Form is empti­ness, empti­ness is form

This line comes from the “Heart Sutra,” and the whole stanza goes,

“…form is empti­ness, empti­ness is form, form does not dif­fer from empti­ness, empti­ness does not dif­fer from form. The same is true with feel­ings, per­cep­tions, men­tal for­ma­tions, and consciousness.”

Huh?

I’m no Bud­dhism expert. I’m a per­pet­ual new stu­dent. My approach is to work to incor­po­rate what I am learn­ing and read­ing into my tribal, cul­tural and ‘school’ learn­ings. I am not try­ing to enter another culture—I am attempt­ing to deepen my own understandings.

West­ern Thought—The Cult of Rigidity

Let’s begin with the west. Here, things are black and white. The west lives in a dual­is­tic world—good or bad, right or wrong. Peo­ple con­sider it a big advance­ment to talk about ‘shades of gray.’ This is taken to mean that there might be other options. While this is so, this does not help, if we then have an argu­ment that goes, “Black!” “No, white!” “You’re both wrong! It’s shades of gray!!”

Noth­ing means any­thing forever

Now, there are cer­tain realms where assur­ance of ‘right and wrong’ is a good thing. A sim­ple exam­ple is that every­one knows that the only mean­ing of a red light at a cor­ner is “stop.” Con­ven­tions like this keep us alive and func­tion­ing as a society.

But upon closer exam­i­na­tion, we begin to see cracks.

Last month Dar­bella and I were in Que­bec. In Ontario (where we live,) ‘right turn on red’ is the rule and con­ven­tion. So in Que­bec, I stopped at a red light, looked both ways, and turned right. Dar said, “Oops.” I said, “Huh?” She said, “You must have missed the huge sign at the bor­der that said, “No right turn on red.” Hmm.

So, back to form and empti­ness. The real mes­sage is that empti­ness is empti­ness of a sin­gle idea, mean­ing, or iden­tity.

Or, another way of say­ing it is that every­thing is con­nected, and that all things exist only in relationship.

Noth­ing is sole, soli­tary, or fixed.

How does this help us?

Well, we like to think that things have one and only one mean­ing. Black and white. This is, how­ever, patently untrue. Name me one thing, feel­ing, thought, that ‘lives’ with­out a ref­er­ence to some­thing else. Noth­ing lives in your world with­out your defin­ing it.

A client will say, “He always treated me well, but last night he yelled at me, and now I know he’s a mean, nasty per­son.” Either / or.

Yet, the Heart Sutra reminds us that ‘he’ is empty of a sin­gle iden­tity. Thus, ‘he’ is some­one who treats his part­ner well, and who also yells, and also does a whole range of other stuff. He does what he does because of who he is. Who he is, is inter-related to his expe­ri­ences grow­ing up, what hap­pened at work, etc. Who he ‘is’ in my client’s eyes, is based upon all of her expe­ri­ences with him, as well as the client’s upbring­ing, expe­ri­ences and judgements.

There is a false sense of secu­rity in think­ing that things ‘are.’

We like to believe that things are unchang­ing, fixed, immov­able. You hear peo­ple say, “I’ll always love you.” “That will never hap­pen.” “I only want to be happy.” (That last one should be put, “I want to be happy only.”) And yet, empti­ness is the rule, as every­thing is imper­ma­nent, chang­ing. That’s what’s up with the client, above. Her part­ner changed, and she decided she didn’t like it. Yet, change is the essen­tial makeup of existence.

So, what is every­thing empty of?

Mean­ing. A sep­a­rate self. Permanence.

• Mean­ing is per­sonal. No two peo­ple see things the same.
• Sep­a­ra­tion is an illu­sion. Every­thing is con­nected. My sto­ries are con­nected to my other sto­ries, my feel­ings to other expe­ri­ences. Every object in the uni­verse exists in rela­tion­ship to other things.
• Per­ma­nence is impos­si­ble. Every­thing is in flux. Your life-purpose is to get old and die. You’ve noticed that, right? Every cell of every­thing is changing.

We need to loosen our grip on the fruit­less attempt to main­tain the sta­tus quo.

We get there by rec­og­niz­ing that how things are is always “how things are, right now.” Things now are never how they were. Things are empty of their past.

Here’s an exper­i­ment. Remem­ber an unpleas­ant expe­ri­ence. Really work toward expe­ri­enc­ing it, com­plete with all of your judge­ments about how painful it was or how hard done by you were. Feel the feelings.

Now, stop for a minute, and ask your­self this. When are you expe­ri­enc­ing your thoughts, judge­ments, and feel­ings? Where was all of this stuff before you thought to have this expe­ri­ence? Can you see that what you just expe­ri­enced hap­pened “now,” and that every­thing was a fig­ment of your imag­i­na­tion, con­cocted on the spot?

It wasn’t “there, in the back­ground.” It is always and ever a ‘new’ expe­ri­ence. Every expe­ri­ence is devoid (empty) of intrin­sic mean­ing. Every expe­ri­ence exists only in terms or its rela­tion­ship with each of its experience-ers. Yet we waste our lives try­ing to get oth­ers to agree that the way we see the sit­u­a­tion is the right and only way to see it.

It’s only true for you

Free­dom comes when I real­ize that every­thing is in flux. Noth­ing means any­thing. It’s all rel­a­tive to me, and the moment. I can con­jure up any­thing, and emphat­i­cally do, all the time.

There is no point deny­ing this, as cling­ing to any­thing, includ­ing my sto­ries and inter­pre­ta­tions, is the only cause of all my suffering.

Let­ting go means sim­ply or barely notic­ing that what I am doing right now is what I am doing right now. Noth­ing about any­thing is fixed in stone.

Again, I invite you to e-mail me with any object, thing, thought, belief, that has never changed and is fixed for­ever, and is not related to any­thing else.

Here’s a hint: you can’t.

So, what you believe about your­self and your life, and other peo­ple and sit­u­a­tions, is equally non-fixed and empty of sep­a­rate­ness and ‘single-meaning-ness.’

Embrace this: you are who you are right now. How you oper­ate in the world is the result of each and every choice you’ve made, and your oper­a­tion in the world is deter­mined solely by what you allow your­self to do.

The Bud­dha said, “All that you are is a result of what you have thought.” The sim­ple mean­ing of this is: change how you think about empti­ness, form, and mean­ing, and you imme­di­ately ‘are’ some­one different.

If you hold to what you believe, moment by moment, you will expe­ri­ence only what you have expe­ri­enced. Change your approach and under­stand­ing, and you will have another expe­ri­ence. In that, you’ll have let go and expanded your emptiness.

Under­stand and work with this, and you free your­self from cling­ing, and remove the cause of suffering.