Emptiness

 Emptiness

Right lets continue what I was talking about yesterday. To begin with, if 2015 taught me so much about impermanence, 2016 taught me a lot about emptiness. I have also decided to learn more about Buddhism every year since 2015. And I'm doing this by focusing on a Sutra every year. This year I chose the Prajnaparamita Sutra, or the perfection of wisdom. Which emptiness is its core.

I've spent almost two years dong daily chanting now. I started chanting everyday since March 2015. Like I blogged about, the Prajnaparamita sutra is a sutra that I chant every day. I've always been intrigued by this sutra because of the line:

"Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Form is none other than emptiness and emptiness is none other than form. This goes the same for feelings, thoughts, compositional factors and consciousness."  

What is emptiness here?

I remember a friend once told me how she doesn't get Buddhism because it seems like a very negative religion. Things like sufferings, emptiness, impermanence and others. I can't really answer that question because when we think deeply, these are truly the nature of phenomenons! But anyway I am still intrigued by that line too. Why is everything empty? How come emptiness is everywhere?

So I begin by researching online for the explanations of the sutra. I've read a couple articles, and I've also decided to get a few books about the sutra. The first book I read is by Thich Nhat Hanh (Title: The Heart of Understanding) and in this book, he explains how emptiness is defined as the absence of an intrinsic existence. So basically all phenomena doesn't exist and can't exist solely on its own.

Every phenomena in life is impermanent, and doesn't have an intrinsic existence. They are caused by something, resulted into something and it just goes on and on. However in our minds most of the time, every phenomena seems to be fixed into just one thing. Just like expectations.

The second book I read is by the Dalai Lama (Title: Essence of The Heart Sutra, the Dalai Lama's Heart of Wisdom Teachings). This book I feel is a bit heavy for me because of the many terms and explanations. But it is also truly an enlightening one. One sentence change my mind forever.

Emptiness is defined as seeing everything as it is...... BOOM.

This is what I have in mind as well. I truly feel the way to happiness is to see everything as it is.

One of my favourite lines from the sutra is:

"All phenomena bears the mark of emptiness. They do not increase nor decrease, they are not deficient nor fulfilled, there is no death nor there is birth."

A lot of times, we do the opposite to this theory. When there is a phenomenon we experience, we tend to increase or decrease it, we make it better or sometimes worst, and the best part is we create something that doesn't even exist, or kill something that existed in that phenomenon! 

Which I can sum as.... We feel too many unnecessary emotions, create thoughts we don't need, paint something that never existed. And who is this we? It is our ego of course.

So if we can see everything as it is, that would really help us a lot in my opinion. Without twisting any facts and adding wonderful spices onto them. Until we know the absolute truth. Like I once said, the easiest and surest way to make us unhappy is to believe in a truth that we create in our heads.

Another of my favourite line is:

"In emptiness there is no ignorance, no aging and death. No origination, cessation, no attainment"

In my opinion this is the greatest test that we human beings can face. How we react to things. How do we handle all phenomenon with hmm should I say neutrality? How we accept everything as it is, without denying any facts. Denying would be ignorance. Adding more facts would be attainment.

One of the greatest lessons that this sutra taught me is to realise the empty nature of things. And how we should react to it. But it's quite difficult because I feel that we need to fully realise this nature before we can learn how to mindfully react to them. And the only way to train your mind is to meditate. A lot of times we let ourselves react with so much volatility that we do not realise it ourselves.

And thus, last but not least, the sutra closes with the mantra of the sutra (Gate gate paragate parasamgate Bodhi Svaha) and how this mantra can quell all suffering. Well it's not as fancy as it sounds. But basically when you practice what the sutra has taught you, you can be free of suffering.

The mantra itself is translated as: Go, go, go beyond, go totally beyond, be rooted in the ground of enlightenment. Or the last part can also be translated as go to the other shore. What shore you might ask? The "shore" that we are in now, is the shore of samsara. And the "other shore" refers to the shore where we're free of samsara. Which basically means when you practice prajnaparamita, you can be free of samsara! No need for suffering, no need for rebirth. Sounds good.

Back to the topic of holding on to emptiness... So yeah. I feel that we shouldn't hold on to expectations but to emptiness. And like what I mentioned above, in emptiness we do not add nor subtract things. We do not create nor destroy things. We do not deny facts nor add more. 

And perhaps we can all be happier this way. To see everything as it is.

Some people regard emptiness as the God of Buddhism. But then again, hey we are a non-theistic religion. Well in a Buddhist perspective, I'm just gonna take it that if impermanence is a fuel that keeps me going, then emptiness is the vehicle that I will be riding on.

Right! This is just my opinion about emptiness, and how much it taught me a lot in this year. Would like to send my sincerest gratitude to all the Buddhist masters whom I learned a lot about this sutra. I would however say that it is definitely not easy practising this. We have to also realise that we're full of emptiness. But sadly ego still resides within us. Well, it's not entirely impossible to practise this. I hope this insight helps you. This is just my two cent worth regarding emptiness.

Take care and you have a great week ahead people! :)