Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising - by Rob Burbea

A core insight repeatedly insisted on in this book is that fundamentally what gets us into trouble are the ways we typically view things, and our blind clinging to these ways of seeing. At the roots of our suffering – primary in engendering, perpetuating, and exacerbating it – are our habitual conceptions and the ways of looking they spawn. It is therefore precisely these that need to be addressed and replaced.

Part One: Orientations

Emptiness – in Pali, suññatā, in Sanskrit, śūnyatā, which may also be translated as ‘voidness’ – is deep and subtle, however, not easy to see or explain, and in many respects it is even counter-intuitive. It is extremely rare for a full realization to come suddenly. Almost always a journey of understanding is required, one that liberates gradually. And this remarkable adventure of insight involves many facets of our being, certainly not just our intellects.

To many people, and often even to meditators, the very word ‘emptiness’ can evoke emotional associations with a sense of barrenness, bleakness, meaninglessness, or even depression. But that is definitely not what Buddhist teachings mean by the word emptiness. On the contrary, they point to this realization as something wonderful, supremely joyful, and profoundly liberating.

Why do we crave? And the answer the Buddha gave and wanted us to understand is that craving is based on a fundamental mistake in the way we see and intuitively sense our selves and the whole world of inner and outer phenomena. We feel and take for granted that selves and things are as real as they seem to be, that they exist, as they appear to, in a substantial way, in and of themselves, ‘from their own side’, as it were. Their reality seems obvious. We assume, in a way that involves no thinking, that our bodies or this book, for instance, exist independently of other things and independently of the mind that knows them. We feel that a thing has an inherent existence – that its existence, its being, inheres in itself alone. Believing then that this real self can really gain or lose real things or experiences which have real qualities, grasping and aversion, and thus dukkha, arise inevitably.

We can, at least for now, define emptiness as the absence of this inherent existence that things appear to naturally and undeniably have. In the tradition, a variety of expressions are used to say this – that all things lack intrinsic existence, true existence, self-existence, substantial existence. Many texts leave out the words ‘true’, ‘inherent’, etc., and just state that all phenomena have no existence, no nature, no reality, but the implied meaning is essentially the same. ‘Emptiness’, then, is more a quality that we can recognize in something, a way something is, a property it has. A thing is ‘empty’ of its seemingly real, independent existence. And all things are this way, are empty. This voidness is what is also sometimes termed the ultimate truth or reality of things.

All things seem to us to be, in the most basic way, simply and exactly ‘what they are’, regardless of how, or whether, they are perceived. Their that-ness and their inherent existence seem evident and given immediately with our very awareness of them; they are not somehow added conceptually later. And yet this seemingly real nature that we perceive is fabricated by the mind.

But we do not cling to what we know is not real. Thus when, with insight and wisdom, we realize that something is illusory in some sense, we let go of any clinging to it – of chasing it, trying to hold onto it, or trying to get rid of it. Since clinging brings dukkha, in this release of the clinging there comes release and freedom from dukkha.

When this profound knowing of the voidness of all things is absorbed, beyond mere intellectual understanding, there is liberating insight into the heart of reality. There is an awakening which fundamentally alters the way in which we perceive the world. This is the realization necessary for enlightenment.

If you dislike such talk that concretizes ‘end points’ for practice, we might simply say instead: To the degree, depth, and comprehensiveness that we can realize the emptiness, the illusory nature, of phenomena, to that degree, depth, and comprehensiveness is freedom then available to us.

Imagine that one day when out walking you turn a street corner and suddenly hear a loud and menacing growling nearby. A ferocious and hungry-looking tiger appears in front of you seemingly about to leap. The distress of a reaction of terror there would be quite understandable. But if you notice on closer inspection that this tiger is not real, that it is actually a holographic projection with accompanying sound recording from a nearby hologram projector, the fear and the problem simply dissolve. The release from the suffering of the situation here comes not from simply being mindful or accepting of the tiger so much as from the realization of its illusory nature. It is this that hopefully your mindfulness can reveal. And such an understanding will not seem abstract and irrelevant; it will matter. Sometimes it is assumed that realizations of voidness will create some kind of ‘disconnection from reality’ or ‘ungroundedness’ in a person. But here we can see that to realize that this tiger is illusory is, in fact, to be more ‘grounded in reality’ than otherwise; and that it will make a considerable difference to how you feel. We can even say that from the point of view of what brings release from dukkha, the most profoundly significant and fundamental thing to understand about this tiger is its emptiness. And this we can extend to all phenomena without exception. It is the puncturing of the illusion that punctures the dukkha most radically and completely.

To say that something is empty is to say something much deeper and more radical, harder to fathom, than that things are inconstant, in flux, in process, or even that, inspected more closely, phenomena are seen to be arising and passing with breathtaking rapidity and that we construct a solidity of continuity where in reality there is none. Even this rapid change turns out to be only a relative truth and its perception a stepping-stone.

Generally speaking, and although it may at first seem paradoxical, as we travel this meditative journey into emptiness we find that the more we taste the voidness of all things, the more loving-kindness, compassion, generosity, and deep care for the world open naturally as a consequence in the heart. Seeing emptiness opens love.

The world of inner and outer phenomena is, in some very important sense, ‘fabricated’, ‘fashioned’, ‘constructed’ by the mind, so that it is somehow illusory, not real in the way that we assume, and not independent of the mind that fabricates it.

It is not that while everything else is fabricated by the mind, the mind itself is somehow real, a really existing basis for the fabrication. The mind, whether conceived as mental processes or ‘Awareness’ – even the awareness that we can know as vast and unperturbed, that seems natural and effortless – is also fabricated in the process. We find, in the end, that there is no ‘ground’ to fabrication.

Void as well are whatever might be conceived as the functional ‘processes’ of the body and of the mind; the ‘flow’ of impermanent events and experiences, inner and outer; the infinite web of conditions that support all things; and the process of fabrication too. Even such apparently obvious and undeniable givens that seem to form the very foundations of existence – space, time (and not just the past and the future, but also the present, ‘the Now’), and awareness, however it is conceived or experienced – these too are empty; Buddha Nature, and whatever notions or senses we may have of ‘Being’ or ‘Essence’; emptiness itself, and even the Unfabricated – all are thoroughly void, in some deep sense illusory.

It is important then to point out right here that we are not trying to annihilate the self through these teachings or practices. Rather, we are seeking to understand something about the self and all phenomena – their emptiness, their fabricated and illusory nature. And this emptiness is true of the self and of all things anyway, even now, whether I’m aware of it or not. Nothing changes in the actual reality – the ontological status – of the self or of phenomena through practice. We are simply realizing a fact that has been true all along. And this realization frees.

Part Two: Tools and Provisions

For now, let us take as a loose definition of insight: any realization, understanding, or way of seeing things that brings, to any degree, a dissolution of, or a decrease in, dukkha. We should, right away, draw attention to a few of the immediate implications of such a definition, and in doing so we can also clarify more what is meant here.

First, insight defined thus is not, in itself, a certain experience that we need to attain. Extraordinary experiences may, to be sure, be important at times but they are not what actually frees. Nor is insight simply ‘being mindful and watching the show’, without any effect on, or input into, the fabrication or dissolution of the experience of dukkha. Just knowing, for example, that dukkha, grasping, or reactivity is present is hardly ever enough to free us from it even in that moment. And it certainly will not be enough to exhaust or eradicate the latent tendencies of craving and aversion. What is needed is an understanding that cuts or melts something or other more fundamental on which that dukkha relies, thus eradicating, or at least diminishing, that dukkha.

Second, defining insight in this way admits a wide range to its manifestation. It can be present in any situation, or in regard to any experience or phenomenon: gross or extremely subtle, easy to see or more profound, ‘worldly’ or more transcendent. It may manifest as the understanding of a personal pattern that has been problematic. Or it may involve the recognition of something more universal – the fact of impermanence impressing itself more compellingly on the mind and heart, for instance, or, indeed, a realization at some level of the emptiness of something. Always the essential characteristic, though, is that it contributes to lessening dukkha.

Third, however, it is important to stress that, as we are defining it here, only what is actually perceivable to a practitioner qualifies as an insight for that practitioner. I may, for example, feel anxious when I check my bank balance and see that there is no money at all in my account. But refusing to believe the bank statement and simply choosing to believe instead that I have a million dollars in the account would not in itself constitute an insight according to our definition here, even if it did have the effect of reducing my suffering. More generally, any introduction of a belief not based on perception, or similarly, any introduction of notions of unobservable entities would also, strictly speaking, be excluded from this particular definition of insight.

Fourth, and related to this last point: Rather than being based upon faith in the experience of another, or upon blind beliefs – even ‘Buddhist’ beliefs – about how things are, insight, as we are defining it, is based primarily on personal experience of what decreases dukkha. When there is insight, the seeing melts dukkha; and that release of dukkha we can feel and know for ourselves.

It turns out that making the relief of suffering and dis-ease the fundamental thrust and concern of practice is not only the most compassionate and skilful support for the alleviation of dukkha, such an approach also begins to uncover the truth of things in the process. In taking the dissolving of dukkha as our primary investigation, reality is gradually revealed. On the path the Buddha discovered, then, insight, discernment of truth, and freedom from dukkha all unfold together. The Buddha’s formulation of the Four Noble Truths is basically an elaboration of this overarching Dharma principle – the cardinal orientation towards liberation from dukkha. And in its very direct concern with the releasing of dukkha, the conception of insight we are adopting may be regarded as a kind of shorthand and immediate version of the Four Noble Truths.

This mode of approach, of actively cultivating a range of skilful ways of looking, is premised, then, on the understanding that we are always and inevitably engaged in some way of looking at or relating to experience anyway. But we are not usually aware of this fact. Nor are we usually aware of how we are looking – what exactly the view is – at any time. Even to intuitively and with immediacy feel a sensation in the body as ‘mine’, for instance, even without consciously thinking “mine”, is a view, a way of looking at that sensation. We could say that the way of looking in any moment is constructed from the total mix of assumptions, conceptions, reactions, and inclinations, gross and subtle, conscious and unconscious, that are present at that time.

Meditation thus becomes a journey of experimenting: with freeing ways of looking; and in particular with ways of looking that withdraw, undermine, or dissolve various elements in the mind and heart that contribute to fabrication. On this journey something amazing is revealed. For as well as learning to drain the dukkha from situations and things, we are also learning to dismantle fabrication. In the process, we are moving towards opening to what is beyond conventional perception, what is unfabricated; and then there is the possibility of opening even beyond that to the fundamental truth of all things – their emptiness.

Vital to our path and of uncountable benefit is the quality of samādhi. This word samādhi is usually translated as ‘concentration’, but in many respects that does not convey the fullness, or the beauty, of what it really means. Therefore we shall keep it in the original language throughout this book. For samādhi involves more than just holding the attention fixed on an object with a minimum of wavering. And it certainly does not necessarily imply a spatially narrowed focus of the mind on a small area. Instead here we will emphasize that what characterizes states of samādhi is some degree of collectedness and unification of mind and body in a sense of well-being. Included in any such state will also be some degree of harmonization of the internal energies of the mind and body. Steadiness of mind, then, is only one part of that.

And although, as the Buddha did, we can certainly delineate a range of discrete states of samādhi (the jhānas), in this present context let us rather view it mostly as a continuum: of depth of meditation, of well-being, of non-entanglement, and of refinement of consciousness. Among other benefits suitable to our purpose, there is also less chance then that the relationship with practice becomes fraught through wondering too much if one ‘has it’ or ‘doesn’t have it’, is ‘succeeding’ or ‘failing’, is ‘in’ or ‘out’. Instead of relating to samādhi practice in terms of measurement or achievement of some goal, it is usually much more helpful, more kind, and less self-alienating to conceive of it as a caring, both in the present and in the long term, for the heart and mind.

The place, however, of samādhi on the path, and in relation to insight, is not simply a matter of it ‘sharpening’ the mind so that phenomena can be seen more clearly and minutely. Insight, as we have already said and shall extensively explore, is not really about seeing smaller and smaller divisions of ‘reality’. Rather, it must primarily address and open our understanding of emptiness, fabrication, and dependent arising. Without these understandings, any insight actually remains rooted in fundamental delusion.

Among its many benefits, a dedication to samādhi can bring a certain ‘juiciness’ to practice and to life, and this can provide a vital resource of wholesome and profound nourishment. In particular, the well-being that it includes can be crucial. There may be times, for example, when we know it would be best to let go of an unhelpful attachment but somehow we just can’t. Perhaps at a certain level we feel somewhat desperate, and unable to imagine that we could be okay without this thing that we are clinging to. Perhaps even unconsciously we worry that letting it go would render us bereft of what we believe we need for our happiness or even our survival. If, however, we can have access to, and develop, a reservoir of profound inner well-being, it makes letting go of what is not so helpful much easier. We feel that we have enough, so letting go is not so scary.

Over the long term, repeated and regular immersion in such well-being supports the emergence of a steadiness of genuine confidence. We come to know, beyond doubt, that happiness is possible for us in this life. And because this deep happiness we are experiencing is originating from within us, we begin to feel less vulnerable to and dependent on the uncertainties of changing external conditions. We may also find that a relatively frequent taste of some degree of samādhi helps our confidence in the path to become much more firmly established. Gaining confidence in these ways will have a profound effect on the sense we have of our own lives and their potential, without making us aloof.

Periods of some steadiness of attention are necessary for looking deeply and seeing clearly. Something held more unwaveringly in our sight is easier to investigate. (As we shall shortly explain though, this steadiness does not only arise by holding the mind to one object.) But there are other, perhaps less immediately obvious, qualities that samādhi engenders. First, as the Buddha pointed out, a mind that has cultivated some samādhi has more malleability. It is more able to look at things in different ways, finds it much easier to learn and develop novel approaches and practices, and can move between these with more agility. Second, the spectrum of deepening samādhi is also a spectrum of deepening refinement of consciousness. As it develops, therefore, samādhi also enables us to see and work with much more subtle levels of fabrication and dependent arising. It has already been explained how this, too, is central to our approach. Third, the sense of well-being of the body and the mind that samādhi, to some degree, involves has other fruits in addition to those already mentioned. As it progresses, the feelings of bliss, happiness, contentment, and peace, of stillness, spaciousness, and freedom that come and go can be exquisite and profound. They are typically also accompanied by some sense or other of emotional warmth, love, or tenderness that suffuses the being. All this, in any measure, is helpful for insight in a number of ways. Far from being merely an indulgence, the exposure to, immersion in, and accessibility of these feelings provides the citta with a sort of ‘cushioning’ that is usually crucial as the insight practice deepens.

Whether through working with the breath, the mettā, or some similar practice, in cultivating samādhi alongside the insight practices, we are, in part, preparing the soil in which insight and a whole range of beautiful qualities of heart can take root and grow. Insight needs good soil.

It is crucial to realize that a dedication to cultivating samādhi necessarily involves working with the hindrances. In fact, it will actually expose and highlight them, and the ways we get seduced by and caught up in them, sometimes more than a simple mindfulness practice might do. Thus it offers us the opportunity to learn, usually gradually, the two wise attitudes discussed above: not to take the hindrances personally, and not to believe their perspectives. If samādhi practice had no other benefits than these, its value would still be enormous. For hindrances do not just arise in formal meditation; they are states that impact our life and our well-being every day. And if we can maintain a stance that, no matter what the conditions, asks always, “What can I learn here?”, the times of hindrances in samādhi practice can be as genuinely valuable as the times that feel good.

Once a degree of collectedness is accessible to us and we have some familiarity and skill in working with the hindrances, we need also to begin to become sensitive to the presence of their more subtle manifestations. A state of samādhi is essentially a state of energized calm. In meditation, we are working, therefore, to support some fluid balance of both energy (or vitality) and calmness. Although it might feel relatively pleasant, too much calmness without enough energy is a kind of subtly dull state, sometimes referred to as ‘sinking’. The mind and the body can feel slightly heavy when this is the case and the quality of brightness is not so manifest in the mind. On the other hand, too much energy without the calm to balance it can create a subtle form of restlessness, often referred to as ‘drifting’. Here, the body does not feel so settled, the attention may skit off the object more frequently, and there seem to be more thoughts or images being thrown up by the mind. Noticing these subtler manifestations of the hindrances, and playing and experimenting to discover some of the many possible ways to energize or to calm the energy body in meditation are important strands in enabling practice to deepen.

Tightness is a state of contraction of the mind and body energy. So too, in fact, is any restlessness – gross or subtle (as in drifting) – and any dullness or drowsiness (including sinking). It can be very helpful, therefore, when any of these are present in samādhi practice, to find ways of opening up more space for the awareness, without abandoning the primary object. Awareness of the whole body is one way this can be effected. Even if you are working with a method of breath meditation, for example, that involves a spatially narrow focus of attention as ‘foreground’, it is often beneficial to lightly maintain, as the ‘background’ to this ‘foreground’, a global awareness permeating fully and ‘filling out’ the whole body in an alive way. Among other advantages, this will automatically introduce more of a sense of space into the meditation, which can help to ease the contraction of tightness when it arises.

Whether one starts from a spatially narrow focus of attention or with the whole body sense, whether the object of concentration is the breath, mettā, or some other object, it can be deduced from much of the above discussion just how central and vital the body sense is in the development of samādhi. Moreover, as ‘concentration’ deepens it necessarily includes and involves the perception and felt sense of the whole body as unified, harmonious and pleasant to some degree, and spacious. Clearly then, sooner or later in samādhi practice the whole body needs to be included in the awareness; and, as the discussion here has suggested, sooner is probably more helpful than later.

• Almost from the start in this approach we deliberately but gently work at nurturing a sense of comfort, pleasure, or well-being in the body.

• This can be done through the way we pay attention to the subtle body, as described above – opening out the awareness to encompass the whole body space, and tuning into the more pleasant frequencies of feeling that are perceivable.

• It is also possible to use the breath or the mettā to help elicit and support the pervasion of this sense of well-being. Simply sensitizing to, and enjoying, the way we feel the energetic resonances of the mettā or the breath throughout the whole space of the body – opening to and finding delight in their reverberations there – can gently move the experience in the direction of a more expansive well-being.

