Inferring Emptiness

Buddha taught that reality is transient and impermanent.

Around the same time, on the other side of the world, before Internet, cell phones, Facebook, or e-mail, a Greek called “Heraclitus” was making a name for himself by teaching wisdom is short blurbs, including “the only thing constant is change”.

Agreement.

Ignorance of this results in negative emotions.

In more modern terms, when your expectations are out of synch with reality, you experience stress.

You get pissed or depressed or anxious or funky.

Reality is change, transient, if you will.

Realization that reality is transient, on a moment-to-moment basis, is a challenge.

Most of us cling to our thoughts, emotions, memories, experiences.

Cluster it all together, and call it your “stuff”.

Some of us refuse to let go of our stuff for most of our lives.

Pain is especially seductive.

We cling to pain, never letting go of some experiences.

Trauma hangs around like bad breath after an all-night binge on Scotch and cheap cigars, like a hungry cat on a cold morning, scratching at your back door.

How we do make it leave?

Or, do we?

By understanding that there is really nothing there, would say the Buddha.

Critical to Buddhism, perceiving nothing reformats conventional mental patterns: nothing, nada, zero, less than zip, infinitely less than negative numbers.

Nothing = no thing.

Think about it, if you can.

Reminds me of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “The Infinite Improbability Drive is a wonderful new method of crossing vast interstellar distances in a mere nothingth of a second, without all of that tedious mucking about in hyperspace.”

When you understand nothing (the emptiness) underlying all of this transient reality, it loses its power over you.

When you understand that there is nothing at the end of knowledge, it lightens you up, causes laughing at oneself.

When you comprehend the emptiness underlying your ever-precious capitalistic ego, you let it go and do more for others.

Experiencing emptiness does not come naturally.

First, we infer it.

According to the Dalai Lama, “inferential knowledge is often compared to a blind person who can only get around with the help of walking stick. Inferential cognition is not a direct experience; it is an approximation of that experience based on reasoning and critical reflection.  However, at the initial stage, it is through inference that we can begin to understand emptiness, the ultimate nature of reality.”

How would you like to go through life with people calling you “Dolly”?

But, tragedy, immorality, the Holocaust, the pedophilic Catholic Church, Warren Jeffs, Charles Manson, all seem so real.