How To Meditate on Emptiness

In the Heart Sutra, it says ‘No eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind.’ But thinking that these things don’t exist and make that the object of your meditation won’t help at all. What should you do instead? Feel your nose with your hand and think ‘Yes, here is my nose. It does exist. I do have a nose. But how? In what manner is it there in my experience?’ Keep looking into it. Hit your head with a stick, and ask, ’Why? Why does it hurt? If it doesn’t exist, I don’t exist, then why? Why is it still hurting?’

All the problems in our life are caused by things we see to be real: ‘my wife, my husband, my children, my career’ etc. The more we take them to be real, the more pain we feel in relation to them. It is not ‘emptiness’, or things we don’t consider to be truly existing that cause us trouble. So, what we need to look at are the trouble-makers, the things we see to be real and truly existing. You can never examine ‘nothingness’, or things that don’t exist anyway, which is your current understanding of emptiness. Don’t make the ‘emptiness’ you’ve made up yourself the focus of your meditation; it won’t bring any result.

All the different teachings ask you to look into things which, for you, do exist; you’re encouraged to analyse them. If you do so, you may come to a conclusion which goes by various names: emptiness, free from elaboration, the dreamlike or illusory and so on. What you have come to realise through analysing is just the true state of these things, how they really are, not something else which is called emptiness.

And what is the sign you are moving closer to understanding emptiness? When you start finding your experience of everything a little bit odd and curious. You start to doubt your experience, which doesn’t match with how things are described in the teachings. These little doubts and questions are very powerful; they can crumble your clinging, which will significantly reduce your suffering.

So don’t look down on the contemplations on karma, cause and effect. They are the foundation of all Dharma. There is not another ‘emptiness’ other than how things came into existing through causes, conditions, and interdependence. Don’t see karma, cause and effect as Buddhist ideas, focus on what is being said, examine everything you see, hear, touch and so on. Don’t throw them away and look for ‘emptiness’ somewhere else. Only when you have the correct worldly view, the understanding of how things work, i.e. the principle of cause and effect, can you enter the Dharma, which is beyond normal worldly views and far more difficult to understand.

Drupon Rinpoche. Thrangu Hong Kong Centre. 19 November 2016