The Integrity of Emptiness
The Mahayana view of emptiness, says Thanissaro Bhikkhu, is too
abstract and philosophical to be of much help in our everyday lives. Instead he
offers a Theravada path of emptiness that starts with taking an honest look at
our day-to-day actions and leads ultimately to enlightenment.
For all the subtlety of his teachings, the Buddha had a simple test for
measuring wisdom. You’re wise, he said, to the extent that you can get yourself
to do things you don’t like doing but know will result in happiness, and to the
extent that you refrain from things you like doing but know will result in pain
and harm. He derived this standard for wisdom from his insight into the radical
importance of intentional action in shaping our experience of happiness and
sorrow, pleasure and pain. Given that our actions are so important and yet so
frequently misguided, our wisdom has to be tactical—and strategic—in fostering
actions that are truly beneficial. It has to outwit our shortsighted
preferences in order to yield a happiness that lasts.
Because the Buddha viewed all issues of experience, from the gross to the
subtle, in terms of intentional actions and their results, his standard for
wisdom applies to all levels as well, from the wisdom of simple generosity to
the wisdom of emptiness and ultimate awakening. Wisdom on all levels is wise
because it works. It makes a difference in what you do and the happiness that
results. But to work, it requires integrity: the willingness to look honestly
at the results of your actions, to admit when you‘ve caused harm, and to change
your ways so that you won’t make the same mistake again.
What’s striking about this standard for wisdom is how direct and
down-to-earth it is. This might come as a surprise, because most of us don’t
think of Buddhist wisdom as commonsensical and straightforward. Instead, the
phrase “Buddhist wisdom” implies teachings that are more abstract and
paradoxical, flying in the face of common sense—“emptiness” being a prime
example. Emptiness, we’re told, means that nothing has any inherent existence.
In other words, on an ultimate level, things aren’t what we conventionally
think of as “things.” They’re processes that are in no way separate from all
the other processes on which they depend. This is a philosophically sophisticated
idea that’s fascinating to ponder, but it doesn’t provide much help in getting
you up early on a cold morning to meditate nor in convincing you to give up a
destructive addiction.
For example, if you’re addicted to alcohol, it’s not because you feel that
the alcohol has any inherent existence. It’s because, in your calculation, the
immediate pleasure derived from the alcohol outweighs the long-term damage it’s
doing to your life. Attachment and addiction are not metaphysical problems.
They’re tactical problems. We’re attached to things and actions, not because of
what we think they are but because of what we think they can do for our
happiness. If we keep overestimating the pleasure and under-estimating the pain
they bring, we stay attached to them regardless of what, in an ultimate sense,
we understand them to be.
Because the problem is tactical, the solution has to be tactical as well.
The cure for addiction and attachment lies in retraining your imagination and
your intentions through expanding your sense of the power of your actions and
the possible happiness you can achieve. This means learning to become more
honest and sensitive to your actions and their consequences, while at the same
time allowing yourself to imagine and master alternative routes to greater
happiness.
Metaphysical views may sometimes enter into the equation, but at most,
they're secondary. Many times they're irrelevant. Even if you were
to see the alcohol and its pleasure as lacking inherent existence, you'd still
go for the pleasure as long as you saw it as outweighing the damage.
Sometimes ideas of metaphysical emptiness can actually be harmful. If you
start focusing on how the damage of drinking—and the people damaged by your
drinking—are empty of inherent existence, you could develop a rationale for
continuing to drink. So the teaching on metaphysical emptiness won’t seem
to pass the Buddha's own test for wisdom.
The irony here is that the idea of emptiness as lack of inherent existence
has very little to do with what the Buddha himself said about emptiness.
His teachings on emptiness—as reported in the earliest Buddhist texts, the Pali
Canon—deal directly with actions and their results, with issues of pleasure and
pain. To understand and experience emptiness in line with these teachings
requires not philosophical sophistication but a personal integrity willing to
admit the actual motivations behind your actions and the actual benefits and
harm they cause. For these reasons, this version of emptiness is very
relevant in developing the sort of wisdom that could pass the Buddha's
commonsensical test for measuring how wise you are.
