I’ve been on a quest recently to understand a bit more about the concept of emptiness. I wrote about it previously (you can read it here) where I argued that perhaps only those who have no desire to be human (as in their purposes in life are greater than living out their human lives) are prepared to conquer and defeat the human need for attachment and practice emptiness in their lives.
If you are interested in the definition of Buddhism’s emptiness, you can read it here. As with many publications, the definition is too ethereal and abstract to be practical for me, so I sought to understand how to practice emptiness. At first this may seem to counter my original post where I mentioned that it may be impossible for one to be empty and not attached if one also wants to live as a human. Well, what if you make the conscious decision to live more monk-like, there are still practical steps one needs to take to reach the state of emptiness. That’s what this post is all about – a practical guide to being empty, if you will.
First, being empty is not about being nothing. Being nothing (as in nihilism) is believing that existence is without meaning or purpose. In other words, if you believe in nihilism, you believe that everything is non-existing and a non-reality. Rather, being empty is, first and foremost, being objective about your surrounding. Everything is real, and everything around you exists. To be empty means to be able to see everything that exists and is real around you with an objective mindset. The more objective you are in assessing the situation around you, the closer you are to being empty.
What do I mean by being objective? The operating definition I like to use for objective is, “free of personal bias and opinion.” It is easier to be objective when assessing situations around us if we are merely third parties looking into the situation. For example, imagine you are an American watching a badminton Olympic match-up between Norway and Indonesia. Assuming you have no ties to the players or the countries in whatever way, shape, or form, chances are you don’t have a preference in who wins or lose. More likely than not, you will simply watch the match as an independent observer and be very objective about the outcome of the game. “May the best player win,” you may say.
Let’s say instead of watching the Olympic game, you were looking out your window and saw two strangers arguing over which box was a more appropriate container for the light bulbs they had. Assuming you could hear their arguments, more likely than not, you would internalize each of their arguments and decide who was more right based on the arguments presented. Again, being a third party and thus being objective allowed you to make a call free of your personal bias and opinion.
The situation becomes harder when we cannot be objective in our assessment of the situation. This happens when 1) we are directly involved in the situation, or 2) we have ties to the persons involved in the situation. For example, let’s imagine you saw your significant other standing really close while talking to a person of the opposite gender. There could be many reasons why they were standing really close to each other — the environment in which they were conversing made it hard to hear each other, or the person of the opposite gender could be hard of hearing. Yet chances are, the first thought that came to our mind might be, “they are flirting with each other!”
So how does one remain objective in situations like that? In my opinion, two big steps are involved. The first step, acknowledgment, is to be taken immediately: it is important is to acknowledge that your assessment of the situation is not objective. You will also need to acknowledge that your feelings and emotions are the reasons you are not objective. Those acknowledgments should help you put yourself back in control of the situation at the moment the situation occurs.
The second step requires cultivation (which really means time and preparation). One way I’ve found to cultivate objectivity is to understand the “whys” behind occurrences. So in the example I gave above, I study the meanings behind non-verbal cues in my everyday life so that when I need to, I am ready to decipher what they mean. I am also an avid student of human relationships, so if I see my significant other potentially flirting with another woman, I would want to understand why he is doing that. By answering the whys, you force yourself to be removed from your emotions and thus your biases. The more distant you become from your biases, the more objective you will become; the more objective you become, the more empty you are.
Notice that distancing yourself from your bias and opinion does not require you to deny what’s happening around you. It simply allows you to see things for what they are, not that they don’t exist. It also allows you to see things outside of a bias lens that may distort the image that you are actually seeing and experiencing. The more you are able to see things without the distorting lens, the more empty you become.
Disclaimer: I am not a Buddhist, but I subscribe to a lot of their teachings because I find them an insightful tool to living a fulfilling life. As such, I welcome all practicing Buddhists to add their comments, especially if what I’ve written is incorrect.
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August 18, 2008 at 6:09 am
Attachment v. Non-Attachment « Casual Observations
[...] July 22, 2008 in Life Experiences | Tags: attachment, buddhism, human, love, non-attachment | Update: If you are looking for a practical guide to emptiness and non-attachment, you may want to visit my more recent post here. [...]
August 19, 2008 at 8:02 am
dragonflydm
There are a lot of traditions in Buddhism that get caught up with the term sunya (emptiness). There are a lot of traditions that lose sight that the purpose of Buddhism isn’t to explain the world, but to end suffering. It is said that those who become arahant (enlightened) will understand the universe– but I think that is it a more pragmatic translation that those who become arahant understand their place in the universe.
Think of emptiness as a colorful way of saying that we are not our “labels.”
A chair is only a chair because we condition ourselves to identify that form as a chair. To an ant it is a mountain. To a termite it is a meal. In ten years it will be fire wood.
When we talk of emptiness, we are talking about reconditioning our outlook towards objects and people and how we deal with them.
If we cling to the idea of a chair, then we expect that chair to be a chair for always. When our expectations are crushed by the chair being gone, or broken or transformed— we suffer. So we understand that the form of the chair is just a momentary relationship we have at the moment. It isn’t really a chair in the long run– but an impermanent process of material.
We call this “empty.”
Some Eastern Asian cultures really focus on this as the core of Buddhism. To understand this is to realize Buddhism. By putting it so high, many Buddhists don’t understand that this is not the core of Buddhism– and it is not a hard concept.
All of Buddhisms concepts are easy— what is hard is the reconditioning of the mind to accept the concept as reality.
Think of the news. Someone dies in a foreign country…you can accept this as part of life. If your child dies— you suffer greatly. This is because you cling to the expectation that your child will live (and perhaps wish it would be forever or at least beyond your life). In theory, we know that people live and die– but we do not always accept this truth: all things are impermanent.
So when we can see the world as impermanent, we are able to liberate ourselves from suffering. A water drop that has left the river, is not the river. If it evaporates it is not a drop. If it is soaked into the ground, it is not mist. If it is taken up by a plant, it is not soil. If that part of the plant is eaten by a cow, it is not the plant. If the cow pees in the river, it is not the cow. So then what is it? It is just a process of material continually shifting.
2,500 years ago, it was explained as empty nature.
It isn’t mystical at all and very simple. However, how many find it nearly impossible to fully accept. We cling to our loved ones. We cling to jobs for a feeling of safety. We cling to our cloths because they are war. We cling to our adornments because they are pretty. We cling to our identity because we are conditioned to think that we are something permanent.
August 19, 2008 at 8:31 am
Ceres
@dragonflydm: Thanks for your comments. I understand what you are saying, but I still find it a bit too vague to make it practical. For me, it’s all about how to translate concepts into practice with concrete step-by-step process. That’s why I wrote what I wrote because it has helped me to feel less attached to the things around me.
I would love to hear from you more on how to see the world as less permanent. And meditation doesn’t count as I already do plenty of that!