• Once it is easily sustaining for some minutes, we can gently begin to take that bodily feeling of well-being as the primary object of our focus. It is important not to ‘snatch at it’, but rather to ease the attention toward it gracefully, and gradually let it take up the full focus of attention. Then the attention and the citta can be encouraged to enjoy it as fully as possible.

• The attention can at times probe it, burrowing into one area of the pleasure, perhaps where it feels strongest.

• Or, at other times, a mode of ‘receiving’ it, really trying to open up to it, can be employed.

• Either way, one attempts all the while to remain intimate with its texture, and actually to relish the pleasure as much as possible. In these ways (and in others that can be discovered) we can delicately work to gently sustain the bodily feeling of well-being, and to absorb the attention more fully into it.

It is the balance of samādhi and insight work that is important and so potentially powerful. Too much samādhi relative to insight practice, and the mind may lose its desire then to contemplate or analyse or shift ways of looking. Too much insight practice relative to samādhi usually tends to enervate the mind and the energetic system. It can lead to an imbalance in the energies, manifesting in over-excitement, which is unhelpful if it persists too long. Or, worse, it can lead to a subtly aversive agitation, which distorts the insights, so that they do not free or even feel freeing. The mind working on insight is profoundly supported by having a ‘wholesome abiding’ in which it can periodically rest and be resourced.

A state of samādhi is indeed still a constructed, fabricated state. But keen investigation, reflection, and a pondering of the relationship it has with letting go suggest that it may be more accurate to understand samādhi as a spectrum of states that involve progressively less fabrication than a more ‘ordinary’ state of consciousness involves. It may not be obvious for quite a while but any state of samādhi is to some degree a state of letting go, of reduced craving. And the deeper the samādhi, the deeper and more comprehensive the letting go that it involves. As we shall come to see through the insight practices, less craving results in less fabricating. Therefore any state of samādhi is a state of less fabricating, less building of the perception and sense of the self and of the world. If we understand how to contemplate it, samādhi itself offers profound insights into fabrication and dependent arising.

Without experience of different states of samādhi, there is not only more chance that states arisen through insight meditation may, through unfamiliarity or fear, be fled from or not given the chance to settle; it is also in fact much more likely that attachment crystallizes around states of insight and particularly around the views and perceptions they involve or imply. This is actually the most insidious of the three forms of clinging to meditation states and experiences that I see. Attachment to the pleasure of samādhi usually only occurs if experiences of samādhi are rare. A meditator may then hanker after it unskilfully because, even if they are told they shouldn’t, and even if they know it is impermanent, they do not have the confidence that such pleasure, though not permanent, is regularly accessible. When we know we can fairly readily experience that kind of pleasure again, we naturally relax our clinging, letting it go when it dissolves.

Part Three: Setting Out

Emptiness that’s Easy to See

There are many situations in life where a significant degree of dukkha can be released through recognizing voidnesses that are not so hard to see at all. Through just a small shift in, or refinement of, our way of looking we realize that some element or other involved is a fabrication, and that it has no inherent existence. We start our insight investigations with these more modest shifts of the way of looking – not only because there is a great deal of suffering that can be relieved at this level, but also because, in the means by which they deconstruct the views underpinning dukkha, some of these ways of looking actually form the humble beginnings of a number of the deeper and more powerful ways of looking that we will learn to cultivate.

Although not always easy to recognize, it is important to acknowledge too how often our opinions and our feelings about many things are conditioned by the views prevalent in the society we live in. Particularly significant in this regard is the conditioning of our sense of values, and thus also of our sense of what is valuable.

Usually we will find we do still emotionally and purposefully engage with a thing or situation even as we are seeing its emptiness. There may be occasions, however, especially in the initial stages of developing voidness ways of looking, when a practitioner might tend to an unhelpful kind of dismissal or nullification of a thing as (s)he is trying to see some level of its emptiness. Perhaps then the way of looking needs to alternate for a time between a view of emptiness and a skilful reification, until the emptiness way of looking matures and there is a clear sense that it opens, rather than shuts down, the heart.

Practice: Beginning deconstruction – The elements of experience

When you find yourself feeling somehow imprisoned in a situation, or grasping unhelpfully at something that is not present, see if you can look within and around you in a way that ‘deconstructs’ your world into its aggregate appearances of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, physical sensations, and mental and emotional experiences. Play and experiment with this way of looking until it feels that some of the oppressive solidity has lessened and you can sense some spaciousness has opened in the perception. Enjoy the lightness that this way of looking allows. Notice too how the heart feels when you view things in this fashion. When we let go of contraction, warmth and kindness manifest effortlessly and naturally. Experiment and play until you discover a way to do it that naturally allows some warmth to permeate experience. Practise this shift of view many times until it feels quite easily accessible, and even lovely. It’s important to practise a lot also when there is no strong grasping or constriction present. Even what feels like an unproblematic perception of things can be lightened and opened up this way.

“What Was That All About?!”

Most human beings will have experienced, many times, states in which the mind gets so caught up in a storm of reactivity that the ability to have a spacious perspective – on a thing, an event, or a person (self or other) – has been lost. Sucked into a vortex of unhelpful thinking and viewing, the mind is bound up in one lens, one way of looking at some situation (or at life in general), utterly convinced of the truth of what it thus sees. Difficult as such states are, we can in fact use them to develop some insight into voidness. It may be, for example, that one morning, tired and not careful enough with our irritability, we have gotten into an argument over something trivial and have now lost our temper. Or perhaps we are beset by one or more of the five hindrances, either in formal meditation or out of it, and have been dragged into a state of obsessively proliferating thoughts about something. Some time goes by, however, and with a change in conditions the mind state naturally changes. Looking back then, we recognize that the mind was fabricating something. It was ‘making something’ – fixating on, and drawing out, some aspect of the totality of our experience, and inflating it through papañca. Reactivity and obsessive thinking were pumping up the perception of this thing as a problem. Now though, from the perspective of a more balanced mind state, we wonder what the big deal was. Maybe whatever it was that we had been so humourlessly fixated on, and that had loomed so large in consciousness, doesn’t seem so important now. Perhaps we feel a little foolish at how easily drawn in we were, how convinced by the mind’s stories, interpretations, and ways of looking. We see that we were caught up in a way of looking that cast our view of our self and of some thing or other in rigid moulds, and in a way that brought dukkha. We see that the mind had concocted something illusory and fallen for it. Even if it is a little late to help the situation already past, such recognition is important. It constitutes an insight into fabrication and the emptiness of whatever view we were transfixed by.

Practice: Investigating what is being fabricated through the hindrances

Both in formal meditation sessions and as you move through your day, devote a series of practices to noticing when hindrances are present, and when they are absent. It may be useful to label which hindrance(s) is/are colouring consciousness. (Recognizing that a hindrance is present already informs and transforms the view.) Then, as sensitively and precisely as you are able, begin to inquire:

• Is the mind believing a story about something or about yourself? If so, what is the story?

• Whether or not there is a story, how is this mind state affecting perceptions right now? In particular:

• What do you notice about the self-view (how you feel and think about yourself, how you see yourself) in this state?

• Is there some thing or element of experience upon which the mind is focusing and dwelling in particular?

• What is the mind’s perspective and assessment of this thing?

• How much belief is there in the truth of such a perception?

• You may also want to become aware of how the mind is framing and relating to notions of past, present, and future right now.

• See if you can pay attention to the feelings of dukkha involved in this whole experience, and notice just how and where they manifest in body and mind.

• Based on what you have learnt from past experiences, can you accept that something is being fabricated here by the mind state? If so, is it possible to hold this insight more steadily (but still lightly) in the mind, and to see things now through the lens of that knowing? What effect does that have?

It may be, until practice matures somewhat, that sometimes one has to wait for a particular wave of hindrances to subside to a certain extent before being able to see the voidness of whatever it is that one is reifying. So, when the above approach seems to have no effect, it may be more fruitful to work instead on cultivating a more wholesome mind state, or just sit out the storm with patience and mindfulness. When the hindrance dissolves – through insight, through somehow encouraging a more helpful mind state, or just through time – really feel how it feels when that dukkha has gone. Notice also then how perception has softened and is less locked-in to solidified perspectives of both the self and whatever was previously being unskilfully focused on. As stated previously, seeing emptiness even with hindsight like this is helpful. It is a vital and genuine step in understanding the whole principle of fabrication; and it can lessen the chances of getting so taken in by such perceptions in the future.

Seeing Spaciousness

Whenever there is any grasping or aversion towards something, indeed whenever any hindrances are present, the mind is, to some degree or other, in a contracted state. It has, so to speak, been sucked in to some perception, some object of consciousness, has shrunk and tightened around it. Generally we experience this contraction in the mind as an unpleasant state, as dukkha. We can notice this contraction, this constriction of the mental space, in relation to both internal and external phenomena. It will be evident, for instance, with regard to some unpleasant sensation in the body, like tiredness, or a difficult emotion, such as fear. And we may also detect it sometimes in social situations, if a certain relationship is charged. The clinging mind contracts around some experience, and then, because the mind space is shrunken, the object of that grasping or aversion takes up proportionately more of the space in the mind. It thus seems somehow larger, and also more solid – its size and seeming solidity both corresponding to the degree of contraction in the mind. With the object appearing then bigger and more solid, and the experience of contraction being painful to some degree, the mind without insight in that moment will usually react unskilfully.

Practice: Beginning to notice space

See if you can notice how attention tends to get sucked in to difficulties, or towards something else as a distraction when there is a difficulty. Can you notice that the mind space has contracted? Be sensitive to how a contracted mind feels. Can you feel the dukkha of this? Then see if you can deliberately pay attention to space, or deliberately include an awareness of space in your attention. Attending to the sense of actual physical space can be very helpful. This may be done in a number of ways:

• by opening the awareness to the totality of sounds that are coming and going;

• by opening up the field of vision;

• by intentionally noticing the space around and between objects, and the space in any room or situation.

Notice what effects this has.

An Understanding of Mindfulness

Understanding how mindfulness works, from the perspective of understanding fabrication and emptiness, will be very useful for the longer trajectory of insight we are developing. Let us begin by considering two closely related aspects of mindfulness – ‘staying at contact’, and ‘bare attention’ – that contribute to its capacity to bring a degree of freedom through some lessening of fabrication.

In any moment, without a certain amount of mindfulness, there can often be a tendency for the attention to get dragged into the associations, reactivity, and stories that a simple stimulus (any sight, sound, smell, taste, body sensation, thought, or emotion, for instance) might trigger for us. This movement, the escalation of such complicating mental activity, and the entanglement of the attention therein, are all ingredients of a grosser level of manifestation of papañca. (For now, papañca may be translated as ‘mental proliferation’.) In contrast, when we practise mindfulness, we are usually trying more to ‘stay at contact’ – that is, to hold or return the attention to the ‘initial, basic’ experiences that arise at the contact of the sense doors with the sense objects. Thus mindfulness practice involves a degree of putting down, or cutting off, these grosser levels of complication, self-based narratives, and proliferation.

Practice: ‘Staying at contact’

If you are not already very familiar with working in this way, experiment with periods of practice, both in formal meditation and in all kinds of situations and environments as you move through the day, where the principal intention is to try, as much as possible, to ‘stay at contact’. Experiment with two modes of doing this:

• With the attention directed (at any time) to a specific sense object – a sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, or body sensation. Make sure that you also include objects that do seem to trigger reactions and associations.

• With the attention more open to the totality of sense contact.

Expect associations, memories, and reactions to arise at contact sometimes. See if you can simply notice them, and not get drawn off by them away from the more immediate experiences of contact at the sense doors. Expect also that the mind will at times get drawn off and into a story or papañca of some kind. There is no need to judge this. See if it is possible to simply notice as soon as you can and bring the attention back to whatever is contacting the senses. As you try to sustain this, notice how it feels. And when the mind is caught up in papañca, what do you notice? How does it feel?

Intimately connected with this idea of ‘staying at contact’ is the notion of ‘bare attention’. Not only does the mind have a habit of getting pulled off into associations and stories, but also a tendency to overlay a veil of concepts, abstractions, and images ‘on top of’ our ‘basic’ experience. Sometimes this can actually be helpful, even necessary. But we can easily become enchanted by and then caught up in those ways of looking – perceiving in terms of and through the lens of that concept, abstraction, or image, rather than attending more simply to the more ‘basic’ data presented by the senses. The mental image of our body, rather than the sensations of the body, is often what the mind is engaging and preoccupied with, for example; and we feel the sensations of the body mixed with and through the filter of this image, instead of more ‘barely’ or ‘purely’. Or, hearing a sound and recognizing a plane, the concept and image of a ‘plane’ can get superimposed onto the sound in a way that makes our listening at that time more vague, less intimately attentive to the actual experience of the sound itself.

Practice: Questioning abstractions and generalizations

On an occasion when you are aware that some dukkha is present, see if you can identify any abstraction or generalization the mind has created and is now reacting to. If a generalization, abstraction, or assumption is involved, can you question whether it is true? If questioning its truth does not feel conceivable, can you identify why not? Is there another perspective on this experience that is possible? What might that be?

Practice: Bare attention

If you are not already very familiar with working in this way, practise periods of bringing and sustaining, as much as you can, a bare attention to experience – trying to meet experience as it presents itself, as free as possible from the veils of concepts, interpretations, and abstractions. Make sure you experiment with all the sense doors, both when there is obviously dukkha present and also when there is not, and both in and out of formal meditation in different situations – for example with the sensations of sitting (in a chair, in a car, or on a bus), of the hands in cold or hot water, of the body in the shower; with the sounds around you, wherever you are; with various smells and tastes of different things. The individual possibilities are endless. What do you notice happens when you sustain bare attention on an experience? Is it possible to see that at least some level of fabrication cannot be supported if the attention is more ‘bare’? How do you notice this? What happens to any dukkha present? What else do you notice?

As practice develops, we naturally experience times when the quality of mindfulness is relatively stronger and more continuous than at other times, and we are able to pay closer attention to things, inner and outer. Then, as has been mentioned, it is possible to begin to see that what at first blush looked so solid in fact has lots of gaps in it. More than this though, we can begin to get a little sense, at a certain level, of how the perceptions of solidity are fabricated. Just as in those children’s ‘dot-to-dot’ drawing books – where you follow and join the numbered dots with a pencil line to get a picture of something or other – close mindfulness can show that the mind joins the fragmented ‘dots’ of momentary experience, and thus fabricates some ‘bigger’ and more solid-seeming experience. And as explained, the bigger and more solid an experience seems, the greater the clinging and the dukkha it involves. This ‘joining of the dots’ happens in thinking about an impending experience in the future, and also while we are actually experiencing it.

Practice: ‘Dot-to-dot’

Experiment with giving a whole range of different kinds of experiences a steadiness of intimate, careful, and precise, moment-to-moment attention. Can you notice the ‘gaps’ in the experience of a ‘thing’? See if you can sustain for some time that level of mindfulness that sees the gaps. What difference does it make then in your sense of that thing? How does it feel to see this way? In your investigations, be sure to include various emotions and mind states, as well as pleasant, unpleasant, and also ‘neutral’ physical experiences involving different sense doors. (Taste, touch, and bodily sensation are particularly conducive to this kind of investigation.)

Eyes Wide Open: Seeing Causes and Conditions

In regard to the sense of self and the various self-views in which we become ensnared, a significant strand of practice therefore involves beginning a) to recognize when the self-sense is being more grossly and rigidly constructed; b) to understand how it is being constructed; and c) to learn how to undermine this construction, so that there is less self fabricated at that time, and a degree of binding in dukkha is thus loosened.

Blame is an extreme example of our instinctual way of seeing, which tends to focus on, and solidify, the perception of self. Too easily and too quickly – when we make a mistake, when something goes wrong, when we or others act, or fail to act, in a certain way, when what manifests through body, speech, or mind is not what we wished for or might approve of – we point at and blame our self or the self of another. Usually in adopting such a stance the mind is adopting a shrunken view. Seeing only in terms of self, and habitually placing self at centre stage of whatever situation or event transpired, it is not recognizing and including in its understanding the wider confluence of conditions that give rise to anything at all in the world. But seeing in terms of the wider web of conditions that come together to give rise to any action or result is a different, more open and more compassionate, way of looking at what has happened or is happening. It is a seeing not in terms of self, not through the lens of self.

What we can practise then, at first after an event that we are seeing with blame, is a ‘re-viewing’, a looking again in a different manner, in a way that takes at least some of the suffering out of it. There is a deconstruction, a softening of a view that has calcified. And this requires the head and the heart working together. Clarity and thoroughness are here in the service of compassion. Since, in blame, our vision tends to be too narrow, it is vital to take into account a broad enough spread of contributing conditions to open out the view. Thus it can sometimes be helpful to make sure to consider four kinds of possibly relevant conditions.

Conditions are inner, outer, past, and present

In opening the seeing out to a broader array of conditions – inner and outer, past and present – this way of looking does not point at a self with blame. In fact, engaged more thoroughly, this process does not even find a self. For it becomes evident that actually none of the conditions that might be considered can be regarded as really being the self; nor can it be said that the self truly owns any of them. Through broadening the way of looking to respect the contributions of a variety of conditions, a certain level of self-view, including the painful self-view of blame, can be dissolved.

The fact that any thing that exists or that comes into being does so dependent on countless other things as supporting conditions is one of the basic meanings of dependent arising. With reflection the assumption or view that some effect or outcome is due to just one cause can seem quite naïve. And as we look more openly, more thoroughly, and with more intelligence, we can see how complex and far-reaching, infinite really, is the confluence of conditions that gives rise to anything. For each condition is fed by others, without a beginning or an end to this web of dependency. Moreover, conditions affect and feed each other too.

