INSIGHT NEWSLETTER FALL WINTER 2005/2006 Practicing Emptiness, IMS Schedules: Experiencing Fullness The Retreat Center 2006 An Interview with Guy Armstrong The Forest Refuge 2006 The world is empty because it is empty of self or of what belongs to self. Teacher Interviews – The Buddha IMS News Guy Armstrong was introduced to the Buddha’s teachings in 1974. Since then, he has and Developments trained as a Buddhist monk with meditation masters in Thailand and Burma. He began teaching the dharma over twenty years ago, and is currently a member of the IMS BCBS 2005/06 Guiding Teacher Council. With an abiding interest in the depth and implications of Course Schedule Outline suññata, or emptiness, he offers us insights into this essential Buddhist teaching. Guy, the teachings on Yogis – those on retreat – often report ‘emptiness’ can be difficult three experiences that indicate a growing for many of us in the West understanding of emptiness: spaciousness, to grasp. What did the Buddha absence of a tangible self, and insub- mean by this term? stantiality. You might say that as the truth of emptiness dawns, the fullness of life People frequently imagine ‘emptiness’ as comes into awareness. blankness, where nothing happens in the mind, where there’s just a big vacancy. Can you describe each of these? That’s not what the Buddha was pointing to with this term. When we begin to meditate, we may feel that thoughts are occurring all the time. As we practice, we start to come in After a while, as our bodies and minds contact with emptiness in different ways. settle, we become aware of small spaces (continued on page 2) THE NEWSLETTER OF THE INSIGHT MEDITATION SOCIETY between our thoughts and emotions. nothing hard or fixed in the body at all. As we continue to practice, these gaps Rather, wherever we turn our attention, can expand until we have a sense of the sensations have the nature of vibration, vastness of our own minds, of our own pulsation, impermanence, shifting, consciousness. This vastness then changing, rising, falling. The Buddha becomes a large container for everything pointed to this in a teaching in the that passes through the mind. It also Samyutta Nikaya (the Connected lends increasing calm to the practice and Discourses) called ‘The Mass of Foam.’ to our lives. He said, “If you see a mass of foam The second important element is that of floating on the surface of a river and ‘not self.’ This aspect is at first unusual you look at it closely you’ll see it’s void, and can take a few years for a meditator hollow and insubstantial. In the same to fully understand. way, if you examine the whole world of matter, you’ll see that it’s also void, If we reflect on our lives, we notice hollow and insubstantial, just like this Guy Armstrong the tendency to place an overlay of ‘I’ mass of foam.” or ‘mine’ on all our experiences of the world. Whenever we hear something, As the understanding of insubstantiality or see something, or think something, it is grows, the world can seem softer, less in terms of ownership. Yet as we closely fixed, and not something that we so easily examine reality, as the mind gets quiet, grasp onto. we start to realize for ourselves that there INSIGHT is no evidence for this ‘I’ or ‘mine.’ As the Does the concept of NEWSLETTER Buddha said, “In the seen, let there be insubstantiality apply to A twice-yearly publication of the Insight just what is seen; in the heard, let there our emotions as well as Meditation Society, a tax-exempt nonprofit be just what is heard.” our physical senses? organization whose mission is to provide a spiritual refuge for those wishing to free themselves from the suffering of mind and Sometimes there can be so much silence, Absolutely. When meditators start to see heart. IMS offers meditation retreats and so much spaciousness in a moment that their emotions in terms of the three practices, in the Theravada Buddhist tradition, we can actually feel a little adrift. The ‘I’ characteristics – that they are always that cultivate our capacity to live in the world with wisdom and compassion, for the benefit has become so weak that we’re not quite changing, that they’re unsatisfactory of all beings. sure we’re still here. Sometimes anxiety because none of them ultimately last, or unsettledness can arise at this point; and that there’s not an owner of any Editor: Gyano Gibson Production: Ahna Fender but it’s a good sign that the usual feeling – then they can view emotions as Cover Photo: Libby Vigeon assumptions of self have shifted. passing clouds. As