Sunday, March 27, 2011

In Love with Emptiness

Emptiness is the key. Last week I got really excited about coming across a fantastic description of emptiness. Thanks to scholar/translators like Geshe Michael Roach I was able to read a section from Levels of the Bodhisattva.After studying for years I'm still struck by all the beautiful and more intricate definitions of emptiness.


In the middle way it's also referred to as indivisibility. From the way I understood the beautiful texts in Asian Classics Institute, there's a fine line between concocting things and discounting. Constructs and anything that doesn't exist from its own side (which is everything) are concocting or formed. Whether formed as a whole (like thinking of the color 'blue') or formed in pieces (my identity). Discounting things is to believe that nothing is there and there is nothing'ness, which can't be true because any scientist knows you can't get 'something' from 'nothing.' And somewhere between those two extremes is the definition of that indivisibility.

In the text the definition was listed as such:

Indivisibility is that object which is incorporated in the nature of phenomena, which is free of the existence and lack of existence of the 2 [concocting and discounting]. And this kind of indivisibility is what we call the 'matchless' object of the path of the Middle Way, the way which avoids both the extremes.

Like a good proof, the definition sounds so elegant and simple to me. The nature of phenomena I'm guessing to mean the appearances of what goes on in the world: birth, sickness, aging, death, love, food, etc. All the phenomena of nature has indivisibility incorporated into its core. The potential of all phenomena is therefore limitless. Infinite possibilities. Angels can tap into that limitless'ness. And the only thing I share with Lord Buddha, Angels, and every single scrap in the world is that indivisibility. That is the only thing which will continue up to enlightenment and be remarkably the same by being limitless. When I learn I'm unraveling those karmas and decpetions to tap into the core. There is no ethics out there, which is why ethics are so important. Due to my experiences I'm forced to tap into that emptiness in countless ways. I experience the subtle shifts and movements in my life based upon the deeds done. And the entire thing encapsulates the open teachings. Everything matters b/c everything is limitless.

Indivisibility and karma are intrinsically glued. And so what I see isn't shifts out there, growing seeds, deaths, pain. What I'm seeing are shifts within me that get me to respond and create more ripples, which then create more shifts, more response. The deeds fuel themselves and create.

I've been re-reading that definition again and again on the subway, during breaks, in meetings. I'm trying to constantly remind myself of this indivisibility.

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