Practice: Ending blame through recognizing the confluence of conditions

If there is something from the past for which you are blaming yourself, take some time – either in formal meditation, or quietly reflecting, or with a spiritual friend – to consider the broader range of conditions on which whatever happened was dependent. Make sure you include the loose categories of ‘present, inner’, ‘present, outer’, ‘past, inner’, and ‘past, outer’ conditions in your considerations. Notice if there is a condition that you come to which you feel is ‘you’, or for which you believe you are to blame. Can you see that this too is dependent on other conditions that are not ‘you’, and identify what they are? Notice what effect this re-viewing has on your perception of and feelings about what happened, and on notions of self-blame or guilt. Re-view this event many times in this way. Even if it feels immediately helpful, the shift in view probably needs consolidating. Alternatively, if it feels like it does not help much, it may yet be that it gains power through repetition, or with the help of a friend kindly pointing out your ‘blind spots’. It is also important to practise this shift in view on many events and situations, ones that feel quite difficult and charged, and also those that feel less so. See if you can practise viewing a situation or a phenomenon that has arisen in the present in the same way. What effect does this have? If there is some apprehension regarding an impending situation, could you also consider that situation in this way? Whenever there is a lingering blaming of another person, a similar contemplative process may potentially be directed toward them. Although we usually have less knowledge of the specific variety of conditions that were operating for another, the same principles hold, and reflecting on this can often dissolve blame.

Stories, Personalities, Liberations

Though all self-views and all things are fabricated, this emptiness of self and phenomena does not mean that we cannot engage with, and view in terms of, the self or any phenomenon on a conventional level. A part of the freedom that comes with any degree of realizing emptiness is a freedom to view in different ways. And in fact there will be countless times when it is not only necessary, but most helpful, not to emphasize the view of emptiness. Sometimes seeing in terms of self is the most appropriate way of seeing, and the one that relieves the dukkha of a particular situation most satisfactorily.

It is frequently the case that in circles prioritizing meditation we can come to regard any and all stories as something to be dropped and avoided. The question, as always though, is whether this narrative that I am entertaining is helpful or not.

Commonly we do not realize quite how malleable is the story of our life, how much flexibility is possible in the way of seeing it, interpreting it, and expressing it. The narrative of my journey – not only my present and my future story, but also the story of my past – is not completely fixed, simply and objectively ‘given’, engraved in stone. Significantly, we can see our story, and thus also ourselves (who must be central to the story), in ways that imprison and disempower us, or render us, for instance, as a victim in some way. Alternatively, we can loosen a little the chains of the stories that bind us, and see our journey in ways that heal, that empower and inspire us, give us energy, possibility, direction, and meaning.

What we seek, then, are both the means of recognizing the emptiness and the malleability of stories and self-views where they have been petrified, as well as ways to move, at times, out of the narrative mode so that other and more radical insights are possible. Part of this, again, will be understanding how a particular self-view has been constructed. In so doing we realize that it is a construction, and so see through it. A significant measure of liberation and an ease of spaciousness are thus made available to us.

It is such a liberating shift of understanding and perspective to see in terms of conditions, and so not make conclusions about ‘how the self is’. At times, therefore, when we feel the contraction of dukkha around some thing, it can be powerfully helpful to ask: What am I making this mean? We need to see precisely what the mind is doing, and particularly what it is concluding. For the meaning of something is given by the mind’s perspective.

When there is suffering around a certain thing that has occurred or a certain element of experience, a related second question we can ask is: From the huge variety and totality of moments of sense impressions today or in a certain situation, why is this phenomenon fixated upon and not something else? Correspondingly, of course, we may ask a third question: What am I not giving significance to then? What am I perhaps not even noticing?

Practice: Examining, and loosening, self-definitions

Take some time to notice and make a written list of self-definitions that you hold on to – both the more obvious and the more hidden ones. What reveals that a self-definition is operating? Once you have the written list, look at it. Writing a list like this on a piece of paper is a way of externalizing it, and so engendering a little space around these views. Notice how it feels to read the list slowly. Notice also how true these definitions seem as you read them. Pick one of these self-definitions and see if it is possible to lightly sustain an attention over some days that notices both the presences and the absences of the qualities it implies. During this time, notice also the opposite qualities when they arise (for instance kindness, if you have a self-definition of being unkind; or unkindness, if you have a self-definition of being kind). How does it feel to see these various contradictions to the self-view? What effects does it have?

Often we simply do not see all that is within us. There may be certain thoughts, emotions, intentions and drives, and even sub-personalities that we are habitually inclined not to notice and acknowledge. It can be instructive to ask oneself therefore: What do I tend to miss or ignore when I look at myself?

It might also be important therefore to ask ourselves at times: What quality within me, or what aspect of myself, am I assuming is the reason for this behaviour (or this thought, or this mood)?

Too readily we may have absorbed and taken on certain collectively held assumptions of the particular sub-cultures we move in. It is therefore powerful also to ask ourselves, as freshly as possible, and with an intent to expose old assumptions: What do I stifle within myself? There should not be any implication, lurking behind such a question, that we always have to act on and express everything that arises within us. Nevertheless, sometimes when we recognize that we are holding back a certain expression, unless it would harm ourselves or others it can be freeing, empowering, and hugely enlivening to experiment with expressing it. Here again, it may be very helpful to feel into the (perhaps less habitual) sense of self when we do so.

Dependent Origination (1)

A good deal of what we have explored thus far could be expressed in the terms of the Buddha’s teaching on dependent origination (Pali: paṭiccasamuppāda). Although it can be interpreted as describing the processes of rebirth of sentient beings from one life to the next, this teaching can also serve as an explication, or a schematic map, of how both dukkha and the self-sense are constructed – in the moment and over time – within one life.

A common formulation of paṭiccasamuppāda reads: With delusion (avijjā) as condition, there are concoctions (saṅkhārā); With concoctions as condition, consciousness; With consciousness as condition, mentality-materiality (nāmarūpa); With mentality-materiality as condition, the six sense spheres; With the six sense spheres as condition, contact; With contact as condition, vedanā; With vedanā as condition, craving; With craving as condition, clinging; With clinging as condition, becoming (bhava); With becoming as condition, birth; With birth as condition, aging and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, and tribulation. Such is the origin of this whole mass of suffering (dukkha).

Thus far, however, this descriptive sketch has oversimplified the process and suggests a kind of linearity that is not really there. It would be more accurate if we added the realization that any link can feed into and reinforce any other link, so that all kinds of sub-loops and vicious cycles can occur.

It is vital too to see that the map of paṭiccasamuppāda, even at this level of understanding, offers not only a description of the tangles we get into, but also multiple possibilities for untangling and lessening dukkha. In fact, this very non-linearity just discussed, as well as adding significantly to the complexity and reinforcement of knots of dukkha, is also an aid to our freedom, since it makes available diverse entry points for undermining the fabrications of self and suffering.

Practice: A skilful tolerating of craving

When there is craving – a grasping after, a holding on to, or an energetic movement to be rid of, something – practise bringing a spacious mindfulness to the experience of the craving, and particularly to the sense of pressure or tension that it involves in the body. Notice how the felt pressure of the craving unfolds in time, intensifying, peaking, and then gradually subsiding. Can you get a sense how mindfully allowing it to do so develops a capacity to tolerate the experience of craving, and gradually disempowers it? Notice too the corresponding rise and fall in the experience of dukkha accompanying the craving. What else do you notice when you do this?

Practice: Focusing on vedanā to temper the force of craving

When you notice that there is craving or clinging present in relation to some object of any of the six senses, practise sustaining a focused attention on the experience of the vedanā (the shifting quality of pleasantness, unpleasantness, or ‘neutrality’) of that object, moment to moment. As you do so, see if you can get a sense of the moment-to-moment arising of the craving from the vedanā. If the vedanā seems to be feeding reactive thoughts and papañca, notice what effects staying concentrated on the vedanā has on the strength and amount of these thoughts and papañca, and on the degree of entanglement in them. Pay attention also to what effect such a stationing of the focus has on the craving and clinging. Observe the effects too on the whole sense of dukkha involved. Again, what else do you notice when you do this?

Part Four: On Deepening Roads

The Experience of Self Beyond Personality

Besides whatever thoughts about the self are present or absent, with every state of the citta there will be a way the self – along with the body, and the citta – is felt and sensed. We can call this aspect of the perception of self the sense of self or the self-sense. When we feel embarrassed or afraid, for example, the sense of self tends to feel more contracted, more solid, and also more separate from others and from the world. In contrast, when we feel relaxed, or generous, say, the sense of self is more open and spacious; it usually feels lighter then too, and there is less of a sense of separation from others and the world. Generally, the self-sense will be mirrored in the feeling and sense of the body, which will correspondingly feel and be perceived as more or less contracted, solid, and separate.

In addition to the sense of solidity, contraction, and separateness, we could say too that the self-sense is experienced along this continuum as more or less gross or refined. A state of anger, for instance, towards one end of the spectrum, involves a quite gross sense of self, whereas a state of deep samādhi, for example, towards the other end, involves a very light, refined sense of self. The movement of the self-sense along this spectrum presents us with one aspect of a basic and pervasive opportunity for comprehending voidness. It may take some practice, but recognizing that there is a spectrum to the sense of self, becoming familiar with the range of that spectrum and the manifestations of the self-sense within it, as well as gradually developing a sensitivity to the subtle differences along the continuum – these are all indispensable to our approach to insight into emptiness.

With the development of meditation practice, we typically move more up and down this spectrum. And we experience a greater range of it than most non-meditators would – meditation making accessible to us at times the more refined end of the spectrum. Such extension into the quieter areas of the range is lovely in itself, but in seeking insight into dependent arising and emptiness we must be interested in the whole continuum. It is not only the grosser, more obvious manifestations of self that need to be attended to and addressed. Nor is it that we are simply trying to hang out as long as we can at the more refined end of the spectrum. It is, rather, an intimate awareness, an investigation, and then an understanding, of the shifting of the self-sense along this entire continuum that will provide a principal key for the unfolding of our realization.

Begin to include in your practice, both in and out of formal meditation, an awareness of the sense of self, and how that sense fluctuates and moves along a continuum. Notice how the self-sense feels at times of different degrees of dukkha, and when there is upset about something or other. Pay particular attention to the sense of contraction and the perceptions and feelings of solidity and separation that comprise the self-sense at one end of its spectrum. Notice too how the sense of self feels at times of more ease, and particularly at different times in meditation. Especially important is to notice the quality of the self-sense in periods of greater quietude, when mettā, mindfulness, or samādhi are stronger. Notice how the sense of the body mirrors the sense of the self. What else do you notice about the experience of the sense of self at different times?

As well as this spectrum of sense of self, there is too another aspect of the experience of self that it is very helpful to notice. That is: the range of possible ways we habitually conceive of the self, and particularly how we conceive its more general relationship with the body and the mind.

Sometimes this conceiving is conscious and involves thought: a person will adopt, intellectually, a certain philosophical position about the self and how it relates to the body, to the mind, and to consciousness; or (s)he may choose, as a matter of faith, to uphold a certain belief about the nature of the self. In either case, (s)he may then be able to articulate these views about the self to others. More often though, this conceiving is not so conscious and does not involve thought. It exists and operates as an intuitive feeling or conception, perhaps vaguely, and of which we may not be aware. Like the sense of self we have discussed, this conceiving is present in any moment when there is any experience. And it too, we should note, is not fixed – the actual conception can be different at different times. Now all of this we can begin to notice, and to question. For this level of self-view also needs to be addressed.

In exposing more precisely and fully the ways we tend to conceive of the self’s relation with body and mind, it can be helpful to conceptually divide up ‘body and mind’ into smaller constituents. One way of doing this is to use the Buddha’s formulation of ‘the five aggregates’. We can list and define them, for now, as follows: rūpa – ‘body’, ‘matter’ or ‘materiality’, and also any ‘form’ perceived possessing shape etc.; vedanā – ‘sensation’, but specifically the ‘feeling-tone’ of sensations, i.e. the quality in any experience of pleasantness, unpleasantness, or neither-pleasantness-nor-unpleasantness; saṃjñā (Skt.), saññā (Pali) – ‘perception’; saṃskārā (Skt.), saṅkhārā (Pali) – ‘mental formations’ or ‘concoctions’, including thoughts, intentions and volitions, and mental factors like attention etc. which play a part in fabricating experience; vijñāna (Skt.), viññāṅa (Pali) – ‘consciousness’, i.e. any of the six sense-consciousnesses (consciousness of any phenomena of the five senses and of mental phenomena).

The frame of reference of the skandhas provides us with a loose, but comprehensive, kind of checklist for exposing all possible self-conceptions, and then learning to let these go. For included in this list of five aggregates are all the phenomena of existence with which we might conceivably identify or which we might assume a possession of. Everything in phenomenal existence may in fact be placed somewhere in these piles. The teaching of the aggregates thus presents us with a framework for meditatively investigating and flushing out even the more subtle and perhaps hidden conceptions and views of self. We can be sure that no stone goes unturned, and that, with practice, absolutely nothing will remain clung to as ‘me’ or ‘mine’.

Typically and almost incessantly we cling to varying permutations of four kinds of conception of the self – either explicitly, or more immediately and intuitively through our normal ways of looking. Sometimes we may feel or conceive of the self as one or more of the aggregates. We identify with the body at times as ourselves, or we identify with the mind, or with one aspect of the mind such as emotion or intelligence – we feel and think that is who we are. Or, it is possible at times that we conceive of the self as somehow other than the aggregates, but possessing the aggregates – owning the body, or owning the mind, the emotions, perceptions, or other mental factors. Alternatively, we might at times believe or feel that the self is somehow in the body or in the mind. And it is possible also to conceive, feel, or believe that the aggregates are somehow in the self – the self being thought of then as something more vast, containing the aggregates. Conceiving of the self in any of these ways is not only not conducive to liberation, but actually prevents it. The Buddha taught, therefore, that we should abandon such conceptions of the self in order to know freedom.

Two important points need to be made here to more fully support the thrust of this teaching. First, if it does not immediately seem to be included on the Buddha’s list of permutations (a list that was intended to be exhaustive), it may be that we assume that some other conception of the self is unproblematic, or correct, or corresponds to reality. However, the Buddha actually taught that clinging to any theory of self will be limiting and will give rise to dukkha. It is therefore necessary at some point to become clearly aware of the conceptions of self we are entertaining and investigate if they are ultimately true, and if they are helpful. Second, while we may be willing to drop an intellectual, philosophical formulation of the self, perhaps out of faith in the Buddha, the more important and more difficult work is to expose and let go of the clinging to these conceptions as they operate in us at a more intuitive level.

It can seem often as if the aggregates are dependent on the self, in a certain sense. First there is ‘me’, and then the body or the mind that ‘I’ own and control. Many of us might easily feel at times that we would gladly exchange this body for a younger, healthier, more attractive, or more energetic one, if we could, or exchange our minds or the mental factors for fresher or somehow better ones – and feel that, all the while, the self would remain unchanged in some fundamental way by that process. In some way a self that is somehow vaguely independent of the aggregates is assumed here. We might also conceive at times of the self as the totality of the aggregates, as if the self is the sum of its parts, or a collection of elements. Or we might posit the self as the continuum in time of the aggregates – a process. This latter is slightly more sophisticated and less likely to be an intuitively held default conception.

Then there can also be a conception, and a strong sense in meditation or at other times, that actually ‘all is one’ – there is only one, cosmic, self. This can take different forms that we do not need to elaborate here. Possible too in many variations, and arising through certain practices, philosophies, or intuitions, is the conceiving of the self as being independent of the aggregates, something that somehow encompasses them, carries or holds them. One of the more common variations is a conception that the true self is awareness, or is a kind of vast, imperturbable, permanent or universal awareness.

None of these conceptions at all, however, was endorsed by the Buddha as the ultimately true nature of the self. They will all involve, either explicitly or implicitly, assumptions of the inherent existence of such a self, no matter how rarefied or cosmic. And likewise, they will also involve assumptions or assertions that this or that formulation or perception really is the true nature of the self.

We should refine this essential point, however, from the perspective of our central method and theme of ways of looking. For it may well be that many of these views and conceptions are extremely helpful and beautiful ways of looking at the self, which bring, in some cases, a profound degree of freedom. They might then serve as necessary stepping-stones of insight – as ways of looking that liberate to a certain extent, and that may then also be helpful en route to yet more radically freeing ways of looking. Without such stepping-stones it will usually not be possible to realize the deeper insights in ways that involve more than the intellect, and so actually make a difference. Even as we feel the blessings it bestows, however, the freedom opened at the level of one of these stepping-stones will still have limits to it. When there is any self-conception, and when there is any assumption of inherent existence, some avijjā remains and, despite its subtlety, will seed the continuity of fundamental delusion and of dukkha.

Three More Liberating Ways of Looking: (1) – Anicca

Anicca means inconstancy, instability, impermanence. That phenomena are impermanent and that they change is fairly obvious. More helpful and more potent than simply acknowledging this when the fact strikes us, however, is the development of a practice of deliberately and repeatedly attending to the appearances and disappearances, the changing nature of things. This entails much more than merely thinking about impermanence; it involves seeing and sensing it.

Practice: Awareness of change at an everyday level

Regularly take some time at the end of the day to view the day’s experiences from the perspective of anicca. With regard to different aspects of experience – mood, energy levels, and the various sense impressions of your surroundings, for example – carefully recollect and acknowledge the changes and shifting phases that occurred. What other transformations are you aware of? The period framed for reflection in this way may actually be of any length. It could be longer – perhaps a portion, or the whole, of a retreat; or shorter – just one session of formal meditation, or the duration of a meeting at work, for instance. Notice each time how it feels to see events and experiences from the perspective of anicca like this. After you have gained some familiarity with this reflection, practise bringing this knowledge of the fact of change to your current experiences – of mood, energy levels, sense impressions, etc. – at any time. Regard whatever the experience is with the clear and conscious knowing that it will transform. Notice, with as much sensitivity as you can, what effects this way of looking has in the moment.

Some practitioners find, at times, that repeating inwardly – very quietly and sparsely – a word such as “anicca”, “impermanence”, or “inconstancy” during this practice helps to keep the attention attuned to change moment to moment. Rather than labelling each micro-instant of perception as “impermanent”, noting like this can function more as a gentle reminder to guide and tune the intention and attention. It will anyway be the case, more often than not, that as the practice settles, the rapidity of change noticed will preclude a discrete and overt labelling of each arising and passing. Any mental noting, however, should only be used to the extent that it supports the view of impermanence being practised. It should not be obtrusive or itself take up much attention. For the primary focus is always on the sense of change. Experiment to find what is helpful for you. There may be times when a light labelling is conducive to the way of looking, and other times when it seems more helpful to drop it.