The Buddha's teachings on emptiness—contained in two major discourses and
several smaller ones—define it in three distinct ways: as an approach to
meditation, as an attribute of the senses and their objects, and as a state of
concentration. Although these forms of emptiness differ in their
definitions, they ultimately lead to the same path of release from
suffering. To see how this happens, we will need to examine the three
meaning of emptiness one by one. In doing so, we'll find that each of
them applies to the Buddha's commonsensical test for wisdom to subtle actions
of the mind. But to understand how this test applies to this subtle
level, we first have to see how it applies to actions on a more obvious
level. For that, there's no better introduction than the Buddha's advice
to his son, Rahula, on how to cultivate wisdom while engaging in the activities
of everyday life.
Observing Everyday Actions
The Buddha told Rahula, who was seven at the time, to use his thoughts, words,
and deeds as a mirror. In other words, just as you would use a mirror to
check for any dirt on your face, Rahula was to use his actions as a means of
learning where there was anything impure in his mind. Before he acted, he
should try to anticipate the results of the action. If he saw that they'd
be harmful to himself or to others, he shouldn't follow through with the
action. If he foresaw no harm, he could go ahead and act. And if,
in the course of doing the action, he saw it causing unexpected harm, he should
stop the action. If he didn't see any harm, he could continue with it.
If, after he was done, he saw any long-term harm resulting from the action,
he should consult with another person on the path to get some perspective on
what he had done—and on how not to do it again—and then resolve not to repeat
the mistake. In other words, he should
not feel embarrassed or ashamed to reveal his mistakes to people he respected,
or if he started hiding his mistakes from them, he would soon start hiding them
from himself. If, on the other hand, he
saw no harm resulting from the action, he should rejoice in his progress in the
practice and continue with his training.
The right name for this reflection is not
“self-purification.” It is
“action-purification.” You deflect
judgments of good and bad away from your sense of self, where they can tie you
down with conceit and guilt. Instead,
you focus directly on the actions themselves, where the judgments can allow you
to learn from your mistakes and to find a healthy joy in what you did right.
When you keep reflecting this way, it serves many
purposes. First and foremost, it forces
you to be honest about your intentions and about the effects of your
actions. Honesty here is a simple
principle: you don’t add any
after-the-fact rationalizations to cover up what you actually did, nor do you
try to subtract from the actual facts through denial. Because you’re applying this honesty to areas
where the normal reaction is to be embarrassed about or afraid of the truth,
it’s more than a simple registering of the facts. It also requires moral integrity. This is why the Buddha stressed morality as a
precondition for wisdom and declared the highest moral principle to be the
precept against lying. If you don’t make
a habit of admitting uncomfortable truths, the truth as a whole will elude you.
The second purpose of this reflection is to emphasize the
power of your actions. You see that your
actions do make the difference between pleasure and pain. Third, you gain practice in learning from
your mistakes without shame or remorse. Fourth, you realize that the more honest you are in evaluating your
actions, the more power you have to change your ways in a positive
direction. And finally, you develop
goodwill and compassion, because you resolve to act only on intentions that
mean no harm to anyone and you continually focus on developing the skill of harmlessness
as your top priority.
All of these lessons are necessary to develop the kind
of wisdom measured by the Buddha’s test for wisdom, and, as it turns out,
they’re directly related to the first meaning of emptiness, as an approach to
meditation. In fact, this sort of
emptiness simply takes the instructions Rahula received for observing everyday
actions and extends them to the act of perception within the mind.
Emptiness as an
Approach to Meditation
Emptiness as an approach to meditation is the most basic of
the three kinds of emptiness. In the
context of this approach, emptiness means “empty of disturbance”—or, to put it
in other terms, empty of stress. You
bring the mind to concentration and then examine your state of concentration in
order to detect the presence or absence of subtle disturbance or stress. When you find a disturbance, you follow it
back to the perception—the mental label or act of recognition—on which the
concentration is based. Then you drop
that perception in favor of a more refined one, one leading to a state of
concentration with less inherent disturbance.
In the discourse explaining this meaning of emptiness (Majjhima Nikaya 121), the Buddha
introduces his explanation with a simile. He and Ananda are dwelling in an abandoned palace that is now a quiet
monastery. The Buddha tells Ananda to
notice and appreciate how the monastery is empty of the disturbances it
contained when it was still used as a palace—the disturbances caused by gold
and silver, elephants and horses, assemblies of women and men. The only disturbance remaining is that caused
by the presence of the monks meditating in unity.
