Everything is emptiness
What is emptiness? Everything is emptiness. The “substance” of anything isn’t actually there, but put together by thinking. When we look at a tree, there isn’t actually a “tree”, but thought says there is a tree, and associated with it the many scientific or emotional significance: like this tree was planted by me and I am attached to it, or this tree is classified according to the shape of its leaves, and so on. These are merely responses to the tree which are not the tree. Then comes the question: what is the tree? We can also ask: without thinking about the tree, is there a tree? There is no tree.
This is an understanding that requires no thought or recognition, but rather intuitive. It is what reality already is: emptiness. It seems so strange that all these colors and sounds and shapes saturate the senses, yet they are completely empty. The car is empty, it is and it isn’t a car. The person is empty, there is no person actually. The world is both existent and nothing at the same time. This is completely paradoxical, but somehow completely natural as well. When thoughts subside, when the mind stop trying to know, this emptiness reveals itself. No effort is necessary. All efforts ever lead to is another piece of knowledge, and that knowledge believes in its own existence as truth. However, knowledge is the dream. There is no knowing awakening. Awakening is unknowing. Knowing continues the dream that there is anything ever to know about. Nothing can be known. All we ever know is our projected ideas, concepts, and longings. Emptiness is indescribable. It is completely beyond the mind, therefore utter and incorruptible freedom.
Cover photo by Aman Upadhyay on Unsplash