It is important to understand that the purpose of the contemplation of impermanence is not to uncover some ultimately true level of reality comprised of the smallest possible indivisible atoms of sensation or experience. Nor, likewise, is it to come to a conclusion that the true nature of existence is some kind of ‘flow’, and thus that the experience of existence as ‘flow’ is an experience of what is ultimately real. It has, rather, two main purposes. First, attention to anicca should, for the most part, organically and effortlessly engender a letting go, a release of clinging, in the moment that we are engaged in it. And this letting go brings a sense of freedom. Second, this practice should also furnish a degree of insight into emptiness and fabrication. In addition to making evident the gaps in things, and how the mind fabricates by ‘joining the dots’, it also offers a simple entry point to begin to see the emptiness of self at a certain level. If sustained attention to the totality of phenomena reveals nothing that is fixed, that does not change, where then is this self whose essence we intuitively feel as somehow unchanging? What could it possibly be, other than these momentary phenomena that are all we encounter? It simply cannot be found. We begin to glimpse then, at an existential level, beyond the personality level of self-definitions, how the sense of self too is stitched together.

Practice: Attending to anicca moment to moment

For a part or for the whole of a meditation session, or continuing as you move about your day, practise sustaining attention on the moment-to-moment changing that you notice in objects. Take time to familiarize yourself with contemplating the impermanence of phenomena in this way in each of the six sense spheres. Make sure that you choose objects that are experienced as dukkha, and also those that are not. (Particularly if you are feeling unwell or tired, and believe that this is preventing you practising or practising well, try to keep attending, as closely as possible, to the momentary fluctuations in these very experiences.) Practise working with both an awareness directed towards a specific phenomenon, and also with a more spacious, open awareness simply attuned to a certain sense sphere and the anicca that is observable there. In similar ways, practise contemplating the moment-to-moment fluctuation in vedanā; and also in the experience of different emotions or mind states, gross and subtle. At times when the citta is a little more settled and spacious, practise remaining focused on the ephemeral nature of thoughts in the ways outlined earlier. Experiment for yourself with contemplating the anicca of any other appearances. (As suggested, it can be helpful to use the five aggregates as a kind of comprehensive checklist of phenomena for moment-to-moment impermanence contemplation.) Some will naturally feel easier to practise with than others. Experiment with seeing the impermanence of consciousness in the way explained earlier. Once you have established some familiarity and ability in regard to phenomena and sense spheres taken singly, practise opening up the attention to the moment-to-moment impermanence in the totality of all experience. Notice always, and as carefully as you are able, how it feels to look at things attuned to their changing nature. Notice too how the sense of self is affected by this way of looking. What else do you notice when you look this way? (This investigation will eventually be vital for the development of further insight.)

In contemplating impermanence, very often we might experience a bitter-sweet fusion of contradictory emotions. As always, what we actually feel depends on a whole host of conditions, inner and outer, that come together in the moment of response. It seems to me important, though, to be able, and willing, to open the heart to the pathos of anicca, to accommodate, and to care for, these feelings. There is loss in life of all kinds. No matter how we might try, nothing at all can be preserved forever just as it is. Material things change or fall apart, or we move away from them. The shared intimacies with those we love become memories, fade and disappear. Our own physical and mental capacities erode with the years. And there appears no end to this unstoppable torrent of phenomena passing from existence. The entire journeys of our lives can seem so brief at times, and our death is not distant at all. Like loss, decay, and separation, it is inevitable; only the exact timing is uncertain. Anicca is everywhere, all around us, and all through us too. It is behind us in our wake, and waiting for us in the future. Allowing ourselves to open to and be touched by this dimension of our existential situation is essential to our humanity, and also to our practice. As the capacity of the heart grows and we are more able to embrace the heartbreaking side of anicca, we may find, at least at times, the possibility of a tender kind of beauty in the reality of impermanence and in our relationship with it.

Practice: Viewing experience from the perspective of death and vast time

Reflect on the fact of your birth and death – your appearance and disappearance in the universe. Consider, or even imagine in some way, the vastness of time and space that surrounds your life, and that also surrounds this moment’s experience. Play, many times, with bringing attention intensely to any sense impression in the present moment, while at the same time allowing this awareness of the greater context of this flash of experience to inform the way of looking. (You may have to experiment to find your own way to make this work for you.) How does this way of looking feel? What effects do you notice of viewing the moment’s experience this way?

Three More Liberating Ways of Looking: (2) – Dukkha

The second characteristic, dukkha, we will divide into two possible ways of working that are related. The first approach is in fact implied by, and only a very slight extension of, the anicca practice. Phenomena are dukkha, that is, unsatisfactory, in part because they are impermanent, finite and unreliable. They cannot provide lasting satisfaction or fulfilment, even when they are lovely. Sustaining a way of looking, moment to moment, that regards phenomena as ‘unsatisfactory’, organically engenders some degree of letting go – of release of craving – in that very moment. This deliberately practised view of phenomena as ‘unsatisfactory’ has, then, as its implicitly understood but silent subtext: ‘because they are fleeting’. Just as with the other characteristics, in order for it to work effectively as a way of letting go it must be a meditative seeing. It is not a philosophical position to uphold. And in practice, this regarding of any thing that arises as unsatisfactory should not be a laboured pondering with thought, but rather an instantaneous, and very light, way of looking, repeated over and over. Again it is worth experimenting to see if a quiet and delicate labelling of “unsatisfactory” feels helpful in supporting this way of looking.

Just as any of the three characteristics will, it forms an avenue of exploration. Our intuitive notion of life is usually bound up with and confined to experiences, but there is the possibility of a seeing that is not limited in these ways. What happens, we are inquiring, if consciousness is not so caught up in or limited by phenomena? For when we meditatively regard things as unsatisfactory, at that time we are sustaining a view that could be called one of holy discontent with almost everything, curious in what opens up as a result of that view. This is categorically not an attitude of aversion towards things, of trying to push them away, of disgust, or repulsion. It is much more a natural letting go in the moment that comes from viewing things as unsatisfactory, a lessening of the compulsive and deep-rooted tendencies to constantly pick phenomena up, grasp after them, fuss over them, or try to get rid of them.

Related to this, when we are practising with any of the three characteristics as ways of looking, there is too a dropping of many of the usual kinds of interest we might have in phenomena. Except for an interest in seeing repeatedly the particular characteristic we are working with, and an interest in the effects of this way of looking, we are sustaining what could be called a holy disinterest in phenomena. Clearly this is not the same as just ignoring things, or being in denial about the presence of some thing or other, or any of the usual kinds of lack of interest that can occur for us at different times. It is a conscious choice to skilfully engage in a particular way of looking. At other times of course we can pick phenomena up, draw intimately close to them, and investigate them in different ways.

Practice: Viewing phenomena as ‘dukkha’ moment to moment

Once you have developed a little familiarity with the anicca practice – particularly at the everyday and moment-to-moment levels – you can begin to play at times with a slight transformation of that way of looking, sustaining a meditative view of phenomena, moment to moment, as ‘unsatisfactory’. Make sure this way of seeing phenomena is uniformly applied to what is experienced as lovely, what is experienced as difficult, and what is experienced as neither. Here the unsatisfactory nature of things is not tied to their being unpleasant. Take time to explore this way of looking with the same range of phenomena as in the anicca practice, and in all the same ways – with attention narrowed down to a particular object, and also opened out in a more spacious way to the totality of experience in one or more sense spheres. Try to be as comprehensive as possible in the practice of this view. Make sure you include the more subtle states of citta that arise – such as any state of relative clarity or relative concentration – as well as states that are relatively less clear and concentrated. Notice also how it feels to regard phenomena as unsatisfactory. It is important to feel the letting go, the letting be, and the release, that this way of looking involves. If joy or some other lovely state of being arises as a result of this practice, you can simply acknowledge, allow, and enjoy these feelings while you continue to view phenomena as ‘unsatisfactory’. Importantly, at other times, these feelings themselves can also be regarded in the moment as ‘unsatisfactory’. If you do this, notice what effect it has. Sustaining a ‘holy discontent’ and a ‘holy disinterest’ should open up a sense of freedom and bright peace in the moment. Notice, though, if aversion creeps in and colours the experience with feelings such as boredom or dullness. If it does, experiment to see if it is possible to shift the way of looking – back to one that supports a letting be of all phenomena. (At times, one way of doing so might be viewing the very boredom, dullness, disconnection, or aversion, as ‘unsatisfactory’.) Notice again, with care, how the sense of self is affected by this way of looking. As before, what else do you notice when you look this way? (Such further noticing will come to be crucial for deeper levels of insight.)

Viewing phenomena as unsatisfactory is one skilful way of letting go, of letting them be. In fact, all of the ways of looking that we are interested in developing over the course of this book are actually ways of letting go, ways of pacifying the compulsive push and pull of craving and clinging to phenomena in the moment. This release and relaxation in the relationship with things can also be practised slightly more directly in a second approach to the characteristic of dukkha.

Practice: Relaxing the relationship with phenomena

In a meditation session, as different phenomena arise, practise developing sensitivity to the presence of clinging, particularly through its expression in some sense of contraction in the body space or of the space of awareness. See if it is possible to gently and deliberately relax that clinging, relaxing the relationship with the phenomenon clung to. You can experiment with different means of doing this:

• by simply intending to let go in relationship to that phenomenon;

• by relaxing the bodily contraction that accompanies the clinging;

• by allowing, welcoming, or opening to the phenomenon as fully as possible;

• by tuning in to the moment-to-moment disappearance and dissolution of the phenomenon clung to;

• by regarding the phenomenon as ‘unsatisfactory’;

• by any other means you may discover for yourself, or find in this book or elsewhere.

In order to sustain this way of looking, repeat this sensitizing to and relaxing of the relationship, over and over, as often as you become aware of any clinging. Feel how it feels in the body and in the mind to cling, and feel the dukkha that clinging brings. Feel, too, how it feels in the body and in the mind to release a degree of clinging; and feel the relative release from dukkha that accompanies a release of clinging. Experiment also with sustaining a way of looking which utterly allows or welcomes, without first pausing to become aware of the relationship with objects. As phenomena arise, gently draw the attention close to them, and then, as fully as possible, try to emphasize a total allowing, or a complete welcoming of, or a wide opening to, the sense impression of that object, over and over. Let almost all the emphasis of the practice be on repeating and sustaining this quality of allowing, welcoming, or opening to whatever is present – its arising, its abiding, and its passing. Also include an awareness of how it feels to do this. It is very important to work at times in a way that focuses on relaxing the relationship with one phenomenon at a time; at other times working in a more open way, focused on the totality of phenomena, is helpful. Remember to include the possibility that releasing clinging allows the citta to calm, so that subtler levels of clinging can be similarly worked with. Alternatively, experiment at times with focusing more on any bodily experience of well-being, pleasure, or pleasant stillness that arises through this way of looking, in order to incline the citta towards resting in samādhi for a time. This may be for a short while before returning to the insight way of looking, or for the rest of the session if you like. As you practise this way of looking notice carefully variations in the perception of the self, and how the sense of self depends on the degree of clinging at any time.

Three More Liberating Ways of Looking: (3) – Anattā

At some point then, instead of waiting for this lessening of identification to come about as a result of another practice, it will become possible to more immediately practise sustaining a view of phenomena as ‘not-self’, ‘not me, not mine’.

As with the other characteristics, you may need to experiment to find out if a very light and succinct labelling helps this way of looking. Possibilities for such quiet verbal support of this view might include moment to moment delicately labelling phenomena as “anattā”, “not-self”, or “not me, not mine”. You can also modify the way of looking by quietly voicing within, for example: “there is sensation”, or “there is awareness” – that is to say, ‘sensations or awareness are just happening’ – in contradistinction to the typical, intuitive sense of phenomena as belonging to or being the self.

Just like with the other characteristics, we need to gradually develop both our skill and our range in this way of looking. In beginning to learn this practice it is imperative to ascertain and work first with the group of phenomena from which it feels easiest to disidentify. This will vary depending on a practitioner’s meditative background and also on personal differences, so that, once more, experimentation is vital. For many, especially those whose main training is in the kinds of insight meditation that place a strong emphasis on mindfulness of the body, it is often easiest at first, naturally enough, to sustain a disidentification with the body sensations. Whatever the least difficult aggregate turns out to be, once a facility with that one is established it can serve as a foundation from which to expand the range of the anattā practice. Step by step, other phenomena can be included – separately, or at the same time – in the way of looking.

Practice: Seeing what is external as ‘not mine’

Choose a number of your material possessions for contemplation as ‘not mine’. Take some time to hold each within some intensity of attention. Notice if and how the sense of ownership is affected when the mindfulness is relatively strong and the mind is less taken by thoughts about the object. See if it is possible to deliberately view these things, one by one, as ‘not mine’. If, through holding any object in mindfulness or through some other practice, you have glimpsed this dropping of the sense of ownership at times, you may find you can gently nudge the mind back into that way of looking. Notice any emotional responses to this way of seeing. Bring a loved one into your mind’s eye, and hold the image or sense of them in attention with mindfulness. Notice whatever feelings arise. When you feel ready, practise shifting the view to seeing them free of the construct of truly being ‘my friend (partner, child, parent, etc.)’. Carefully notice again any effects this has on your feelings and your perceptions of them. If you would like to, you and a loved one could also practise this together, sitting facing each other and attempting, moment to moment, to sustain a way of looking at each other as ‘not mine, not my…’ Afterwards, take some time to share with each other your experience of this exercise.

Practice: Regarding the aggregates as anattā, moment to moment

Perhaps, based on experience with the other practices, you have a sense of which aggregate is the easiest for you to regard as anattā moment to moment. If you are not sure, take some time in meditation to experiment and find out. (If you are still unsure, starting with the body sensations is usually a good bet.) For all, or a substantial part, of a meditation session, practise sustaining a view of this aggregate as ‘not me, not mine’. (If it seems difficult, remember that you can always shift to another way of looking, such as the anicca or dukkha practices or even simple mindfulness practice, mettā, or samādhi, and let the perception of ‘not-self’ arise out of that, until you can sustain the anattā view more immediately.) Notice how this letting go feels. When some feeling such as peace or release comes from this way of looking, at times simply let yourself acknowledge it while continuing to regard your chosen phenomena as anattā. At other times, see if you can regard this experience too as anattā. And at other times, practise allowing yourself to rest in the experience, fully enjoying it, and learning to consolidate it, thus leaning the citta into more of a state of samādhi, as discussed. Once you are generally able to sustain a view of that chosen aggregate as not-self, and experience a sense of some freedom doing so, add another aggregate, or element of an aggregate, to the contemplation, and practise until that too can be sustained in the view. As explained, gradually you can add more and more. It is possible to work individually with any phenomenon, or to include together in this way of looking a pre-determined range of phenomena, and to work with a more spacious awareness. (For some practitioners, it will not suit the temperament to work so systematically through the aggregates in any order. If this is the case, you still need to make sure that all phenomena are eventually included, and the list of the aggregates is useful then simply as a checklist.) If it feels helpful, once you have some meditative facility with the sevenfold reasoning, practise incorporating it into the anattā way of looking to give it fuller power. Notice how any release of identification affects the sense of self. After gaining some familiarity with this practice, begin to pay attention also to the ways in which viewing phenomena as anattā affects other aspects of the perception of experience.

Emptiness and Awareness (1)

Practising the kinds of release of clinging that any of the three characteristics views involve, one very common possibility is that the sense of consciousness begins to become more noticeable. Through an attitude of holy disinterest, less entranced by and entangled in the particulars of phenomena, a perception of awareness as a vast and clear space in which all appearances are contained may naturally begin to emerge. In contrast to the habitual sense of consciousness as somehow ‘over here’ (perhaps in the head) directed toward some object ‘over there’, consciousness can now seem less localized, more pervading, like the open space of the sky.

As it opens and becomes more steady, it can seem more and more that all phenomena appear to emerge out of this space of awareness, abide for a time, and then disappear back into it, while the space itself can have a sense of profound stillness, of imperturbability, to it. Like shooting stars, or like fireworks, bursting into view against an immeasurable backdrop of night sky, phenomena live for a while and then they fade back into the space. Seeing experiences this way allows one even more fully to let them all arise and fade; and to let them all belong to the space of awareness.

With less distinction thus being perceived between inner and outer, and between phenomena and awareness, there may naturally be a sense of oneness, of unity of all things, that emerges, perhaps gradually, at this point. Every thing appears then, mystically, as having the nature of awareness. And this awareness seems to have very little to do with the personality; it seems more as if one has opened into something universal, shared and available to all. Allowed and supported by this sense of oneness and universality, a perception of love may also arise organically and permeate experience.

Practice: A vastness of awareness

(Experiment with different approaches to the following practice. You may want to employ the three characteristics ways of looking for a while in a session before encouraging the perception to open in the ways suggested below. Or you may let go entirely of any deliberate use of the three characteristics. Alternatively, you may incorporate them into the meditation as much or as little as feels helpful in supporting the opening to the space of awareness.)

In a meditation session, once a little calm is established, settle for a while with an open attention that allows the coming and going of the totality of body sensations in the whole body. As you do so, be aware too of the sense of space, and perhaps stillness, around and within the body. After some time, open the attention further to also include a bare attention to the totality of sounds. Let them all arise and pass, allowing the awareness to be receptive as much as possible, rather than moving toward and focusing on each sound. Listen to the silence between the sounds as well. Notice how sounds seem to arise out of, and fade back into, the silence. Allow, or imagine, the awareness to be like an open sky, clear and vast. Sensations, sounds, thoughts and images appear and disappear, like fireflies or like shooting stars in this space. Feel that in this vastness of awareness there is space for everything, no matter what it is. Notice that the awareness itself does not struggle or become entangled with what appears within it. As you sense the arising of any impulses to control or interfere with phenomena, let the undisturbed nature of the space support a relinquishing of that craving. See moments of sensation and experience appear, float freely, and disappear within the vastness of the awareness. Aware of the clarity and the immensity of this empty space, notice how every thing that arises is held within it effortlessly. Over and over, watching phenomena emerge from and then melt back into the space, see if you can practise letting all phenomena belong to this space of awareness. Notice too how experiences seem gradually to begin to lose their substantiality. Is it possible to see whatever arises as just an impression in awareness, like a reflection on the surface of a body of water? Include whatever image of your self, or self-sense arises – see these too as just impressions in awareness. Just as silence permeates all sounds, gently allow the stillness and space of awareness to pervade and to permeate every thing that arises. Is it possible to see all phenomena as having the same ‘substance’ as awareness? Watching phenomena dissolve back into the space again and again, is it possible also to get a sense of the vastness – its imperturbability or any other qualities it seems to embody? (Make sure you practise this meditation in the walking and standing postures, as well as sitting. Experiment too practising both with the eyes open, and with eyes closed.)

