Seriously, though, I have been working with this little exercise for a few weeks now and I think it’s working…because it has me feeling a little edgy. I’m trying to experience the emptiness of a world that is empty of self and I’m finding it to be a little disconcerting.
You can try this right now. Look around at your computer screen and the wall behind it…let the details register. Now close your eyes and feel your contact with the chair and the floor. Imagine those contact points starting to swirl together as the perceived boundaries dissolve. Let yourself really feel the swirling energies (fake-it-til-you-make-it rules apply). Now bring the image of the room to mind and let the colors start to wash together a little like a sloppy watercolor.
Open your eyes and see what it feels like as all those boundaries try to snap back into place. Do this a dozen or so times a day in odd places for a week or so and get back to me.
Don’t worry if you start to feel a little edgy because…waking up is hard to do.
That’s a good article, Barry…but the whole form is emptiness; emptiness is form thing is a tough one, right? I have been circling around it big time.
The dependent arising concept is what helps me the most with understanding emptiness. No thing exists in and of itself. Every thing is completely dependent upon that which makes it up and that which supports its existence.
I am beginning to really grasp that as…the essence of emptiness. I am beginning to feel it as well.
When this exists, that comes to be;
With the arising of this; that arises.
When this does not exist, that does not come to be.
With the cessation of this, that ceases
…and…
One who sees dependent arising sees the Dhamma.; one who sees the Dhamma sees dependent arising.
Your musings always inspire me!!! I have been reading Alan Wallace’s books and he does such a great job illustrating through the four applications of mindfulness about the total interdependent arising of reality. I still can’t believe the sheer brilliance contemplatives like the Buddha and others discovered so many years ago. I mean…they were like scientists for goodness sake. I so enjoy learning more about the Dharma and getting to do so with all of you
Last night, during my WBTB, I was musing about how all this always and inevitably ties in to lucid dreaming and dream yoga. It was three years or so ago that I was thrust into the world of lucid dreaming by a powerful dream. Before that I had not given more than a moment of thought to the world of Dharma and Emptiness.
Lucid dreaming study led me almost immediately to dream yoga which immersed me into the Six Yogas of Naropa which introduced me to the illusory body and clear light mind and emptiness and rigpa…and led me back to dream yoga which opened my eyes to Dharma and the timeless teachings of Gautama Buddha and those that followed in the centuries after him which eventually led me here to this wonderful sangha…and changed my life forever.
It turns out that waking up isn’t all that hard after all. All I had to do was open my eyes a little wider.
Oh Steve, reading your reply was so heart opening for me I actually teared up!
I thought you’ve been on this path for a decade or more! I say this because of your level of insight and articulation of concepts that you share in this forum. It leads me to believe that the Dharma teachings help refine our inquiry and openess. I am assuming you already have a depth of understanding and that your study and practice brings you further on the path. It’s amazing what three years can do.
I might have already shared this, but I’ve been exposed to yogic teachings since 2008, but it was my daily morning and night sungazing practice from December of 2020 to the spring equinox of this year that revved up my intuition and led me to Andrew’s Dream Yoga books and Buddha’s authentic teachings via Alan Wallace. Alan has been a great help for me in going deeper with Shamatha and so far, that is the only thing that’s calling me. I have heard of the Six Yoga’s of Naropa. It’s so interesting what paths truly wake us up…
Ive really enjoyed all these experiences Teaches me a few ways in which people perceive things Ive learned that you can recuruit an inception self and build up armies of them from realities you made while watching a movie. You know that feeling you get when you watch Americas funniest home videos and someone gets hit in the crotch and here you are grabbing for your legs? well that’s because in that instant a flood of manufactured memories you suddenly have or have awareness of have you wondering for that reality Any time you winch at a gory scene your curiosity made you a path to it…Its when you extend the words in the 10s as recorded libraried thoughts that you have a sort of connection to speak back and forth with them and learn about all your realities where you did greater than now.
Unfortunately the reality is once the floodgates are open so are all everyone elses horrible memories. You dont want to know what slicing Ben Kanobi is like or blowing away half of Cambodia or losing your kids to something horrible you dont want to hve to psychosomatic ally talk yourself into a disease and literally discover the diseases that are able to be psychosomaticly the cause Its then its time to put together a flow chart