Taking this observation as a simile, the Buddha launches
into his description of emptiness as an approach to meditation. (The simile is reinforced by the fact that
the Pali word for “monastery” or “dwelling”—vihara—also means “attitude” or
“approach.”) He described a monk
meditating in the wilderness who is simply noting to himself that he is now in
the wilderness. The monk allows his mind
to concentrate on and enjoy the perception “wilderness.” He then steps back mentally to observe and
appreciate that this mode of perception is empty of the disturbances that come
with the perceptions of the village life he has left behind. The only remaining disturbances are those
associated with the perception “wilderness”—for example, any emotional
reactions to the dangers that wilderness might entail. As the Buddha says, the monk sees accurately
which disturbances are not present in that mode of perception; as for those
remaining, he sees accurately, “There is this.” In other words, he adds nothing to what is there and takes nothing
away. This is how he enters into a
meditative emptiness that is pure and undistorted.
Then, noting the disturbances inherent in the act of
focusing on “wilderness, “ the monk drops that perception and replaces it with
a more refined perception, one with less potential for arousing
disturbance. He chooses the earth
element, banishing from his mind any details of the hills and ravines of the
earth, simply taking note of its earthness. He repeats the process he applied to the perception of
wilderness—settling into the perception of “earth,” fully indulging in it, and
then stepping back to notice how the disturbances associated with the
singleness of mind based upon the perception “earth.”
He then repeats the same process with ever more refined
perceptions, settling into the formless jhanas,
or meditative absorptions: infinite
space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, neither perception nor
nonperception, and the objectless concentration of awareness.
Finally, seeing that even this objectless
concentration of awareness is fabricated and willed, he drops his desire to
continue mentally fabricating anything at all. In this way he is released from the mental formations—sensual desire,
becoming, views, ignorance—that would “bubble up” into further becoming. He observes that this release still has the
disturbances that come with the functioning of the six sense spheres, but that
it’s empty of all fermentation—all potential for further suffering and
stress. This, concludes the Buddha, is
the entry into pure and undistorted emptiness that is superior and unsurpassed. It is the emptiness in which he himself
dwells and that, throughout time, has never been nor ever will be excelled.
Throughout this description, emptiness means one thing: empty of disturbance or stress. The meditator is taught to appreciate the
lack of disturbance as a positive accomplishment and to see any remaining
disturbance created by the mind, however subtle, as a problem to be solved.
When you understand disturbance as a subtle form of harm,
you see the connections between this description of emptiness and the Buddha’s
instructions to Rahula. Instead of regarding
his meditative states as a measure of self-identity or self-worth—in having
developed a self that’s purer, more expansive, more at one with the ground of
being—the monk views them simply in terms of actions and their consequences. And the same principles apply here, on the
meditative level, as apply to the Buddha’s comments to Rahula on action in
general.
Here, the action is the perception that underlies your state
of meditative concentration. You settle
into the state by repeating the action of perception continually, until you are
thoroughly familiar with it. Just as
Rahula discovered the consequences of concentrating on the perception by seeing
how much disturbance arises. As you
sense disturbance, you can change your mental action, moving your concentration
to a more refined perception, until ultimately you can stop the fabrication of
mental states altogether.
At the core of this meditation practice are two important
principles derived from the instructions to Rahula. The first is honesty: the ability to be free of embellishment or
denial, adding no interpretation to the disturbance actually present, while at
the same time no denying that it’s there. An integral part of this honesty is the ability to see things simply as
action and result, without reading into them the conceit “I am.”
The second principle is compassion—the desire to end
suffering—in that you keep trying to abandon the cause of the stress and
disturbance wherever you find them. The
effects of this compassion extend not only to yourself but to others as
well. When you don’t weigh yourself down
with stress, you’re less likely to be a burden to others; you’re also in a
better position to help shoulder their burdens where need be. In this way, the
principles of integrity and compassion underlie even the most subtle
expressions of the wisdom leading to release.
This process of developing emptiness of disturbance is not
necessarily smooth or straightforward. It continually requires the strength of will to give up an
attachment. This is because an essential
step in getting to know the meditative perception as an action is learning to
settle into it, to indulge in it—on other words, to enjoy it thoroughly, even
to the point of attachment. This is one
of the roles of tranquility in meditation. If you don’t learn to enjoy the meditation enough to keep at it
consistently, you won’t grow familiar with it. If you aren’t familiar with it, insight into its consequences won’t
arise.