Practice: ‘No difference in substance’

Both within formal meditation sessions and outside of them, practise holding an object in attention while recognizing that what is actually perceived is a perception, an experience. Notice how this affects the experience. Is it possible to sense how a degree of the solidity that is habitually imputed to objects of perception is dropped? You may notice too how the usual distinction between inner and outer also becomes somewhat pacified. Whether based on shifts in view from previous meditation or on some reflection, practise sustaining a way of seeing, moment to moment, that focuses on the emptiness of any difference in substance between objects of perception and awareness. Some may find a very light labelling to this effect supportive. Practise this way of looking in the sense spheres in which it feels easiest at first, gradually adding the others until they are all included. Experiment both with an attention focused more narrowly on one object, and also with a wider, more global attention, inclusive of whatever arises. Experiment also with modulating the intensity of the view, relaxing into and resting in the view, or directing it in a more forceful manner. Notice how it feels to view phenomena this way. If feelings of release, of joy, or of physical bliss arise, you have a choice how to respond. At least some of the time though, make sure that these feelings too are regarded through the lens of this particular view. Whatever arises, and however perception changes, notice what effects repeating this way of looking over and over has on perception.

In regard to these and in fact to many discussions of using insight into the nature of awareness in meditation, something interesting can be noticed. Some approaches adopt a view of awareness wherein awareness and objects of awareness are of the same essence. In contrast, other approaches, or stages within an approach, adopt the opposite view: that awareness is radically other than the phenomena and events that are its objects; and in being other, it is undisturbed. Things arise and pass and awareness remains pure, unmoved and unsullied by any object. Many analogies may be given for this latter view. What they point out in common is the fact that we are habitually entangled in, and myopically reacting to, the objects of awareness, and miss the free and unperturbed nature of awareness itself. Just as, watching a movie, we can be engrossed in the action and story, and fail to recognize the screen on which the movie is projected, or (in a modification of the analogy) fail to turn around and become aware of the light of the projector behind us. Both of these views are available to us. In practice, we may sometimes have, and encourage, a sense of awareness as separate from its objects, and this view can be very helpful; and at other times we may have, and encourage, a sense of the sameness of objects and awareness, and this view too may be helpful. In both cases, however, as part of the view, a nature of awareness has been asserted which will not ultimately stand up to scrutiny. We will see, eventually, that the nature of awareness is neither the same as nor different from its objects of perception. These views and insights then are still provisional.

Part Five: Of Highways and Byways

The Relationship with Concepts in Meditation

Practice/Inquiry: Attitudes to using thought and concepts in meditation

Devote some time, either alone or together with a friend, to carefully exploring and inquiring into your relationship with the use of concepts on the path. Is it possible to uncover any assumptions you may be holding in this area, and then to question these assumptions? Investigate, in particular, to see if any of the kinds of suppositions and biases discussed in this chapter are operating within you. For instance: Are there are any attachments to simplicity? Or to presuppositions of ‘being directly with things as they are’? Are there ways in which notions such as ‘not knowing’ have been elevated in your view of the path? Is there a doubting of your capacity to learn to work skilfully with concepts in meditation? If so, how does the presence of that doubt feel? And what might it need? Or is there a worry that the use of thought and logic will somehow close the heart? If there is, can you identify on what experience or teaching this concern is based? Does it necessarily have to be the case? Of course, there may be many other inclinations and suppositions at work too. What else can you discover? How does it feel to unveil these assumptions and biases? And what effects does it have to see them as such, and to question them?

The Impossible Self

The anattā practice introduced earlier is a way of looking at phenomena as not-self. In contrast, the sevenfold reasoning is a practice that looks for the self that seems so obviously to have inherent existence. Recognizing that such a self cannot be found in any possible manifestation at all, it proves, and convinces us of, the impossibility of a truly existing self. Originally using an investigation of the relationship of a chariot with its parts to illustrate the deconstruction of the self’s relationship with the aggregates, the sevenfold reasoning can actually be employed to refute the inherent existence of any phenomenon. Once it is practised with the self we will extend its range. Absorbed and then used in meditation, this analysis can bring profound and powerful realizations of emptiness. We explored some of the ways the self might be conceived in relationship to the aggregates. The sevenfold reasoning expands on the permutations we mentioned there to create a more finely meshed net with which to try to seek out the self. It is the thoroughness of the search that makes it convincing. And this conviction is, in turn, critical for the meditative process.

The sevenfold reasoning will conclude that, just as a chariot or car cannot inherently be:

1. exactly the same as its parts (the wheels, the axle, the frame, the seat, etc.);

2. other than its parts;

3. in the parts; and just as, really:

4. the chariot’s parts are not in it;

5. the chariot does not possess its parts;

6. it is not the collection of its parts;

7. nor is it their shape;

just so, the self too cannot inherently be:

1. the same entity as the aggregates;

2. other than the aggregates;

3. in the aggregates; and so too, really:

4. the aggregates are not in the self somehow;

5. the self does not possess the aggregates;

6. it is not the collection of the aggregates;

7. it is not the shape of the aggregates, nor is it their continuum in time.

Naturally and typically – that is, unless we sign up to some philosophical doctrine formulating the nature of the self in a particular way – we do not consciously conceive of the self as existing in any of the seven ways listed in the analysis. The sevenfold reasoning is not principally, therefore, aimed at refuting a specific theory of self that we may be espousing or clinging to. What it is saying, rather, is that if the self had inherent existence, it would have to exist in one of these seven ways. There is no other possibility. That the self is not findable in any of these ways implies that it cannot really exist in the way that it seems to.

Practice: The sevenfold reasoning in meditation

Spend some time reflecting on the principle underpinning the sevenfold reasoning until some conviction is reached – that the self, or anything else, if it is inherently existent, must be found in one of these seven ways; and that if it is not, it must mean that it lacks inherent existence. Spend some time too pondering each of the seven branches of the reasoning so that they become familiar, and you find reasons refuting each possibility that convince you. When you feel ready, you may engage the analysis more meditatively. Take a little time to settle the citta in meditation. (As discussed, you can move back and forth between a concentration practice and the sevenfold reasoning practice as feels helpful.) Once a degree of samādhi is established, become aware of the sense of self, wherever it is on its spectrum. Become aware too of the way it feels as if it has inherent existence. If you have chosen another object to analyse, focus on that object and notice too the sense that it exists inherently. Remaining focused on the object of analysis, remind yourself, based on the conviction you have established, that it has to exist in one of the seven ways if it has inherent existence. Begin to go through the seven possibilities refuting each one. This can be done in any order that feels fruitful, and at whatever pace feels helpful at that time. When you have gone through all seven, you may want to consciously remind yourself of the conclusion again – that since it cannot be found in any of these ways, and since there are no other possibilities, it is empty, it cannot exist in the way that it appears to. Linger in and pay attention to the feeling that accompanies this conclusion. Pay attention, too, at that point, to the perception of the self or the object analysed. If a perception of a vacuity has replaced the object then that vacuity may now be focused on. (It may take a little practice to be able to do this.) Make sure, though, that it is pregnant with the meaning of the emptiness of the object. When you need to, you may revisit the analysis to any degree in order to reconsolidate the sense of the emptiness of the object. You may also relax the focus on the vacuity and allow the perception of the object to reappear. Again though, notice the sense of the object, and how it now appears with a greater sense of its emptiness. Notice too how this feels. At this point, you may also let the attention wander to other objects. Notice how they appear now, and how it feels to view things this way.

The Dependent Arising of Dualities

Certainly a pair of obvious opposites constitute a duality. But even when we do not clearly define an opposite to some thing, a fundamental duality is made in our minds, consciously or sub-consciously, between that thing and what is not that thing. This would include then, as the Buddha declared, the duality we typically assume between any thing’s existence and its non-existence, and also between its presence and its absence.

A first option for working with dualities is to simply be aware of them, and to drop investment in them, without actually considering their emptiness.

It is possible to use this teaching as a meditative way of looking. In a meditation session, we can attempt to sustain an attitude of not picking and choosing, moment to moment, in regard to whatever is present or not yet present. We can practise, over and over, a dropping of any preference for any pole of any duality that presents itself. Often though, we are not even aware that dualistic conceiving is operating in us. The felt sense of any dukkha and any clinging can provide a way in, for a duality is implicated through their presence. The arising of even the most subtle dukkha, grasping, or aversion must rest on some perception of duality. Dukkha requires clinging. And when there is clinging, it is always to one pole of a duality: grasping at some thing’s presence and aversive to, or fearful of, its absence; or aversive to a thing’s presence and desiring its absence. Noticing dukkha and clinging, we can identify what duality we are invested in, and practise a view of ‘no preferences’, ‘not picking and choosing’.

Practice: ‘No preferences’

In a meditation session, take some time to gather the citta in a state of samādhi to a degree, and then attempt to sustain an attitude of ‘no preferences’, of not picking and choosing between experiences at all. Whenever you become aware of the presence of dukkha or clinging, see if you can identify what duality has been seized upon. Then see if it is possible to drop any preference for one pole of that duality over the other. Notice what effects this has – both on the sense of dukkha and also on the sense of self. Use any calming of fabrication that this practice allows to support a sensitivity to more subtle picking and choosing, which may then also be dropped. What effects does this way of looking have on the perception of these dualities? What else do you notice?

In practice, one way of not seeing fault anywhere is to view things through a lens informed by a conviction in the emptiness of duality. For ‘fault’ is a dualistic concept. Any ‘fault’ is in dualistic relation to its own absence, or to an instance of something conceived as ‘without

Shavari gave the instruction: Do not see fault anywhere. In practice, one way of not seeing fault anywhere is to view things through a lens informed by a conviction in the emptiness of duality. For ‘fault’ is a dualistic concept. Any ‘fault’ is in dualistic relation to its own absence, or to an instance of something conceived as ‘without fault’. Recognizing the voidness of dualities can melt the notion and perception of ‘faults’. And more generally, insights into the emptiness of dualities make possible a number of options for working with them, beyond merely trying to ‘not pick and choose’. Through sustaining a view which knows that dualities are void the investment in any duality is automatically dropped. Thus a release of clinging is supported through the insight in the way of looking. In addition, as is always the case with views, the particular insight embodied in that view is consolidated through practising it. And the practice of such a view also opens the possibility for certain new insights to be gained.

Practice: Seeing dualities as empty because fabricated

Once a degree of calm is established in a formal meditation session, whenever you notice dukkha or clinging is present, see if you can identify the dualistic conceiving that underpins it. Having done so, practise viewing both the duality and the pole or object clung to knowing that, although they are perceived, they are empty. Experiment with using a very light label such as ‘empty’ to help hold this insight within the attention to the object. (The understanding underlying the view of emptiness here is that the apparent difference is not as substantial as it seems – that the dualistic perception is exaggerated by clinging to reified and solidified poles of what is essentially a non-solid continuum.) Notice how this way of looking feels, and the effects it has on the sense of dukkha. Notice also the effects it has on the sense of self, and particularly on the perception of any phenomenon clung to.

In viewing duality as empty, it is important to understand what we are trying to do, and not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. While dukkha can easily be bound up in such dualities, clearly many of the pairs mentioned above actually constitute helpful distinctions, necessary for a genuine deepening of insight. We need, therefore, to use them, but to take care in our relating to them. Eventually, seeing their emptiness will allow a freedom to pick them up or put them aside, to use them without any danger of dukkha or of becoming trapped in them.

As always with emptiness practices, sensitivity and care are required along with a spirit of experimentation. We may recognize within ourselves marked individual tendencies to perceive in terms of certain dualities in ways that cause suffering. Realizing their voidness can be immensely freeing. But some of the dualities we repeatedly suffer with are also quite complex psychologically. Loneliness and togetherness, feeling rejected and feeling loved, feeling understood and feeling misunderstood – dualities such as these may be part of more consistent and multifaceted knots of pain in a person’s life, and may need to be approached with more delicacy. There may be times when it is appropriate and helpful to regard them as empty, and other times when other ways of relating to them might be more helpful.

The very notion ‘long’ depends on the notion ‘short’; and, equally, ‘short’ depends on ‘long’. They arise dependent on each other. Of course, as Tsongkhapa and others stressed, this is not to say that ‘short’ is the producer of ‘long’, or vice versa, in the way that a sprout produces a seed, for example, but rather that they are meaningless concepts without each other. This will be the case for any thing that exists as a duality with, or in relativity to, something else. Thus ‘left’, ‘right’; ‘here’, ‘there’; ‘beautiful’, ‘ugly’; ‘calm’, ‘agitation’ – none of these have independent existence either. We saw earlier that the perceived intensities of a pair of opposites are dependent on clinging. Here this mutual dependency is shown to extend to the most basic conception of any of these phenomena. Each is actually constellated in mutual dependence on its opposite, and is unable to stand alone. From this perspective too, then, we can say that, because they lack any reality independent of each other, they are empty, they have no inherent existence.

Practice: Seeing dualities as empty because mutually dependent

As in the previous practices, once you are settled in a meditation session, whenever you notice dukkha or clinging is present, see if you can identify the dualistic conceiving that supports it. Having done so, practise attending to both the duality and the clung-to object within the knowledge that, although they are perceived, they are void. Experiment with using a very light label such as ‘empty’ to help hold the understanding within the attention to the object. (Here, the label ‘empty’ would have at times the tacitly understood subscript: ‘because it arises in mutual dependence within a duality’.) Again, notice how this way of looking feels, and the effects it has on the sense of dukkha. Notice also the effects it has on the sense of self, and particularly on the perception of any phenomenon clung to.

Part Six: Radical Discoveries

The Fading of Perception

A meditator practising diligently will notice that, often, through many of the insight ways of looking the perception of phenomena will fade to some degree. It may be a little, a lot, or completely, but even as attention is focused on an object, for example a pain somewhere in the body or the body sensations as a whole, when the view releases clinging enough in one way or another, the experience of that object under view begins to soften, blur, and fade. In the case of painful sensation, the unpleasant vedanā will also become less and less unpleasant, before the apprehension of any sensation at all gradually dissolves. Again depending in part on the background of the practitioner, this fading will initially be evident more easily in some senses than in others, but to some extent there begins to be, in meditation, a melting of all appearances, of ‘things’, of objects of perception.

This fading of perception – or, as Nāgārjuna and others sometimes called it, ‘pacification of perception’ – it is crucial to experience many, many times, and to reflect on. It is easy to miss the insight here. Without giving it a second thought, a practitioner may just assume that things disappear ‘because they are impermanent’, or ‘because the attention is concentrating on something else’. More careful investigation, though, reveals that something more surprising, radical, and mysterious is going on here than either of these conclusions suggests: The experience, the perception of a phenomenon, depends on clinging. For a thing to appear as that thing for consciousness, to be consolidated into an experience, it needs a certain amount of clinging. As alluded to above, this insight is in fact merely an extension of our previous insights into how clinging fabricates self-sense and apparent substantiality of phenomena. A fading of perception is, in a way, just a further loss of substantiality. And it is actually possible to see this dependency of phenomena on clinging at any level, from the grossest to the most subtle.

At the extremity of the more subtle end of the continuum, in a moment when clinging, identification, and grasping at inherent existence are pacified, there is the cessation of perception – the phenomena of the six senses do not appear at all. The Buddha stressed the importance of such cessation many times:

We may be tempted to answer that an absence of craving, identification, and delusion will reveal the world ‘as it is’. But equanimity – the dying down of the mind’s push and pull with respect to phenomena – does not reveal a world of things, in their pristine ‘bare actuality’, ‘just as they are’, stripped only of the distortions of ego projections and gross papañca. Rather, as meditative skill develops, we see that without clinging phenomena do not appear at all. Not only how they appear, but that they appear is dependent on the fabricating conditions of clinging. We will see later, though, why even the experience of cessation cannot be objectified and taken as an ultimate truth.

One may recognize in this continuum of unfolding experience a parallel with progressively deeper states of jhāna. This is worth some elaboration. In samādhi meditation, after any pain and hindrances subside, there is the arising of pleasure of different kinds, which gradually becomes more and more refined and subtle until the deep end of the third jhāna. This refinement continues until the loveliness of the fourth jhāna, where the vedanā have become “neither pleasant nor unpleasant”. The body sense and the perception of form disappear in the fifth jhāna, the sphere (or ‘realm’) of infinite space. And by the seventh jhāna, the sphere of nothingness, any perception of space is replaced by a sense of nothingness. What is happening here is most accurately regarded as a progressive non-fabrication of perception. Indeed the Buddha called the jhānas ‘perception attainments’ – not because higher states of jhāna are fabricated more and more, but because progressive states of jhāna are fabricated less and less, and themselves fabricate less and less.

Thus in practice this spectrum of fading can be approached in a number of ways. Similar to what was described in earlier chapters, at every stage of fading, one potentially has a choice. When, for instance, an area of bodily discomfort fades, one may choose to focus on, and spread, the well-being or pleasure that has replaced the discomfort, and then stabilize that into a state of some samādhi. Alternatively, one may keep regarding that area of the body with the insight way of looking, and the perception there may fade further down the continuum. At each stage then, one may keep pressing on with the insight way of looking, or choose to spread and stabilize whatever perception is now there into a corresponding state of samādhi. Sometimes the view may lead straight into a state of jhāna; at other times the perception will need to be tuned into, spread, and stabilized before a more fully jhānic state can arise. One possibility, therefore, is to occasionally use the ways of looking with the deliberate intention of reaching a specific jhāna, as outlined above. Even if the full jhāna does not quite stabilize then, it can still be very helpful to linger at that stage of perception, since the particular insights that are involved with that jhāna will be reinforced by doing so. And of course, typically these insights and any such states themselves are profoundly beautiful.

