This is a post about emptiness.
Growing up, I often found myself in a pensive mood or a feeling of melancholy. Perhaps I used to think it is because, the cone of my favorite ice-cream was to it's last drop, or when Sunday was like the setting sun, wrapped in the dusk.
Perhaps I thought maybe I was different from my siblings or my friends, I was too wrapped in my thoughts, much adrift from the mundane cycle of a young kid's growing up.
Now at the ripe age of 40, pretty much contained with emotions, places, people, experiences. I pondered upon one of the most profound philosophy of Buddha, Emptiness, in Sanskrit known as Shunyata (well, it's been few years since I have been playing with this concept)
Form is emptiness, Emptiness is form … a famous chant from the Buddhist Heart Sutra.
So it says, there is no moment in which we are separate, and apart. We are always connected to past, future, the sky, the tree, and to other.
Every thought, every emotion, every action, has myriad of causes, and reverberations, that stretch out mysteriously, and endlessly. We are all consumed with our actions, aftermath, our concepts, relationships, our survivals. We are always bounded with making plans for our security, the animal instinct of survival usually captaining our boat.
Most times we say we are seeking, we are in search of the purpose of our life, the meaning to this life or chasing an ambition. This seeking actually is sharpening our ego, of Self, the I, and the more we seek or search the dimensions, the stronger the I-ness is strengthened thus on an egoistical trip.
While I sit on my meditation cushion, opposing on my self centered activities, and following my breath, the deep inhales and the long exhales, when the mind has ceased any thoughts, when I finally don't feel the fidgetiness to scratch my head or the itch to move from my practice to check my iPhone or simply acknowledge the myriads of all "to do list" which suddenly springs up in my mind, the moment I sit to mediate.
Meditation attunes me with a silence, an indefinable quietness, a warmth feeling like embracing a long lost old friend. Just being. Nothing more to do or nowhere to be, finally nodding agreeably to the peals of the bells from the ancient monastery, situated on a hilltop of my grandmother's village, knowing now that for all those years the peals were the sounding of emptiness amidst the colorful prayer flags.
Emptiness is not empty, like a coffee mug after the coffee has been consumed. Nor is it 'the' meaninglessness of a nihilist.
Emptiness is just being, seeing things as it is. The thing itself is emptiness, but because we add something to it, we create an illusion, so if we don't create this illusion of that particular thing, we see the actual reality which is free of dualistic approach … Just acceptance … The Reality that is And will always be, is only conceived from the angle of Shunyata.