Let’s continue with our discussions on emptiness today. In the last two sessions, we looked at the emptiness of phenomenon as well as the emptiness of the body. Let’s look at an example that may explain emptiness a little better. Growing up, I used to watch magician shows few times a year. There were these magicians who were also hypnotists that would come to town and perform magic shows. When you go to these shows, almost always they would have at least one hypnotist spell during the show. They would put the whole audience into their spell and then all of a sudden you would think that a piece of wood is a cow or something. Emptiness is just like that. We are the people in the audience. For us, the cow is as real as it comes. It exists and there is no doubt about it. We look at all phenomena just like that. We think they exist and are real. Now if you are the magician, you can see the cow but you know it does not exist at all. So that is the next level of understanding we need to cultivate. Where we can see that cow exists but it does not exist inherently. It is just an imputed existence. Now if you walked into the hall let’s say half an hour after he put his spell on the audience. You would only see that piece of wood and do not see the cow at all. That is true wisdom. We all eventually want to strive for that. Hope all of these make sense and explains the emptiness a little better.
Today, we are going to meditate on the emptiness of the mind. And before we do that, let’s look at what our mind is. We have discussed in the past, three types of mind. Gross mind the waking mind that sees everything that we see in the world. Subtle mind the mind that is active in our dream state. And very subtle mind our peaceful mind that travels from one life to the next.
One way to look at this is that our mind is like a river. It is a consciousness that is flowing from lifetime to lifetime. Have you ever been to a river to hang out? You see these water bubbles when the water touches a rock. Our life is just like that water bubble. When the water bubble bursts, what happens to the water? It just becomes part of the river that’s it. It goes and creates another bubble somewhere else.
Yet another way to look at this is soap bubbles we used to blow when we were young. Let’s say you blow a bubble and I blow a bubble. We both talk about “our” bubbles. All of a sudden the bubble bursts. Where did the bubble go? Can we call the air inside those bubbles my air and your air? Of course not.
Our very subtle mind is just like their bubbles. It is part of a consciousness that is going on from the beginningless time. Life after life without stopping.
So does the mind exist inherently? Let’s go find this inherently existing mind. We know that the mind is a continuum. When we are happy or unhappy we look at that mind as inherently existing. However, we know that our mind changes from moment to moment. If it was inherently existing, it would be solid as a rock if you will. It would not be changing on a moment-to-moment basis. If it was inherently existing, we would be able to find it at any given moment. But the mind changes every moment and we cannot find this unhappy mind or happy mind because it constantly changes. The same logic applies when we look at our feelings. Our feelings are as fleeting as the wind blowing on a stormy day. They keep changing from moment to moment and we cannot find the mind that contains that feeling when we go look for it.
Of all the emptiness teachings, I find the emptiness of the mind probably the most difficult to grasp. So don’t be discouraged if you are struggling with the concept. In time with enough contemplation and example, you will begin to understand the concept.