[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
the cause of suffering, and changing it into positive. You should be
applying your meditation like a medicine to the eradication of harm-
ful thoughts, the delusions the disturbing emotions that harm your-
self and others. You need to eradicate these and make your mind
healthy and your attitude beneficial, just as the Buddha explained in
the verse I quoted before:
77
VIRTUE AND REALITY
Do not engage in any harmful actions;
Perform only those that are good. ...
Abandon non-virtue, the cause of suffering, and practice virtue, the
cause of happiness. Transform negative motivation into positive so
that your actions will become virtuous. In this way you will not waste
your life but make it meaningful. At least you won t be harming your-
self or others.
The way to practice more meaningful mindfulness is this. For exam-
ple, when you re sitting or when you re walking, ask yourself the ques-
tion, What am I doing? Then your mind will answer, I m sitting,
I m walking, I m eating, depending on what it is that you re
doing. I m cooking, I m talking. Whatever you are doing, you can
meditate on emptiness.
One way in which you can do this is to reply to the answer I m
walking with another question: Why do I say I m walking ? Then
you analyze; you look for the reason. What you find is, The only
reason I say this is that my aggregate of body, the base I label I, is
walking. Your body is walking just because of that, your mind
labels and believes I m walking.
After you ve done that, check how your I appears to you at that
moment. Is it the same as before or has there been a change? Usually
you ll find that it s not the same, that there s been a definite change.
Suddenly, the old view of a real I in your body, appearing from that
side, the I you have always believed to be there in your body, has van-
ished, become non-existent. And that s the truth. It s not a false view.
The old I was the false one. When you do not meditate, do not ana-
lyze, the I that appears to you and in which you believe the I that
78
MEDITATION ON EMPTINESS
seems to be on these aggregates, in this body is the false one. In
philosophical texts, we refer to that I as inherently existent or existing
by nature. In Western psychological terms, we call it the emotional I.
The emotional I the one that you believe is in your body or on your
aggregates is totally non-existent. That is what you have to discover
that it s empty. You have to discover that it is totally non-existent,
totally empty.
If you can realize that that there s not even the slightest atom of an
I there and feel as if you yourself have become totally non-existent,
you have entered the Middle Way. At that time, when you realize
emptiness, you gain full conviction, or definite understanding, that you
can attain liberation, you can cease all suffering and its cause.
Remain in the state of your discovery of the absence of the emo-
tional I. Keep your mind in the emptiness of that. When your mind
gets distracted, again ask yourself the question, What am I doing?
Then, when your mind replies, ask again, Why do I say I m doing& ?
There s no reason other than& , whatever it is. If the answer is, I m
meditating, ask yourself, Why do I say I m meditating ? There s
no reason other than the fact that the base, the aggregates of mind,
are transforming into virtue (which is what meditation really means).
Then check again to see what effect this has had on your I. Has there
been a change or not?
Doing this meditation again and again helps you see the false I
more and more clearly. The more clearly you see the false I, the emo-
tional I, the I that doesn t exist, the more clearly you see, the better
you recognize, emptiness the better idea of emptiness you get.
The second technique for meditating on emptiness is one that
takes you back to your childhood, to the time before you had learned
79
VIRTUE AND REALITY
the alphabet. Imagine yourself before you knew your ABCs. You re
sitting in the classroom and your teacher draws a letter on the black-
board for the first time. You, the child, have no idea what it is, what
those lines represent. Although the teacher draws an A, you have no
appearance of A. Even though you see the lines on the blackboard, A
does not appear to you. You see the lines but you don t see them as
A. That s because your mind hasn t labeled those lines as A and
believed in that. Remember, labeling is not enough in order for
there to be appearance, you have to believe in it as well. At this point
in your life, your mind has not yet labeled that configuration and
believed, This is an A.
Then your teacher tells you, This is an A, and your mind
believing what your teacher has said, in relation to that base, those
lines on the blackboard creates the label A, merely imputes it on the
base, and believes in it. Only then do you have the appearance of the
letter A. After that, then you see that this is an A.
The point to understand here is that first there s that arrangement
of lines, which is the base. What is it that makes your mind decide
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]