Aided by the novel realization that vedanā are not independent of the reaction one has to them, with practice it also becomes possible, to a degree, for a meditator to transform, at will, unpleasant vedanā into pleasant or neutral. This malleability of perception further reinforces the insight that vedanā are, to a certain extent, what the mind makes of them. And the consolidating of this understanding allows in turn for a greater facility in shaping the perception of vedanā.

Practice: Viewing phenomena as ‘empty’ because they fade dependently

When you have seen many times that perceptions fade dependent on the release of clinging of various kinds, and when you have understood the implication of their emptiness, you may sometimes now wish to practise a way of looking that views perceptions more directly as ‘empty’, or ‘just a perception’. As you practise this view, be clear that the understanding tacitly incorporated in the view is that their perception is dependent on clinging, fabricated by clinging. As before, practise this way of looking with both a narrow attention focused on one object, and a wider attention more inclusive of the totality of experience. You may also experiment with focusing on one sense sphere for a period. Include both objects that are more fleeting and those more prolonged in duration. Even as an object fades, experiment with sustaining the way of looking unremittingly on whatever more refined perception replaces the initial one. At other times experiment with resting in whatever state opens up. In any way of looking that causes a fading of perception a range of meditative stances is actually available – between, on the one hand, resting in the state of samādhi that comes through the way of looking, and, on the other, continuing more intensely to view things as empty. It can be useful, and fun, to explore the balance between these two aspects of the practice at any time. Even if an object of perception does not fade so much, viewing it as ‘empty’ and ‘just a fabricated perception’ can still bring a great sense of freedom, and may be very useful in consolidating the view of its emptiness. In these practices, insight and liberating understanding may come at times through experiences where the fading is not so intense, or absorption in a particular jhāna not so steady or deep.

Love, Emptiness, and the Healing of the Heart

That appearances are thoroughly dependent on the citta can be seen in countless ways. The various practices that cultivate beautiful qualities of mind and heart, such as mettā, compassion, and joy, are particularly valuable in this respect. Thus they offer, along with their other blessings, potential avenues for insight into emptiness.

In devotion to any of these heart practices, the citta state inevitably moves through a wide range with the natural ups and downs of the meditation. Then we cannot help but see how variable is the perception of an other, and how coloured dependent on conditions. As we practise mettā toward someone, for example, our feeling for and perception of them changes. In the times when the mettā is strong, their beauty perhaps more apparent to us, they actually seem more loveable, and even though we may not know them well at all, we feel a kind of deep friendship and bond with them. As we experience this more often, the opposite views will stand out more in contrast too. The shaping of perception by the mind becomes obvious. And we can begin to question the truth of our conclusions about others.

We may recognize then that ordinarily our own past experiences and conditioning greatly influence how we tend to assess others. And from a more spacious perspective, the normal and understandable tendency to categorize others dependent on whether the self feels it has derived any benefit or harm from them, or whether we identify with them somehow, may be seen to be given too much weight in our conclusions about, or felt sense of, what they are like. Through acknowledging just this much dependent arising of our perception, a little space may be opened for looking more mercifully.

And recognizing all this, we may again experiment with the malleability of perception. We can practise choosing to see others – even strangers and those with whom we feel we have difficulty – as ‘friends’. Such a practice, without the insights we have been discussing, may initially seem quite naïve. As understanding develops over time, we see that it is in fact the opposite; and that a belief that others are objectively and simply how they appear to us would, rather, be naïve. Moreover, choosing to see an other as a friend actually brings joy through the very perception. It is a very lovely, and usually very beneficial, way of relating. Here once again then, instead of waiting for a shift in view to emerge as a result of practice in any meditation period, we may implement such a shift deliberately, knowing that it is helpful, and in this case as true as any other view.

With practice it becomes more and more evident not only how our sense of others is dependent on the citta but how our sense of the world is too. When qualities such as generosity, mettā, and compassion are strong, all perception is coloured. We see beauty everywhere, in other sentient beings, in nature, in the most mundane and ordinary situations and objects. Things can seem to be lit from within themselves with a quality of love, peace, or joy.

The qualities and impulses of the citta that so shape the perception of the world in these ways we could say are aspects of mental karma. Thoughts and acts of generosity, for example, sow seeds in the citta – of generosity, and also of related positive qualities – making such qualities more likely to arise spontaneously in the future. When they do, they colour and shape our perception and sense of ourselves, of others, and of the very world we feel ourselves moving in. Thus we can see how influential are the habitual dispositions of the citta. The qualities and impulses that have been reinforced through habit will tend to arise more frequently and with more force, and shape our perceptions of things accordingly. These colourings and shapings of perception can then become habitual too.

Practice: Directing love towards phenomena

In a meditation session, practise directing mettā, or compassion – or a mixture of the two – towards experience, moment to moment. Begin with whatever experience is prominent at that time. If nothing is particularly prominent, begin with the body sensations. Experiment with different ways of doing this. You may find that using the traditional method of phrases of mettā or compassion is helpful. But whether with or without phrases, in a more directed or a more receptive mode, over and over tenderly bathe and hold all phenomena in kindness. Through the mettā or compassion, gently try to sustain a relationship with experience that is as genuinely and totally welcoming as possible of their arising, their abiding, and their passing. Let all the emphasis be on the qualities of love and acceptance. As before, practise this with both an attention focused more narrowly on one experience at a time, and with a wider, more inclusive attention. Include experiences in all the sense spheres. Make sure also to include both unpleasant and pleasant experiences, as well as more neutral ones. If there is resistance, see if it is possible to hold the felt experience of that resistance in love and complete acceptance. Whatever is experienced can be included. The self-sense or image, when it is noticed, can be regarded as just another perception, and likewise be bathed in kindness and compassion. Experiment also with including less obvious objects of perception. For example, kindness can also be directed in this way to the very experience of kindness in the moment; and also to the moment-to-moment intentions for kindness. As always, notice what happens to perception when you do this, and how it feels.

In the last chapter, we saw that when grasping, aversion, identification, and avijjā are lessened, perception of self and of world is lessened too. From this perspective it could be said then that these factors – craving, identification, and avijjā – are ‘builders of the self and the world’. In contrast, mettā, compassion, samādhi, equanimity, and even generosity, build less self and less world. Thus it is not just because they bring clarity, steadiness of attention, and a sense of well-being that these beautiful qualities are so valuable on the path. They also contribute significantly to a deeper understanding of dependent origination. And this understanding is indispensable for the liberation of awakening.

Whether inside or outside of a formal session, frequently or only occasionally, experiences of eruptions of difficult physical sensations or difficult emotions at times can be a common feature of meditation practice or other kinds of inner work. With training, the courage and ability to be with such difficulties with some mindfulness and a degree of patience grows. Often though, a meditator will not notice anything in the present causing such eruptions. They may seem to come from within unprompted. In the absence of any immediately discernible cause in the present, it is frequently tempting to assume that something must be ‘coming up’ from the past, or perhaps that old ‘stuff’ or karma is being purified. And since, when the difficulty subsides we feel lighter, and as if something has been released, the interpretation that something was stored inside, came up, and has now been released is quite understandable.

One might want to assert that practices such as those we have introduced are somehow repressing what is difficult, doing something to block the process of its arising and release. But as has already been discussed, in relinquishing clinging these practices involve a relinquishment of doing. It is clinging that is actually a doing. Less clinging is less doing. And if, additionally, we consider that seeing not in terms of self is actually more true than, or at least as valid as, seeing in terms of self, it becomes clear that notions of purification cannot be ultimately true. It turns out that I only experience a sense of purification when there is aversion or grasping or self-view; and the more of these, the more ‘purification’ I seem to experience. We could, then, also ask again: “How much clinging or self-view will reveal the real emotion or experience or phenomenon stored within?” But of course there is no answer to this question. We can find nothing that exists inherently as this or that stored inside us. Without being fabricated by clinging in the present, this difficult experience cannot arise. In fact, nothing at all from the past is anything in itself, because it needs fabricating in the present to make it any thing in particular. What ‘comes up’ is built – shaped, coloured, and concocted – to a large extent by factors in the citta in the present.

In addition to the influence of the citta state, the view that is operating at any time will also be a decisive factor. Experimenting in practice we may discover that the very belief in a store of past wounds or a notion of purification actually perpetuates the experience of ‘difficult stuff coming up’. Beliefs inevitably function as views – they shape the way of looking – so will always affect what is fabricated, and thus what is experienced. And depending on the exact view adopted, the mind might also tend to reach out towards certain associations, weaving in remembered, or even conjectured, incidents from the past, near or distant. In doing so, it further constructs and solidifies a particular way of looking – all the while believing in the objectivity of what it experiences.

If the dependently arisen nature of experience is not seen and understood, processes that seem to be purifications or releases of old hurts may actually be never ending. Convinced of its reality and necessity, we will try, with the best of intentions, to ‘be with’ our experience, and not realize that subtly woven into our ‘being with’ and our mindful attention are factors which construct that very experience. It may seem that we are simply being passive and open, not doing anything. But we have failed to see the subtle clinging and views present; that these most certainly constitute a doing; and that they shape and concoct experience. Difficult experiences thus being unwittingly fabricated again and again in the present, there is nothing that will exhaust a ‘storehouse’ such as this.

In exploring the realm of emotional healing, we might inquire too then whether we are free to approach things from different angles and levels, or whether we have some resistance to one or another. For freedom, ultimately, includes a freedom to see in different ways, knowing that ultimately none reveals an objective truth. Any view is limited. Yet we are obliged to engage views, for when there is perception of any kind, there is always a view, a way of looking, involved. We are always participating in what we experience. From this perspective it is a release of our clinging to views, rather than anything else, that actually allows the fullest emotional healing. Instead of crystallizing views of the self, the past, or ‘Life’, we can – based on profound insight and compassion – exercise a far-reaching pliability of view, and so open up the possibility of a lightness, a tenderness and blessedness to existence.

Meditating on the implications of the fact that phenomena fade as clinging is relinquished begins also to expose the emptiness of things we might have considered more fundamental building blocks, or foundations, of existence.

Several times already we have alluded to the notion of ‘just being’. A practitioner might recognize the dukkha in continuously pressuring himself to be different than he thinks he is. He might recognize too the dukkha inevitably involved in effort and striving; or in endlessly reacting to things by trying to change them into what is more agreeable. Seeing this, and growing tired of it, he might understandably hold up the concept of ‘just being’ as a goal of practice, or at least as a preferable state. Here, being will usually be conceived in contradistinction to doing, or becoming, or both. Thus it may involve the idea, and even the impression, of not doing anything in practice – simply allowing awareness to happen naturally and effortlessly, as it seems to anyway. And since the sense of self will be less grossly inflated through the directing of intention and doing with respect to experience, it might also seem at such times that self is not fabricated at all. Because of all this, it might appear that a more fundamental or natural state is thus allowed than any that may arise through doing. ‘Being’ is elevated over ‘doing’ for these reasons.

And having seen and contemplated the fading of phenomena, we might now question the whole notion of ‘just being’ even more cogently. For we can ask: would any such experience of ‘just being’ really be an experience of non-doing? Something has to give me the sense of experiencing being. To experience being, I have to experience something. To ‘be’ is to ‘see’. But as practice reveals, to ‘see’, or experience, something – any thing, ‘inner’ or ‘outer’ – a degree of clinging is needed. And as has been made clear, even the subtlest clinging is a doing. A sense of being requires some perception, some experience; and any experience involves the doing of clinging. To be is to see; and to see is to do. Thus although it might at first seem compelling, on deeper investigation the apparent dichotomy between being and doing is in fact illusory. Being is not any more fundamental than doing, because being is doing.

Very similarly, from all that we have discovered and discussed so far, it is obvious that various related notions – such as ‘Pure Awareness’, ‘basic mindfulness’, ‘The Natural State’, or ‘Presence’ (as something basic, pure, and ‘non-interfering’) – are simply no longer tenable. They cannot be ultimately true. Whenever anything is perceived, that perceiving involves fabricating through clinging and avijjā. And what is perceived is always coloured and shaped by the citta in some way or other; there is no state of the citta even conceivably able to reveal an objective, independently existing, reality of things as they are in themselves.

We can see the emptiness of clinging from other angles too. In the discussion of duality, it was mentioned that clinging, like any dualistic concept, cannot stand on its own. It is relative to non-clinging. Just like ‘left’ and ‘right’, clinging and non-clinging are meaningless without each other; they rest on each other. They lack independent existence. We can also see that, as movements of mind, aversion and grasping are not actually separate. Aversion for one thing implies grasping after another. Moving away from ‘this’, the mind seeks ‘that’, even if it is not aware of doing so. Aversion to pain is at the very same time grasping after comfort. They are not really two different things as they might initially seem to be. We may perceive one or the other at any time, but essentially the same movement is merely being interpreted differently.

Practice: Contemplating the emptiness of clinging

Reflect on the fact that clinging needs an object. And that if the object is empty, that means clinging is dependent on something that is empty, illusory. Clinging must then be empty too. Once settled in meditation, choose any object present in the moment to hold lightly in attention. Based on conviction from previous practice you can briefly regard it as ‘empty because it is dependent on clinging of different kinds’. But then, as you are viewing the object, add to the view the understanding that clinging is empty too, since it depends on this object. As with all ways of looking, there is plenty of room for experimentation with the approach and the emphasis. At times, you may wish to focus more on the voidness of the clinging; at other times, that of the object. Seeing the emptiness of clinging deepens the sense of the emptiness of the object. If clinging is void, the object is realized to have even less basis. It is important to let the comprehension of the mutual dependency of object and clinging infuse the view. The object is empty because it is dependent on clinging, and clinging is empty because it depends on that object. They are both empty. Being mutually dependent and both empty, no ground for appearance can be found. Notice how it feels to see this. With practice, you may also pick up the view of the mutual dependency and emptiness of object and clinging more immediately, and then sustain this view while attending to both the object and the clinging together. As always when a wider and deeper emptiness is contemplated it is possible that a greater degree of fading occurs. If so, again you may choose at times to continue this way of looking on the now less fabricated object of perception. At other times, either deliberately relaxing the intensity of the contemplation a little or as you leave the meditation session, pay attention to the appearances of things. Perhaps you can notice the quality of groundlessness pervading experiences, the empty and magical quality of appearances. Notice how seeing this feels too. At times, both in and out of formal meditation sessions, you can experiment with supporting such a perception without fully entering into focused contemplation of mutual dependence. For instance, letting the attention move from object to object as it will, you can allow the previously gained insight into mutual dependency and emptiness, which in meditation has been seen and contemplated more intensely, to gently inform the view in a more relaxed way.

Part Seven: Further Adventures, Further Findings

No Thing

We mentioned also that the variety of practices used here can broadly be split into two groups: meditations that explore fabrication, and analytical meditations. The exploration of fabrication we may call a directly phenomenological approach. That is to say, it is an almost purely meditative examination of phenomena as they present themselves, and it deliberately tries to leave aside any further assumptions or speculations about them. Regarding the world of things, all we can ever actually experience is the world of phenomena we perceive. (Indeed that is most often the meaning of the term ‘the world’ when used by the Buddha in the Pali Canon.) There is never the possibility of knowing precisely how things are ‘in and of themselves’, independent of perceptions. Of course, we typically assume that for the most part we perceive ‘the objective world out there’ exactly as it is. So adopting a phenomenological mode is already a significant shift.

Analytical meditation, on the other hand, though it is also for the most part a kind of phenomenological approach, reaches out in a slightly different way. The various reasonings each prove that the inner and outer things of the world cannot possibly exist in the way they appear to. They cannot have inherent existence. This much can be known of the ontological status of things. And knowing this fully is enough to liberate the heart.

In addition to those practices we have already explored, there are many other skilful ways the emptiness of phenomena can be contemplated. Before we pick up again and take further the main thread of the inquiry into fabrication, let’s introduce a few of these complementary meditations here and at various points in some of the chapters that follow. It won’t be necessary for everyone to learn all of these practices, or even any of them, before moving on. But I would encourage experimenting with these meditations at some point at least, for each of them can be a powerful aid in developing the capacity to see that “there is no thing”.

One possibility available to us is a contemplation of parts and wholes. It’s clear that without the parts of any thing, there can be no whole. A thing can be said, therefore, to be dependent on its parts. We can recognize further, though, that the very concepts ‘whole’ and ‘part’ cannot exist independently. Indeed not just the conception, but the perception of a part, as a part, is dependent on the conception and perception of the whole to which it is seen to belong. Whole and part are mutually dependent.

Practice: The emptiness of parts and wholes

Whenever there is a sense of solidity to a difficulty – whether it is a citta state, a bodily condition such as physical discomfort or illness, or an external situation that feels oppressive, such as busyness or a relationship difficulty – see if it is possible to directly view it as ‘empty’, based on the conviction that it is the mind that joins the dots to fabricate a solidified whole. Experiment with dots which are spatial regions connected to form a larger whole – for example, viewing a region of physical discomfort as comprising smaller areas of discomfort joined together by the mind. Experiment also with dots which are temporal moments connected to form a more continuous whole – seeing, for example, the individual instances of a particular emotion stitched together. Notice how it feels to do so, and what effects it has on the perception. Once you have gained some facility with this, experiment – attention all the while remaining focused on the experience – with very lightly adding the contemplation that the perceptions of the dots (parts) are thus ‘dependent on an empty whole’. Notice how this way of looking at the experience feels, and also what effects it has on the perceptions. As you hold attention on the experience, you may, if you like, follow the reasoning round once more. You can add the recognition that the perception of the whole is then ‘fabricated in dependence on empty parts’. Sustaining this awareness of the mutual dependence and mutual emptiness of whole and part, notice how it feels and what the effects are.