clouds move across IMS Buddha Photos: Dawn Close, the sky, they coalesce, they persist for a Libby Vigeon & Éowyn Ahlstrom Design: Lux Productions The third aspect of emptiness is the while, and then they break up. We realize quality of reality as being insubstantial that emotions are formed in exactly the Please address correspondence to: and not solid. Usually, the initial place same way. This is the realization of the IMS, 1230 Pleasant St. we can see this is in relation to our emptiness of emotions, which can unhook Barre, MA 01005, USA Phone: (978) 355-4378 own body. When we first meditate, we us from taking them quite so seriously. Email: [email protected] feel the body is really dense, like a rock We let them arise, form and pass away Website: www.dharma.org or a piece of wood. But as we investigate within the spaciousness of understanding. Printed in Canada on recycled further and look directly at the experi- This is one of the biggest areas of paper using soy-based inks ence of bodily sensation, we find there’s freedom for meditators. Page 2 www.dharma.org Fall • W i n t e r 2005 / 2006 When the Buddha speaks of In doing our usual mindfulness practice, practice abiding in emptiness the ‘empty of self’, doesn’t that we might note “hearing,” “seeing,” “in” more we experience awakened imply nihilism? for an in-breath, “sensing,” “thinking,” qualities of heart and mind – peace, and so on for the various arisings at the contentment, joy, lovingkindness and Well, the Buddha was actually accused in sense doors. Every time we make a note wisdom. You could say these are the his lifetime of being nihilistic. One time like that, we might try adding the fruits of emptiness. he replied to that question by saying, comment, “Not I, not mine.” Practicing “I don’t teach the annihilation of an like this, over and over, inclines the mind How has this aspect of existing being.” While this is absolutely to see things the way they actually are, the teachings inspired your right, it is also a bit cryptic and invites and to cease the extra habit of claiming own practice? reflection. It’s important to understand experience as self or belonging to self. that, with insight, what goes out of our Emptiness has been a frequent theme experience is a false and limiting sense of At the time of the Buddha, for my own reflection and study. On a who we are that confines and constricts were these teachings on study retreat in my home a few years our full functioning. Many yogis say that emptiness unusual? ago, I read about emptiness every day. when the false sense of self goes, even The concept began to really sink into temporarily, a weight is lifted off their They were very original. The existing my bones. One night I dreamed that I shoulders. So the experience isn’t one of religious world view most in favor was standing in front of a full-length nihilism, but one of relief, greater 2,500 years ago in India was an early mirror, looking at my reflection. I asked happiness and ease. form of Hinduism which posited that my reflection, “Why is emptiness the work of the spiritual path was to important?” The reflection answered, Every meeting with every person is unite the atman, or individual self, with “Because it means that you don’t exist.” experienced more fully. Every time we the brahman, or universal self. The actual At that point I woke up, because it was hear a bird’s song it’s experienced more existence of the individual self was never quite startling. I appreciated the answer, directly. Every taste of food comes across questioned. The Buddha’s presentations though, because it came out of the mirror more clearly. As the Zen master Dogen of the teachings of ‘not self’ were very and not out of my own mouth. put it, “To study the way is to study the radical in his day, and unsettling to many self. To study the self is to forget the self. at the time, just as they are radical and It also pointed to the way of liberation. To forget the self is to be enlightened by can be unsettling today. When the sense of a separate self goes, all things.” the very difficulties of life also dissolve. Since the teachings on emptiness are The mirror’s reply doesn’t mean that I Can you offer some techniques about the very nature of the human heart literally die. Rather it reminds me of a that help cultivate a deeper and mind, they’re just as true today as comment from an old Sri Lankan monk understanding of emptiness? they were in the time of the Buddha; who was asked the secret of his great they are the doorways to liberation.