increase personal happiness. Please do these four contemplations one after the other before you attempt to contemplate of what follows here. I created these suggested contemplations after my own long meditation practices on emptiness. Keep in mind that Lord Marpa noted a very long time ago that only fools think emptiness is the same as nihilism. It is not nihilism. Also remember that when your mind shifts away from the object of your contemplation (emptiness) gently return attention back to the object, AND each time try to go deeper into concentration on your contemplation.

What follows here is a compilation of various insights about meditation on The Middle Way and on emptiness. Some come from The Dalai Lama; some come from T’song-kha-pa; some come from Nargarjuna; some come from Chandrakirti; and, some very far less exquisite ideas come from me. My effort here is to make the wisdom of the wisdom leaders more pragmatic and practical for us today, in our world as it is now. A key concept in the process of becoming enlightened is that we do it more for the sake of others. Thus, the bodhisattva/bodhichitta compassionate action ideals are seriously pursued. Our practice is based on the desired unification of two important bodies: Dharma and Form. The Dharma refers to the body of emptiness and other ultimate realities, and the form refers to the body of Buddha. Pursuit of Buddhist Dharma and the experience of emptiness connect us to the pure path of liberation. Wisdom about no-self, impermanence, dependent origination, karma, causes and effects, interconnectedness, conventional vs ultimate truth, and ultimate emptiness of intrinsic existence of all phenomena – all lead the way to liberation and enlightenment. They all lead us from conceptual knowing to experiential knowing, and from the Samara world of conditioned sense pleasures and suffering to wisdom. In many respects to practice a wisdom-informed life IS to move along the path, The Middle Way to complete realization. In the final analysis of emptiness, there lies a clear implication that there is no such reality as an object becoming established on its own. Therefore, there can be no-self nature, thus no-self. What appears to be concrete in nature is actually made up of totally dependent arisings. One may experience a contradiction here; if we are the Buddha already, does it matter if it is just emptiness? The answer to this inquiry is far more complex than it sounds. Only our thoughts and our minds perceive the concrete self-phenomena as existing in and of their own. The correct view of it all suggests that there is no thought or cognition about Dharma (even if we study it); it is more about post-perceptual experiences and understanding via pure wisdom experiences. T’song-kha-pa noted that in the “profound Middle Way” there is NO independent, intrinsic, concrete self or things. It is pure wisdom of experiential awareness.

Now on to the contemplation practices.

Again, I am creating these on my own as means to experience some glimpse of emptiness in meditation.

1) Contemplate about your own compassionate actions for the benefit of others. When you feel/experience being deep enough into contemplation, add the experience of emptiness to this process. Be mindfully aware of what happens in the experience?
2) Contemplate deeply in the ultimate wisdom that there is no intrinsic existence in any phenomena, including your own contemplation right now. What happens in your experience?
3) Contemplate deeply about how your own life is conditioned via sense pleasures and avoiding suffering. Go even deeper, and contemplate the factors of non-existence (emptiness) in this process. What happens to your experience at this point?
4) Contemplate deeply on the experience of experiential awareness now. Continue until you are experiencing just experiencing without conceptual or cognitive awareness. Now what happens to your experience?
5) Lastly, contemplate deeply on what experiential insights may have been found via your four experiential contemplations. Shift gently to cognition now, and note what the insights are.

Now take a few deep, slow, calm breaths and bring your experiential self back into awareness. Be aware! Move your body slightly before you attempt to stand up. Think about what you might wish to share with others.

For more information refer to The Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso). (2009). The Middle Way: Faith Grounded in Reason. Boston: Wisdom Publications, pp. 119-147. Also refer to The Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso and others). (2011). Meditation on the Nature of Mind. Boston: Wisdom Publications, pp. 126-139.

By Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont

Author of Mindful Happiness

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