Emptiness of All Things

All things are empty, and that includes all physical things, the whole process of experience, also concepts too, like awakening, the dharma, even life and death.

There is a saying “A glass is useful because of its emptiness”. Meaning it is the potential of the glass to hold something that makes it precious. That is beautiful, but not exactly the kind of emptiness we are talking about in the dharma teachings. Yet a glass is empty of being only a drinking vessel: we can use it to (gently) transport an insect out of a room; as we carry it the glass acts like an aquarium––a way of looking at the insect more intimately; we can use a glass to isolate or amplify sounds––cupping it over our ear, or pressing it against a wall; upturned and lightly pressed into rippling water it can still the movement and allow us to see deeper under the surface; we can rub a finger around the rim of the glass and produce a tone. The possibilities of uses are as endless as the way of looking. None are what the glass really is, regardless of who made it and why, it depends on the way someone relates to it.

Emptiness is not a thing, it is not something you can fill with something else, it is a characteristic of all things which is deeply ungraspable, but not incomprehensible. More than a noun it is an adjective: all things are empty of the ability to exist in the individuated way we often presume them to. This brings a radical shift in view. When this understanding is absorbed and assimilated deeply into the way we look, sense, and feel the world, we are changed. We change because we too are empty.

Slipping into a lens that sees all things are empty is so radical it can easily feel destabilising, but only in the way waking up too quickly sometimes feels disorienting. It is helpful, therefore, to not rush the seeing of emptiness, rather let it expand at a natural speed. Seeing that all things are empty (including, yet not limited to, who we take ourselves to be) is like waking up from a weird dream (or, if not from it, then into a far less illogical relationship to the dream).

Everything is Made Up

The other day I had the pleasure of walking along a sandy seashore. As I was walking I saw a piece of clear broken glass sticking up out of the sand just where the waves were breaking on the shore. I was glad to have seen it, and went to pick it up so that no one less observant or less well-sighted would hurt themselves on it. The dependently arising thought came “Why would someone leave this here?” But, as I picked it up I saw how smooth it had become, it had lost all its jagged edges, it felt as smooth as a river stone. So I too left it there.

The waves of water and sand had eroded the glass. Where had some of the glass gone? Glass is highly heated (2,000ºC) sand, which is skilfully manipulated, then allowed to cool slowly. Glass is fabricated from sand and skill, and even with good eyesight, I could never isolate those components now on the beach.

As I walked in the rising and receding wash of the waves, my feet were pressing temporary imprints in the sand. Each new footprint was 'washed away' by the next high wave. This image can impress a poetic metaphor and a plain depiction of emptiness in our minds. Yet no footprints were washed away, they never really were. The appearance of my footprint, was also just a shape in the sand. I couldn't take it home with me. The footprint only exits in a mind that sees it that way. We can easily see this towards a footprint, yet actually all things are fabricated appearance made up from other things, they are only coalesced by the mind. No trace remains of eroded glass, or footprints.

“Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.” John Lennon

Everything we know has this nature; everything is fabricated. All things are aggregated together from other things (these are themselves aggregated together from other aggregated things, and on, and on, and on, into the refinery of infinite finery). Don't miss this pertinent empty point; every appearance is dependent on the mind. Everything is made up. That is a sentence that can be taken in many ways, and at sometime any one of them could be seen to be true.

What then Is Reality?

We are really not in a position to say. How would we know reality? We must know it through our senses. But, the senses have a limited range: we don't have as good eyesight as an eagle, or sense of smell as a wolf, or sensitivity of touch as an octopus. So is this really reality we perceive or a mere skimming of its potential?

Further to the limitations of our physical organism, any reality we experience is processed through our limited minds.

The question we can ask is not “what is this reality we experience?”, but “what is our experience of reality?” Once we refine the question that way we start to see the empty fabricated nature of experience. This is the phenomenological lens of exploration. How do we come to this, or any, experience? The answer to that is something like the links of dependent origination.

As Nagarjuna said: “Emptiness is just this dependent origination.” If something depends on something else, it is not able to also independently exist. The scales fall from the eyes of one who sees dependent origination deeply, for them all things are empty. For all seen things depend on a seer.

Empty because of Perception

All experience is dependent on perception. If no thing is perceived no thing is experienced. If some thing is perceived then some thing is experienced.

What really is perception? Perception is an isolating concept. It is an activity of mind, and is even more ephemeral and ungraspable than a footprint in the wash of a wave. If we accept the definition of perception to be the forming of distinct things from a chaotic unfolding flow of sensory phenomena, we see that perception is a generative process of experience. By perceiving we are somehow making things out of not-things. Conceiving and perceiving are parts of the same process of making our world. This moves us towards another of Nagarjuna's crazy-sounding deeply-sensible statements of emptiness: “This world arises from imagination”.

This screen you are looking at is made up of things which are not a screen. If we took all the parts apart there would be no screen. At that moment where would the screen have gone? Would the screen be waiting somewhere — stage left — for all the parts to be put together? That doesn't make sense. We have to see the label of things are not in the object (or else the screen would be a part), nor in a collection of those objects (for the screen would continue to exist in any shape), not even in the shape of those objects (for someone could perceiving it as something other than a screen, or if it's shape were somehow different it could equally be taken as a screen). The screen-ness of the screen is only existent in the mind.