However, unless you’ve already had practice using the
Rahula instructions to overcome grosser attachments, even if you gain insight
into the subtlest of attachments, such as attachment to concentration, your
insight will lack integrity. Because you
haven’t had any practice with more blatant attachments, you won’t be able to
pry loose your subtle attachments in a reliable way. You first need to develop the moral habit of
looking ar your actions and their consequences, believing firmly—through
experience—in the worth of refraining from harm, however subtle. Only then will you have the skill needed to
develop emptiness as an approach to meditation, in a pure and undistorted way,
so that it will carry you all the way to its intended goal.
Emptiness as an
Attribute of the Senses and Their Objects
When used as a departure point for practice, emptiness as an
attribute leads to a similar process but by a different route. Whereas emptiness as an approach to
meditation focuses on issues of disturbance and stress, emptiness as a
attribute focuses on issues of self and not-self. And while emptiness as an approach to
meditation starts with tranquility, emptiness as an attribute starts with
insight.
The Buddha describes this kind of emptiness in a short
discourse (Samyutta Nikaya
35.85). Again, Ananda is his
interlocutor, opening the discourse with the question, In what way is the world
empty? The Buddha answers that each of
the six senses and their objects are empty of one’s self or anything pertaining
to one’s self.
The discourse gives no further explanation, but related
discourses show that this insight can be put into practice in two ways. The first is to reflect on what the Buddha
says about “self” and how ideas of self can be understood as forms of mental
activity. The second way, which we will
discuss in the next section, is to develop the perception of all things being
empty of one’s self as a basis for a state of refined concentration. However, as we shall see, both of these
tactics ultimately lead back to using the first form of emptiness—emptiness as
an approach to meditation—to complete the path to awakening.
The Buddha refused to say whether the self exists or not,
but he gave a detailed description of how the mind develops the idea of self as
a strategy based on craving. In our
desire for happiness, we repeatedly engage in what the Buddha calls “I-making”
and “my-making,” trying to exercise control over pleasure and pain. Because I-making and my-making are actions,
they fall under the purview of the Buddha’s instructions to Rahula. Whenever you engage in them, you should check
to see whether they lead to affliction; if they do, you should abandon them.
This is a lesson that, on a blatant level, we learn even as
children. If you lay claim to a piece of
candy belonging to your sister, you’re going to get into a fight. If she’s bigger than you, you’d better not to
claim the candy as yours. Much of our
practical education as we grow up lies in the discovering where it’s beneficial
to create a sense of self around something and where it’s not.
If you learn to approach your I-making and my-making in
light of the Rahula instructions, you greatly refine this aspect of your
education as you find yourself forced to be more honest, discerning, and
compassionate in seeing where an “I” is a liability and where it’s an
asset. On a blatant level, you discover
that while there are many areas where “I” and “mine” lead only to useless
conflicts, there are others where they’re beneficial. The sense of “I” that leads you to be
generous and principled in your actions is an “I” worth making, worth mastering
as a skill. So too is the sense of “I”
that can assume responsibility for your actions and can be willing to sacrifice
a small pleasure now for a greater happiness in the future. This kind of “I,” with practice, leads away
from affliction and toward increasing levels of happiness. This is the “I” that will eventually lead you
to practice meditation, for you see the long-term benefits that come from
training your powers of mindfulness, concentration and discernment.
However, as meditation refines your sensitivity, you
begin to notice the subtle levels of affliction and disturbance that I-making
and my-making can create in the mind. They can get you attached to a state of calm, so that you resent any
intrusions on “my” calm. They can get
you attached to your insights, so that you develop pride around “my” insights. This can block further progress, for the
sense of “I” and “mine” can blind you to the subtle stress on which the calm
and insights are based. If you’ve had
training in following the Rahula instructions, though, you’ll come to
appreciate the advantages of learning to see even the calm and the insights as
empty of self or anything pertaining to self. That is the essence of this second type of emptiness. When you remove labels of “I” or “mine” even
from your own insights and mental states, how do you see them? Simply as instances of stress arising and
passing away—disturbance arising and passing away—with nothing else added or
taken away. As you pursue this mode of
perception, you’re adopting the first form of emptiness: emptiness as an approach to meditation.
Emptiness as a State
of Concentration
The third kind of emptiness taught by the Buddha—emptiness
as a state of concentration—is essentially another way of using insight into
emptiness as an attribute of the senses and their objects as a means to attain
release. One discourse (Majjhima Nikaya 43) describes it as
follows: A monk goes to sit in a quiet
place and intentionally perceives the six senses and their objects as empty of
self or anything pertaining to self. As
he pursues this perception, it brings his mind not directly to release but to
the formless jhana of nothingness, which is accompanied by strong equanimity.