The emptiness of the body may be meditated upon in numerous ways. For example, when probed a little it becomes clear that the body is not as separate from its environment as it seems; its boundaries are not as clear-cut as they appear. At all levels in a constant and fluid exchange of elements across apparent edges, the body is not, upon closer inspection, a thing sharply defined from what it is not. Again, certain kinds of questions begin to point to its lack of inherent existence, and suggest the mind’s role in reifying the body. Even leaving aside the absence of inherently existing boundaries and exact locations that is more openly evident at the subatomic level, when exactly does the water I drink, or the porridge I eat, become part of my body? Are the faeces in the bowels and the urine in the bladder part of the body or not? When precisely does a teardrop or a bead of sweat falling from the face stop being part of the body? What is true of the body is true of all material forms, and we can extend the investigation to include any material thing.

We may consider the body, or any material thing at all; or we may consider something like a bodily pain, or the pattern of bodily sensations of an emotion. With only a little inspection it is clear that none of them is inherently ‘one’, is truly single in nature. The body has many parts – hair, skin, nails, teeth, kidneys, etc. Indeed for any material object, there will be this part and that part. And for any spatial perception, there will be different regions. If I have a pain in the area of my stomach, there is a region of the pain that borders an area of less or no pain around my throat, for example, and a region that borders an area of less or no pain in my lower belly or groin. Seeing this, we may wish to simply admit instead then that the true nature of these things is manifold. However, for anything to be really ‘many’, there need to be things that are really ‘one’. For ‘many’ is, by definition, a collection of ‘ones’. Nothing, though, can be found that is truly singular. A hair, a tooth, a nail – none of those are inherently singular things. An atom of anything also has a nucleus and electrons, it is not essentially one. Even if we imagine down to the level of subatomic particles, these will necessarily have parts facing in different directions, or interacting with other particles in this or that direction. Anything that occupies space must have parts.

Practice: ‘Neither one nor many’

Take some time to reflect on the neither-one-nor-many argument until it makes sense to you. Once the citta is somewhat settled in a meditation session, choose an object to view through the lens of this reasoning. It may be the physical body, or any material object, or an area of sensation in the body. As you hold it in the attention or in the mind’s eye, lightly reflect and recognize that it is clearly not one, for instance because it has parts. Then see that actually nothing that is really singular could exist. A partless particle is impossible, since nothing could be formed from such particles. If nothing that is really one can be found, this object now scrutinized cannot be really many. As you hold the object or its image in attention, recognize then that it is neither one nor many. Recognize too that these are the only possibilities. Since nothing that is truly one exists, there can be nothing that is really many, so all objects, being neither one nor many, lack true nature. All things lack inherent existence. As you view the object with the help of the reasoning, notice what effect this way of looking has on the perception of the object contemplated. Notice too what effect it has on the sense of other objects. When you leave the meditation session, be sensitive to the way things appear, noticing if there are any after-effects on the perception of things.

The Nature of Walking

Practice: Analysing walking and finding it empty

Take a little time in a walking meditation session to first focus on the sensations of walking and so allow mindfulness to gain some stability and strength. Then, perhaps standing at any point, ready to walk, imagine and carefully consider the beginning of walking. See that it cannot begin in a moment when the body is stationary. Nor can it begin once in motion. Realize that there is no third option, so the beginning of walking cannot be found. Subject an imaginary micro-moment to as much analytical scrutiny as it takes for you to be convinced that this is so. Contemplate stopping, the ending of walking, in a similar fashion. Notice what effects it has to see this: walking has no findable beginning or ending; but it is not permanent either – it lacks inherent existence. You may also contemplate where, or when, walking is actually happening. As described, by mentally dissecting the walking path – and realizing that walking is not happening on the path ahead nor on the path behind, and that there is no part left where it may happen; or that it is not happening in the past nor the future, and cannot be happening in the present moment – see that walking is unfindable. Having considered the present moment, see also that it must be true of all points in time – whether past, present, or future – that it is not possible to find walking at that time. As always with the different insight ways of looking, be patient and gently persistent as you apply them. Often they will begin to have an effect only after a little while. Once they do deliver a realization of the emptiness of walking, notice how this feels. Rest in this view a while, relaxing the analysis, and enjoying the perception and feeling. When this sense begins to lose its vitality, run through the analysis again to re-ignite the realization. These analyses may be combined once they have become relatively quick. And once some fluency with the sevenfold reasoning or the neither-one-nor-many analysis has been gained, you may also use either of these, or a combination, to contemplate the parts of walking and see that it has no inherent existence. Make sure you experiment with subjecting other processes and phenomena to these ways of looking. Particularly if there is some activity that is feared, or experienced as dukkha, these analyses can be helpful in dissolving the perceived solidity of that thing. But any process in time – breathing, for instance, or a citta state or emotion – may usefully be regarded in these ways.

Emptiness Views and the Sustenance of Love

Even just with respect to insight ways of looking at one’s own self, there are many options. Some of these relate to how one actually feels in the course of practice. For example, if on some occasion I am practising mettā or compassion towards another, and I feel unwell physically, one possible response at times might be to gently encourage a view that embodies the attitude ‘it’s not about me’. In other words: ‘right now, how I feel is not so important, it’s your well-being that I am nourishing in this meditation’. Having seen from previous practice that the self-sense is fabricated, an empty appearance, there is more freedom to choose to regard the experience of self sometimes as not so significant, not so much at centre stage, where it is usually placed. Such letting go of self-interest in that moment can open the heart and energize the mettā. At the same time, as we would expect by now, my own weight of dukkha will be lightened.

We may also use the faculty of the imagination at times to take such a shift of attitude a little further. Since it is understood now that there is no real way the self is, there is the possibility to imagine ourselves skilfully in different ways that might be helpful. Knowing that all self-views without exception are fabrications, we are free to play with different images of self without taking any of them literally as the truth. When we are experiencing dukkha then in practice, to lightly, playfully even, introduce the imagination of oneself as a hero or heroine, a bodhisattva, who is willing to endure and open to this discomfort and these difficulties for the sake of all beings, may be a very skilful way of looking. Because it can also bring in a heart element of devotion in some way or other, such a view can transform, even bless, the sense of the whole situation. To the extent that this kind of play of imagination is mixed with the view of one’s self, of one’s aggregates, and even of the imagining, as void, this becomes an immensely powerful practice.

Practice: Deepening mettā and compassion by fabricating less self

Spend some time at the beginning of a meditation session cultivating either mettā or compassion in your usual way. When you feel ready, bring in one of the emptiness ways of looking, and gently try to sustain it moment to moment, as you continue directing love to a being. One possibility is viewing all that you experience as you practise – the sensations of sight and sound, the sensations of the body, the mental perceptions and images, even the intentions, attention, and consciousness – as anattā. Notice the effects this has on the whole practice. Experiment with the balance of emphasis between the two ways of looking in any moment. Here, the primary intention is the strengthening of the mettā or compassion; the emptiness way of looking is being used to support this. The second dukkha method may be incorporated by repeatedly tuning in to the sense of clinging and relaxing it. If you are using the anicca characteristic, experiment to find which approaches best support the mettā or compassion. If needed, you may gently guide the anicca view so that it brings, for instance, an opening out, or a diffusion, of the sense of self – subtly steering the unfolding towards more softening and love in the moment. Perhaps, on encountering nothing but momentary perceptions, the self is sensed to be almost nothing, ‘paper thin’. Existing through perceptions, it is inseparable from what it perceives, and so inseparable from the world. Love opens naturally with this awareness of non-separation.

We may also turn the emptiness ways of looking toward the other. When there is judgement, ill-will, or anger at another, I might ask, for instance: Who am I angry with exactly? My anger requires that I am viewing this other as a solid self. Without a sense of their self as an object, the anger cannot be sustained. But when, asking this question, I look more closely I cannot find this self of theirs as an object for my anger. Nor can I find any part that justifies my anger. Considering their body, I find I cannot be angry at their body, or the parts of their body – the spleen or the lungs, the hands or the brain. Whatever part I consider, it does not seem to make sense for me to be angry with that part. I might think I am angry at this person’s feelings, thoughts, or intentions. But even these, as discussed earlier, arise out of conditions – inner and outer, past and present – and then evaporate. There is no self in them, and contemplated this way these parts don’t seem to fuel my negative feelings. Dissecting the other (merely metaphorically, that is!) and asking who exactly I am angry with, my anger cannot find a base for support, and so it dissolves.

Practice: Searching for the object of negative feeling

When there is some kind of negative feeling, such as anger or judgment, toward another, practise holding this person in the attention and asking, for instance, “Who exactly am I angry with?” View each part of them in your mind’s eye and see if that part is the object of your negativity. Notice what happens to your perception of the other and your feelings about them as you do this. You may also analyse the person with the sevenfold reasoning. Notice what happens to your feelings about them when you view them as empty of inherent existence.

Practice: Exchanging self and other

When there is a moment of happiness, whether in or out of a formal meditation session, practise tuning in to the experience and offering this happiness or pleasure to others. This movement of offering can be very quick and light, and does not necessarily need any words to support it. Practise also giving away an imagined experience of pleasure or happiness, as well as the causes of happiness that you are cultivating through practice. When there is some dukkha present, tune in to the experience, and then experiment with imagining that your taking it on relieves an other or others elsewhere of similar dukkha. With a little practice the various elements involved here – the sense of the other, the sense of wishing them well or giving them love or happiness, and the sense of welcoming the difficult experience – can all be easefully held together. Notice the effects on your feelings and on perceptions. Experiment with incorporating different emptiness ways of looking into these practices. Experiment also with different combinations of objects viewed through these emptiness ways of looking. You may view your self or the other – the receiver – as empty; or both. You may also view as void, in any number of ways, that which is given or taken. Again notice the effects this has on your feelings and on your perceptions; and also on the capacity to give and to take. Whether actually experienced in the moment or only imagined, remember to make the object specific, by focusing on a particular happiness or dukkha, or the experience of the particular aggregate or sense sphere that is being dedicated. Breaking up the field of possibility, and offering this or that part at a time – for example, the happiness and pleasure of one of the senses – may thus be helpful. Even if offering the totality of being, connecting with the phenomena that comprise this totality, and with a sense of their emptiness, brings the practice alive.

Part Eight: No Traveller, No Journey – The Nature of Mind, and of Time

Emptiness and Awareness (2)

One conception of awareness is that it is somehow like a mirror that reflects the objects of the world. A large part of our task in practice then would be to ‘clean’ the mirror so that it might reflect things clearly and truly. ‘Emptiness of Mind’ in this view is sometimes taken to mean a state of no thought. For thoughts would be like spots of dirt on the mirror’s surface, distorting and obscuring the reflection of things. The mind in itself, like the mirror, might be regarded as inherently empty of these adventitious stains, these thoughts and other impurities: its true nature is to simply and naturally reflect things as they are. Such a notion may perhaps be helpful partly because it carries an implication of the unaffected nature of awareness. A mirror is not troubled in any way by what passes before it. It continues to reflect whatever is there, whether beautiful or ugly. Encouraging this view of awareness can thus support a deepening of equanimity – a letting go, in the moment, of a degree of reactivity to appearances.

However, two problems with this notion will be immediately clear from all that we have discovered through practice by now. First, implicit in this idea is the belief in an objective reality, the mirror-mind reflecting ‘things as they are’. Second, there is the assumption that, like a mirror, awareness reflects things effortlessly, passively. From our more thorough investigation of fabrication though, we have seen that objects of perception are concocted, through various forms of clinging, to appear as this or that, and that without clinging – which is not passive, but a doing – they are not anything objectively in themselves. Our realization of the nature of awareness needs to go beyond this level of understanding that construes mind as a mirror.

Another view which may emerge from practice was among the cluster of variations explored earlier. Sometimes when there is a sense of the vastness of awareness, it can seem that this vastness is the transcendent ‘source’ of all other transient phenomena. As was mentioned, things seem to arise out of, and disappear back into, this space; and this sense of things may be profoundly helpful in supporting equanimity, love, and freedom. Here again, awareness seems free and independent, uninvolved in and unperturbed by the movements and machinations of ‘small mind’, of reactivity and thought. However, this notion of awareness as a source of appearances was repudiated by the Buddha. In relation to any such perception of vastness of awareness – or indeed to any perception or notion, even of nibbāna – he said that one who is awakened does not conceive things about it, [and] does not conceive of things coming out of it. If one seeks the fullness of insight it is not ultimately helpful to regard awareness, or anything else, as the source of appearances. To be locked into that view would be to perpetuate a sense of the inherent existence of that phenomenon, missing and preventing the more radical freedom of insights into emptiness, dependent arising, and the ultimate groundlessness of all things.

With careful and open-minded investigation in practice we will notice something interesting, though, that can help us move beyond many of these kinds of views: The way awareness seems at any time is dependent on the way of looking. Practising in certain ways, awareness will likely seem vast and imperturbable. On another occasion, or even at another point in the same meditation session, practising with a narrowly focused attention and tuned in to the rapidity of moment-to-moment anicca, it is quite possible to have a sense of consciousness not as vast and imperturbable but as arising and ceasing together with different phenomena with immense rapidity. Which is the ‘real’ way awareness is? As we have already mentioned, awareness is bound up with perception. Through the way of looking then, it merely takes on the aspect of perception at any time. What is perceived in any such manner cannot be regarded as the true nature of awareness.

Being inseparable and mutually dependent, knowing and known, we see, are concocted together, and fade together. It is clear then also that awareness, the knowing of any object, is not an unfabricated phenomenon. Fading together with the perception of objects, it too is fabricated by clinging. In addition, though, to the fabricated nature of both consciousness and perception, something amazing and mysterious is also implied by all of this. For we have just said that perception and consciousness are dependent on each other; and that both are dependent on clinging. But clinging is empty, and dependent itself on an object of perception. It must also be dependent on consciousness. Perception, consciousness, and clinging thus all lean on each other, without true separation, and without any other basis. Being mutually dependent, they are all ultimately groundless and empty.

Practice: Meditating on the mutual emptiness of consciousness and perception

(Initially, this practice will be easier if a relatively steady perception is taken as an object, such as the perception of a state of samādhi, or a sight or sound that is not so fleeting. Eventually, it can be sustained too even as the attention moves between different momentary perceptions, resting in a view that sees their emptiness and the emptiness of awareness at once.)

Hold any perception in attention. Then, based on your conviction from past insights into the emptiness of objects of perception, introduce the view of that object as ‘empty’. As you continue to do so, tune in as well to the sense of consciousness, of knowing, that goes with the perception in the moment. Gently introduce the understanding that this knowing is dependent on, and inseparable from, an empty known, so that it must also be empty. (This will also require a previous familiarity with focusing on the inseparability of consciousness and perception.) Alternatively, you may sustain the view of consciousness as ‘not me, not mine’ and then add the understanding that it is dependent on empty perception, so that it is empty too. (Here the anattā view merely helps loosen the clinging to consciousness, making the contemplation easier.) It is also possible, seeing that awareness is dependent on and inseparable from fabricated perceptions, to view awareness as ‘fabricated’ over and over, moment to moment. Experiment both with using a more narrowly focused attention and at other times a wider, more spacious, attention. If a sense of vastness of awareness arises, see that too as empty, as described. Notice what this way of looking feels like and what its effects are. As always though, make sure that at least sometimes the view is sustained through any fading or transformation of perception that occurs.

About Time

How then might profound and fundamental realizations of the voidness of time be nurtured? The beginning levels at least of such insights often happen naturally through basic mindfulness meditations. Typically, as a meditator learns to settle the attention (s)he sees how much the sense of past and future is constructed by thought, and also how much dukkha is often wrapped up in thinking about the past and the future. Inhabiting the present more fully can feel wonderful and vivifying. ‘Past’ and ‘future’ may seem to drop away at times, and then seem illusory, leaving only the reality of the present. But although it can be a helpful way of looking for a while to see that “it’s always the present”, that “only Now exists”, or even that “Being is endlessly Now”, such notions reify and sometimes eternalize ‘the now’. Just as with perceptions of flow, eventually the present needs to be seen through also. ‘Being in the now’ is most certainly not the goal of practice. Realizing the emptiness of all time – past, future, and present – is essential to a more radical liberation. Such insight is accessible through a range of means and will ultimately take us even deeper into the mystery of dependent origination.

Practice: This moment is neither one nor many

Focusing on a sense of the present moment – as a moment of time, or as a moment of consciousness or of some other phenomenon – bring into the view the understanding that this moment cannot be one, since it must have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and these must occur at different times. Maintaining the focus on the present moment, gently reflect that if it did not have a beginning, middle, and end, it could not really exist. It would be infinitely small; and it would be impossible to arrange such moments in any sequence of time. See also that this moment cannot be truly many. This ‘many’ would have to be comprised of moments that are truly one. Since no moment can exist without beginning and end, however, there can be no moments that are truly one which could be aggregated to form the many. Sustain a view of the moment as thus being neither one nor many, and so being empty of inherent existence. Whatever phenomenon you were contemplating, see how this way of looking fundamentally undermines the sense of its inherent existence, and notice how this feels.

Practice: Approaches to the emptiness of time

As is evident from the discussion in this chapter, it is possible to arrive at a realization of the voidness of time through many different means:

• You may have found that in releasing clinging more and more deeply – through the anattā practice or through any other practice that fabricates less self – glimpses of timelessness emerge in various ways, and the dependence of the sense of time on self and clinging is seen.

• You may also cultivate either or both of the analytical meditations outlined earlier. Additionally, a moment – of consciousness or of any other phenomenon – may be subjected to the sevenfold reasoning by analysing its relationship to its parts, particularly its beginning, middle, and end.

• Or the understanding may be developed that, as explained, time depends on the perception of things; and that if things are empty, then time also is empty. Like the analyses, in order for this to be an effective way of looking in meditation, the present moment needs to be focused on quite intently. Then the understanding of this moment’s inseparability from and dependency on empty, fabricated perception can be brought in and sustained as a view. (A conviction in the emptiness of objects of perception needs therefore to have developed from previous practice.)