Again, everything has this nature, including the perception which fabricates it: Perception is 'made up' of not-perception. The self that appears to perceive is also made up of not-self.

Dependent on the Way of Looking

As we have discussed the way some 'thing' is perceived affects how that 'thing' is experienced. Any 'thing' depends on how it is viewed. There is always a way of 'looking' affecting perception. We can have all kinds of 'lenses' — like seeing all things as permanent and individual, or taking all things to be inconstant and interconnected. This may sound arbitrary and insignificant. Yet, we see different worlds when we view through a different lens.

It is not possible to see without a view. There is no means to access reality without a refracting lens, yet we mostly assume we can. Furthermore, if we do cognise this limitation, we often overlook it. Either way we habitually believe, right now, we are seeing things as they are. This is root ignorance, upon this the whole play of life is staged.

When we are quite unaware of dependent origination and emptiness we have a mode of viewing that inclines us towards dukkha; stress and distress. Yet, once our view is wisely informed (the first limb of the eight-fold path) we are less likely to blindly stumble into self-made stress.

Because of the dependency between view and experience, and thanks to the nature of changeability, we can develop a more skilful lens; a way of 'seeing' that frees, as Rob Burbea says. Lenses that are attuned to the Dharma, like anicca, dukkha, anattā are useful for fabricating less. Even these are a lens; we do not see things as they truly are, we see them as they appear dependent on the lens.

All Things Are Empty Because They're Dependent on Self

When something is held strongly in our perception it is because of the relationship. The story “I want this”, “I must have this”, “I can't live without this”, makes the object so much more vivid and real. Likewise with the story, “I don't like this”, “I despise it”, “I can't live with this in the world too”. Or even "I'm hopeless", "I never understand", "I'm not good enough". Whatever phenomena is promoting, projecting, or otherwise entangled with that feeling and view will be similarly shaped by that view: appearing most likely more intense, rigid, and solid.

When the sense of self is strong, like in the above narratives, the sense of the object also is more strong. If the sense of self quietens, calms, and softens then the sense of the object likewise fades. If the sense of self really goes still, or the sense of dukkha, demand, or story diminishes, then so does the potency of the object. If we stay steady and attentive through this process of calming and stilling, we will see a fading of the object in perception.

One of the great illusions of perception is that subject and object are two separate things. This is intuitively felt to be objectively true, yet a more thorough investigation makes things a lot more subjective. If we draw out this understanding further then we see that seeing something as a thing is dependent on the way of looking, and the way of looking is dependent on the looker. As we saw in Emptiness of Self the looker in this way of looking is also empty. We could say the object (which was already clearly fabricated) just became, or is seen to be, even more empty: it is dependent on the activity of an empty self. Mirroring this, the self also appears even more empty for the phenomena it perceives, and in turn depends on for this experience, is also more empty than previously seen.

Everything is a Concept

Emptiness can be approached from many different avenues. Each one adding more and more weight to the statement that everything is empty, made up, fabricated.

No matter what we experience, we never experience the thing itself, it is the mind's best guess. All reality is virtual reality. All things are our conceptualisation of them. Revealed via an approximation by the limited senses and the biases of the fabricating processes of our minds. We see what our mind imagines is important, offered up into consciousness in a manner it thinks will be useful. We see a complex gathered together concept of the world. With clear and wise looking we see that our experience of life is dependently arising due to many factors. Some factors are quite conscious but many are far less so. Yet, a sufficient degree of them can be influenced.

We can be more mindful and see more clearly, and cultivate wholesome qualities and incline towards more wisdom, and that is what this teaching is pointing towards.

Why does this Matter?

“All things are empty” sounds like a wild thing to say. But, it is not a statement of reckless nihilism, more a tug away from absent-minded reification. “All things are made up” does not imply that things can't matter. It isn't actually taking away their reality, rather that the reality projected onto them isn't independently real. It is just how we see them right now, and we know this because when we change the way of looking, they change accordingly. Another way of saying "all things are empty", could be "phenomena are mere dependent arising perceptions". For the way we see them (depending on our way of looking in the moment) is part of what makes them appear that way.

Sometimes these deep-end dependency teachings are compared to leaping out of an aeroplane, to realise we didn't pack a parachute. Just as we can't embrace this awful dream of plummeting, we can freak out as reality dissolves. At some point we realise that emptiness means there's also no ground, falling just lost all danger. This is a dramatic and catchy image, yet in reality our practice is more empty even than that imaginal concept, and can be far less dramatic. There is no parachute and no ground, but also nothing to fall through— so no falling—and no one to fall—so no faller either. Furthermore, we can go at a gradual pace, and really we should. We don't need to metaphorically leap out of a plane. Rather moment by moment enjoy the ease and openness as more rigid and oppressive projections of reality soften and lighten in warm emptiness.

All of this matters because it inspires us towards freedom without freaking out. We can have more fluidity and creativity as we experience, and that changes everything including the sense of self this liberates.

Everything will change, because everything is inconstant. Yet anything can be changed, because it is dependent on the way we're seeing it—from objects, to processes in minds, to the subtlest sense of existence at all—it all depends, it's all made up. Because it is empty, if we change the way we look at it, we can't help but to see it differently, deeply confirming its emptiness. With skill and wisdom, an empty lens that views all things as empty, is a way of looking that radically frees.