Another discourse (Majjhima
Nikaya 106) pursues this topic further, noting that the monk relishes the
equanimity. If he simply keeps on
relishing it, his meditation goes no further than that. But if he learns to see that equanimity as an
action—fabricated, willed—he can look for the subtle stress it engenders. If he can observe this stress as it arises
and passes away, neither adding any other perceptions to it nor taking anything
away, he’s again adopting emptiness as an approach to his meditation. By dropping the causes of stress wherever he
finds them in his concentration, he ultimately reaches the highest form of
emptiness, free from all mental fabrication.
The Wisdom of
Emptiness
Thus the last two types of emptiness lead back to the
first—emptiness as an approach to meditation—which means that all three types
of emptiness ultimately lead to the same destination. Whether they interpret emptiness as meaning
empty of disturbance (suffering/stress) or empty of self, whether they
encourage fostering insight through tranquility or tranquility through insight,
they all culminate in a practice that completes the tasks appropriate to the
four noble truths: comprehending stress,
abandoning its cause, realizing its cessation, and developing the path to that
cessation. Completing these tasks leads
to release.
What’s distinctive about this process is the way it grows
out of the principles of action-purification that the Buddha taught to Rahula,
applying these principles to every step of the practice, from the most
elementary to the most refined. As the
Buddha told Rahula, these principles are the only possible means by which
purity can be attained. Although most
explanations of this statement define purity as purity of virtue, the Buddha’s
discussion of emptiness as an approach to meditation shows that purity here
means purity of mind and purity of wisdom as well. Every aspect of the training is purified by
viewing it in terms of actions and consequences.
This is where this sort of emptiness differs from the
metaphysical definition of emptiness as “lack of inherent existence.” Whereas that view of emptiness doesn’t
necessarily involve integrity—it’s an attempt to describe the ultimate truth of
the nature of things rather than to evaluate actions—this approach to emptiness
requires honestly evaluating your mental actions and their results. Integrity is thus integral to its mastery.
In this way, the highest levels of wisdom and discernment
grow primarily not from the type of knowledge fostered by debate and logical
analysis, nor from the type fostered by bare awareness or mere noting. They grow from the knowledge fostered by
integrity, devoid of conceit and coupled with compassion and goodwill.
The reason for this is so obvious that it’s often
missed: if you’re going to put an end to
suffering, you need the compassion to see that this is a worthwhile goal and
the integrity to admit the suffering you’ve heedlessly and needlessly caused in
the past. The ignorance that gives rise
to suffering occurs not because you don’t know enough or are not
philosophically sophisticated enough to understand the true meaning of
emptiness. Rather, it comes from being
unwilling to admit that what you’re doing right before your very eyes is
causing suffering. This is why awakening
destroys conceit: it awakens you to the
full extent of the willful blindness that has kept you complicit in unskillful
behavior all along. It’s a chastening
experience. The only honest thing to do
in response to this experience is to open to release. That’s the emptiness that’s superior and
unsurpassed.
In building the path to this emptiness on the same
principles that underlie the more elementary levels of action-purification, the
Buddha managed to avoid creating artificial dichotomies between conventional
and ultimate truths in the practice. For
this reason, his approach to ultimate wisdom helps validate the more elementary
levels as well. When you realize that an
undistorted understanding of emptiness depends on the skills you develop in
adopting a responsible, honest and kind attitude toward all your actions,
you’re more likely to bring this attitude to everything you do, gross or
subtle. You give more importance to all
your actions and their consequences, and you give more importance to your sense
of integrity, for you realize that these things are directly related to the
skills leading to total release.
You can’t develop a throwaway attitude to your actions and
their consequences, for if you do you’re throwing away your chances for a true
and unconditional happiness. The skills
you need to talk yourself into meditating on a cold, dark morning, or into
resisting a drink on a lazy afternoon, are the same ones that will eventually
guarantee an undistorted realization of the highest peace. This is how the Buddha’s teachings on
emptiness encourage you to exercise wisdom in everything you do.
THANISSARO BHIKKHU, born Geoffrey Degraff, is an
American Buddhist monk in the Thai Forest Tradition. He is Abbot of
Metta Forest Monastery in San Diego County, California.
“Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or
society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying
attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes
you eager. Stay eager.”