Whichever means are used, notice what it feels like to see that time is empty. Since, generally, the assumption of the reality of time is so deep-rooted, it may be most helpful if eventually all three of the above approaches are developed and employed. And as always, the insight needs repeating. It is usually not enough to see the emptiness of time in any of these ways just once or twice. Growing accustomed to the insight, a conviction is gradually established that time is empty; and this conviction can then be used in meditation as a platform for further ways of looking:

• It is possible to focus on any object of perception and sustain a view of it as ‘empty because it depends on time, which is empty’.

• The emptiness of self can also be contemplated in this way.

• Since clinging too needs a sense of time – at least of the present and the future – as well as (like everything else) a time to be 'in', it also can be regarded as ‘empty because time is empty’. Here the focus may be any felt sense of clinging in the moment; or it may be the clinging that we know must be present to support the fabrication of the moment’s perception.

• Consciousness, the sense of knowing that is present with any object of perception, may also be repeatedly viewed in this way moment to moment.

In each of the above cases, when you feel ready, it is possible to extend the way of looking to include an appreciation of the mutual dependence and interpenetration of time and the phenomenon focused on. The tacit understanding in the view then might be expressed, for instance, as: ‘This present moment of time is empty. It is dependent on and inseparable from empty perception (or consciousness, or clinging). This empty perception (or consciousness or clinging) is dependent on this moment of time, which is empty.’ As always, notice how these ways of looking feel and what their effects are. With practice, an appreciation of the mutual dependence and emptiness of self, things, and time grows, and this understanding can further creatively inform approaches to these meditations.

Dependent Origination (2)

Practice: Meditating on the voidness of attention and of the elements of mind

Once the citta is somewhat settled in meditation, choose a relatively steady object to attend to. As the attention is held on the object, introduce into the way of looking the understanding that this object depends on this attention; and that conversely, this attention depends on this object. Allow the sense that they are therefore mutually dependent, inseparable, and mutually empty to permeate the way of looking. You may find that including such an understanding in the view may involve a very light thinking, which may be dropped once the view is established. Alternatively, it may feel fine to continue with that light thinking to support the view. (When contemplating these subtle factors of mind, it can also be helpful, before contemplating their emptiness, to spend a little while regarding them as anattā. The release of clinging and identification this allows can render the new way of looking more workable in the initial stages. Find out what is helpful for you.) This way of looking may be made more powerful. Choose a relatively steady object, and based on conviction from previous practice, view it through a lens which knows that it is empty. As you do so, gently begin to include an appreciation that the attention in the moment is dependent on this object. Thus the attention is dependent on and inseparable from what is empty, and can only be empty. This contemplation of mutual dependence on an empty object may be repeated with any factor of mind.

Practice: Meditating on the mutual emptiness of subject, object, and time

Once you are familiar with a way of looking that sees time and this moment as void, this may be incorporated into the view. Choose an object, and begin to regard it as ‘empty’ or ‘just a perception’. Then, as you continue to do so, begin to include also in the way of looking the understanding that mind is empty too, since it depends on the empty object. (Here you can see the mind as a whole as empty; or choose to focus on any of the individual mental factors, as above; or, regarding the mind as a collection of mental factors, allow the understanding of emptiness to include them all.) When you feel ready, you can then gently add the contemplation of the emptiness of time and the present moment. (It will be easier if this insight too has reached a point of conviction already. Then that conviction can simply be summoned and incorporated, without having to go through an analysis of the moment or reflect much on why the moment is empty. Still, it is certainly possible, and can be very powerful, to introduce an analysis or a light reflection at that point.) As always when the emptiness of phenomena is contemplated at a deep level like this, there can be a fading of the perception of phenomena. As perception fades, you can practise sustaining the view – of the emptiness of the object of perception, of the mind that knows it, and of the present moment – as far down the continuum of fading as possible. You may also experiment with various different orderings as you combine different insights. For example: Regarding the object of appearance as just a fabricated perception – since it is dependent on clinging and self-view, for instance – the understanding can then be added that this moment of time must be empty too, because it depends on this object of appearance. Including then the sense of attention to the appearance and the moment, the dependence of this attention on this appearance and on a sense of this moment (time) may be contemplated, so that attention is understood to be empty. Then, the mutual dependency can be followed around again. Since this moment and this object of appearance are dependent on attention, they can be seen to be dependent on what is empty. A deeper sense of their emptiness can thus be obtained.

If what one is seeking is a final, intellectual understanding of ‘how it all works’, then there may be frustration. A view which comprehends the emptiness of all phenomena does not, and cannot, give an ultimately coherent explanation of the functioning of conventional reality in conceptual terms. Any such hypothetical account could only be available from views which reify at least some thing as elementary, including time. In seeking a full explanation then, we may be missing the point of the teaching. For explanation is not the task of emptiness; liberation is. Conversely though, and as we have suggested before, simply shrugging and declaring ‘unknowing’ too early would also be a mistake. A premature retreat from knowing, before one has probed such mysteries as mutual dependency and the emptiness of time, can only deliver a limited freedom. Unknowing is not in itself, therefore, the point of the path. It is thoroughly knowing voidness that brings a fuller release.

However, at least one of these two tendencies – on the one hand, wanting the ‘clarification’ of a reductionist explanation, and on the other, wanting to abandon concepts too early – is usually very strong for most people. One person may be attached to descriptions of atomized items neatly categorized with their well-delineated functions within a mechanism, and believe such descriptions to be reality. Another may be attached to the concept that all concepts are burdensome and that they block any possibility of opening to reality. Sometimes a practitioner’s tendency careens back and forth over time between these two extremes. More often we each sustain a certain disposition to one or the other. This pair of views and tendencies are like Scylla and Charybdis, and somehow a middle way between them needs to be charted.

Dependent Cessation – The Unfabricated, The Deathless

Phrases such as “cessation of consciousness”, “cessation of nāmarūpa”, and “cessation of vedanā” clearly indicate something more than a cessation of only the grosser distortions of consciousness, nāmarūpa, contact, etc. What the Buddha was describing here is not a state of ‘equanimous objectivity’ with regard to the things of the world – a state of perceiving things ‘purely’ because the accumulated residues, encrustations, and biases from the past no longer flow into the present to influence or veil perception. Here we have gone beyond what might be termed a ‘calming of reactivity’, and beyond merely a pacification of the extremes of vedanā – whether unpleasant or pleasant. Rather, what is being referred to is a complete fading and cessation of all appearances, and of all the elements that make up conventional experience – including all six sensory consciousnesses together with all their associated contacts, vedanā, perceptions, etc. All are utterly transcended.

An experience wherein conventional perception ceases is not really describable. Since conceiving and language are based on notions of subject, object, and time, how can what remains when they collapse possibly be conceived by the mind or conveyed in words? The Buddha said: Where all phenomena are removed, all ways of speaking are removed as well.

Many teachings thus confine themselves to speaking in negative terms, making clear what is not there, and what has been left behind. To speak in terms of ‘cessation’ is to speak in terms of known conventions, using a negative formulation – the ceasing or non-fabrication of perception – without affirming anything about what remains. The word nirvāṇa is also in fact a negative formulation.

Practice: Meditating on the emptiness of insight

Once you have gained some facility in meditation contemplating the emptiness of time and consciousness, it is possible to contemplate the emptiness of insight also. In a meditation session choose any object of perception. For a little while sustain any insight way of looking at it that sees its emptiness. If you wish, you may also include insight into the emptiness of the mind that is looking. When you feel ready, include the awareness of the insight way of looking. Then begin to include in the view an understanding of its emptiness too. This may rest on the understanding that it exists in time, but that time is empty. Or that the way of looking is dependent on and inseparable from the object it is directed at, which is an empty appearance. Or that it is dependent on and inseparable from consciousness, which is empty too. You can also combine all three of these understandings, or find any other way of contemplating insight’s voidness that feels helpful.

Part Nine: Like a Dream, Like a Magician’s Illusion…

Beyond the Beyond…

This fact that with a sufficient dissolution of avijjā and clinging there is a fading and cessation of perception demands of us further careful reflection. For not all the conclusions it seems to suggest are ones at which we can yet arrest our explorations. In particular, some of the understandings as they have emerged so far from our observations might set up an orientation wherein appearances are somehow denigrated. The appearances of the world may be viewed to be essentially the results and manifestations of ignorance. Cessation, on the other hand, might be seen as ultimately more true and desirable. And such a bias would reflect only a partial realization. Taking our inquiry into dependent arising, fabrication, and emptiness deeper still will open up greater and less dualistic insights.

To begin with we can investigate more searchingly the nature of delusion. Although on one level it can certainly be said that dukkha, self, and appearances arise in dependence on avijjā, avijjā – like all the other links in the web of dependent origination – is thoroughly empty also. This it is possible to see from many angles. For example, as we have already mentioned, while appearances are dependent on delusion, delusion is also dependent on appearances. It only exists with, and in relation to, appearances; and appearances, we know, are empty. Avijjā is also dependent on consciousness. Without consciousness there can be no delusion, and consciousness too is void. Seen thus to be leaning on and totally inseparable from what is empty, delusion is also seen to be empty. And of course avijjā must also be dependent on time. Like anything else, it needs a time to ‘be in’; and because time is empty, avijjā can only be empty.

The implications here are subtle but momentous. Conventionally we can say that avijjā gives rise to saṅkhārā, perception, and the rest. Seeing that ignorance, saṅkhārā, and all the other links are empty, however, moves the whole understanding beyond dualistic notions. Any directing of practice towards the idea of finally pacifying the world of appearances is itself pacified through this insight. Rather than regarding appearances as ultimately inferior, when we dwell in a realization that everything is empty, appearances may appear to us magical, holy even. They are no longer imbued with the sense of the taint of ignorance. For that is only possible when avijjā is reified. Now the reality of the notion of ignorance collapses, along with the subtly negative colouring of appearances that it entails. Such insight does not set up merely a return to ordinary unexamined assumptions though. Since by this point in practice there is a deep knowing of the voidness and dependent arising of all things, the view will not be limited that way. Rather, in their wondrous insubstantiality and their utter lack of any foundation now all appearances may be seen to express a profound and mystical blessedness and even bliss.

The arc of our long journey of insight is beginning in some ways to trace a spiral – progressing and evolving as if by circling back on itself but at ever more profound levels. And in doing so it opens out to an awe-inspiring depth of mystery. Having picked up the concept of fabrication and investigated it with more and more penetration, we have eventually gone beyond even the very notion of fabrication. Fabrication and dependent origination are conceptual constructs that are immensely helpful at a certain level. But they are in fact only relative truths. What is extraordinary about them is that they have the capability to take the understanding beyond their own meaning in this remarkable way. They eventually negate even themselves.

Everything can now be seen to be ‘pure’, wondrously so. For nothing, ultimately, is the product of anything. No thing is truly fabricated or truly unfabricated. Then also we are no longer constrained to seeing fabricated things as unreal, while regarding the transcendent Unfabricated, wholly ‘Other’, as real. All can now be seen to be equally ‘unreal’ or ‘real’, equally miraculous. Beauty and truth are everywhere.

Rather than pointing toward a final goal of cessation, delivering us to an ultimately real Unfabricated and to a view of all else as really fabricated, an unremitting exploration of fabrication and dependent arising opens a vision of the world as nirvāṇa – a world of magical appearances, groundless and thoroughly empty yet mystically appearing. At one level we can say that phenomena are fabricated, but not ultimately. At another level it can only be said that they are empty. We have used the concepts of fabrication and dependent origination to go beyond those very concepts of fabrication and dependent origination.

Sometimes in Dharma teachings there is an emphasis on reaching a state of “disenchantment” with the world and with all the things of the world. The bringing about of this disenchantment is then regarded by some as the purpose of practices such as the contemplation of impermanence or even emptiness practices at a certain level. But we need to investigate this kind of teaching carefully. For, first, experiences of disenchantment can often be merely expressions of the presence of aversion in the citta, rather than of any great insight. And second, even if there has been some sense of disenchantment brought about through practice, we can see now that going deeper into an experiential understanding of emptiness profoundly and wonderfully re-enchants this whole world of phenomenal appearances, as described. Now that we have seen the emptiness of fabrication, and so the emptiness of any duality between the fabricated and the Unfabricated, when we say that this or that is fabricated, it has a whole other sense, a whole other dimension of meaning.

Practice: Viewing appearances, knowing that avijjā is void

As usual take some time to settle the mind at least a little in meditation. Then, choose any object of perception and, focusing on that object, begin to view it through a lens that understands, from previous practice, that it is fabricated. Include especially the understanding that it is fabricated by avijjā. When you feel ready, begin to include in the way of looking the understanding that this avijjā operating right now must be empty also. (There are many insights that can be used here. You can bring in the insight that avijjā is dependent on and inseparable from this empty object, and so must be empty too. Or that it is similarly dependent on consciousness, which is also empty. Or that it must be void because it needs to exist in time, and all time is void. It is also possible to subject a moment of avijjā to some analysis or other, for instance the sevenfold reasoning. As always these other insights will probably need to have been practised with in advance and enough familiarity with them developed to be able to bring them to bear here in an uncumbersome way so that they can open further insight.) This way of looking will naturally allow a deeper fading of perception. But play with modulating the fading so that appearances remain to some extent. Alternatively you may wish to enjoy for a while this deeper fading and relatively deeper pacification of concepts before allowing the world of appearances to return to some degree. The important thing here is at some point to sustain the viewing of appearances through a lens which silently understands: ‘The avijjā which fabricates these empty appearances is empty itself. These appearances are not really the product of a real ignorance.’ If you like, you may start to allow the attention to move between objects in a relaxed way, or take in a wider field of objects. In perceiving various appearances and sensations now, notice the sense of things that this way of looking brings. Notice also the heart’s responses.

Notions of the Ultimate

One way of clinging to a view of emptiness would be to conceive of it as a thing, a space, or a realm, with inherent existence. Such views, though, we have already discounted in discussing notions of the nature of awareness and of the Unfabricated. Our use too of the concept of emptiness in a more adjectival way, right from the beginning, ensures that the emptiness of emptiness is in fact relatively obvious. For if emptiness always qualifies some phenomenon or other, then it is always dependent on that phenomenon. It is not something with an independent or separate existence. We may take this a little further though. If there are not really any things, then any attributes of those things, even attributes such as ‘empty’ and ‘not empty’, are not really real either, and cannot ultimately be clung to.

Here then, the ultimate view is described as transcending the concepts ‘empty’ and ‘emptiness’. It is the “unspeakable, inconceivable, inexpressible perfection of wisdom”. Working with such teachings and texts, it is helpful to know that words such as ‘ultimate’ and even ‘emptiness’ may be used in different ways at different times. Sometimes the ultimate truth of things is declared to be their emptiness of inherent existence. But at other times the ultimate is declared to be beyond all assertions and conceptual designations, including emptiness. Moreover, since, as we have just seen, a full understanding of the implications of emptiness eventually leads to a transcending of all concepts and ascriptions, at still other times that very word ‘emptiness’ is used too, as Nāgārjuna used it above, to mean a ‘relinquishment of all views’.

An Empowerment of Views

No matter how skilful, any way of looking at appearances which we employ is still in fact a relative view. Since, for us, there is always at least some conceiving whenever there are appearances, no way of looking at appearances should be clung to as literally being a non-conceptual ultimate view. Nor should any be clung to as being a kind of window revealing finally ‘true’ appearances, things which are definitively, singularly, actually, ‘what is’. Insight into emptiness enables different ways of looking; and different ways of looking bring deepening insight into emptiness. Through all this, a profound freeing up of the whole sense of existence is possible. Thus thought, too, cannot be regarded as the problem.

Teachings on śūnyatā are not proclaiming that language or cultural assumptions are the primary problem. Nor that reasoning and logic are to be dismissed as unhelpful in the pursuit of freedom. Although, as discussed, the entire net of concepts is eventually to be transcended, texts by Nāgārjuna, Chandrakīrti, Śāntarakṣita, and others use reasoning and logic as tools to make evident that our most basic normal assumptions about things cannot possibly be true. Rather than the movements of reasoning, it is principally these more fundamental, habitual, and intuitive conceptions that imprison us, so they are actually the target of refutation in the teachings. As can be seen in practice, these binding conceptions operate in the mind below the level of language. Thus thought, too, cannot be regarded as the problem. Emptiness teachings are not saying “Don’t think, just experience”, or, ultimately, “Just stay at the moment of contact with things as they are”, for fundamental delusion is woven right into our very experience, our ‘basic’ perception, even when there is no thinking.

The inclination to somehow grant a level of objective truth to conventional reality is understandable, and such a tendency is not always motivated only by ethical concerns. We humans seem to possess a hard-to-fracture clinging to the intuitive conviction that there really is something that exists in an independent way, and then want to know what ‘really’ is there. Rather than being able to establish and determine such a reality, however, the philosophical and scientific projects which seek to do so seem to reveal the opposite instead. As we probe, ask, and analyse more deeply, we find only dependency, relativity, emptiness. And whatever the linguistic and conceptual framework of our inquiry, eventually even the clear distinction between conventional and ultimate begins to blur. A bow begins…

Perhaps it could be said that, as beautiful as the inquiry may be, a clinging to wanting to determine what is ‘really and unequivocally there’ on a conventional level simply betrays a mistaken premise of fundamental delusion. Perhaps we may say, with the Buddha, that some questions do not need answers. What matters is the freedom and love that comes from realization of the emptiness of all phenomena. Still, our inquiry into emptiness involves inquiry into appearances; and since cessation is not regarded as the goal, that inquiry may become a kind of open-ended exploration – of ways of looking and the perceptions of their associated appearances. It is not the assumed objectivity status of its appearances at a conventional level, but the blessing and liberation that any way of looking effects that becomes the primary criterion for judging it.

There is space here, and space for reverence and devotion. When we see the void – the open and groundless nature of all things, the inseparability of appearances and emptiness – we recognize anyway just how profound is our participation in this magic of appearances. Then whether fabrication, which is empty, is consciously intended in a certain direction or not, the heart bows to the fathomless wonder and beauty of it all. It can be touched by an inexhaustible amazement, touched again and again by blessedness and relief. In knowing fully the thorough voidness of this and that, of then and now, of there and here, this heart opens in joy, in awe and release. Free itself, it knows the essential freedom in everything.