The Fullness of Emptiness

"Father, what is the destination of this world-appearance or repetitive existence? When will it come to an end?

When will the delusion of the mind cease? Gaining what shall one attain total satisfaction, seeing what shall one seek naught else?

I see that it is impossible to attain this by means of experience of the worldly pleasures or actions. For, they only aggravate the delusion!

Pray, tell me the means by which I shall rest for ever in supreme peace." 

~Yoga Vashista
 

 Religious intellectuals have presented traditions like Buddhism, with its essential meme of Sunya ("emptiness"), the Neti Neti practice in Indian Vedanta ("not this, not that"), the Via Negativa of the Christian mystics, as negative and even nihilistic philosophies, devoid of any positive joy. This has led to centuries of gloom and renunciation. But the actual taste of emptiness is the most positive experience a human being can have. Emptiness is precious because of what it is, not because of what it isn't. 

Emptiness is absolute bliss. The bliss of emptiness is the direct experience of its boundless, ever-expanding and undivided nature. What is boundless is delicate and soft, having no edges. What ever expands is dynamic. What is undivided is completely full. In contrast, any experience we have in the realm of thought, sensation, emotion, or physical form is bound, perishable, and separate. Hence there is no experience in the material world or in the mind that can rival the bliss of emptiness. 

We can taste the freedom of emptiness without the slightest expenditure of energy, work, or travel from here to there. In fact, by resting in emptiness, we actually gain energy, since emptiness is the source of all that is. This is proven by quantum physics: all energy arises from vibrant fluctuations in the vacuum of empty space. 

So by resting in emptiness, we merge with the ocean of potency at creation's source. We don't need to go anywhere or accomplish anything to taste this bliss, because it is the very nature of awareness before any thought, will or act arises to fill the void with content. Emptiness is who we are before we even have the thought of "I." Emptiness is supreme joy, and this joy permeates all other experiences of form, sensation, or thought, because emptiness is the all-pervading space in which any possible form, sensation, or thought could arise. Emptiness is the no-thing that contains all, without being contained by any of it. Not even the concept of "emptiness" contains true emptiness, for it is not a concept. It is the space beyond thought.

Why then do we keep fleeing from this space, the space of our true nature? Why do we believe we need to accumulate thoughts, feelings, sensations, and material forms when we are already full in our innate emptiness? Our need to accumulate experiences, as if they will make us wiser, or give us more merit, or edify our "soul," is ignorance. There is nothing permanent to accumulate; it all passes through us and dissolves. And there is no "soul" or "I" who could possibly accumulate anything anyway.
 
We think that by experiencing a mountain climb, tasting French cuisine, amassing graduate degrees, rubbing our body against another body, or putting paper in a bank, that we will be happier. Yet none of these phenomena contain any inherent pleasure, and as experiences, they only overshadow the inherent bliss of emptiness. They are disappearing forms, conglomerates of dissolving atoms. The only real happiness already exists as the prior empty space of our own being, before we engage in any of these encounters.

This "I" or "soul" attempts to accumulate experience, moral merit, and wisdom. But the "I" is just a bundle of sensations and memories that we desperately carry around with us. The accumulation of these illusions is not happiness, but weariness. There is nothing to acquire, and nothing to keep it in even if we acquire it. All there is, is a vast expanse of emptiness.

"Emptiness" may sound like death or negation. Yes, it is certainly death for the mind, the "I" that clings and accumulates. But when the "I" abandons its sense of gain, relinquishing even the thought that "I am," then there is a flowering in the void, like the burst of ten million suns out of nothing, into nothing. The death of "I" is energizing and rapturous. There is no deeper joy. 

Here is the paradox, yes, the joke! Our "positive" experience of the senses is actually quite negative, because it binds us to the illusion of a permanent separate soul that must be carried around with all its stories about the world. But the " negative" experience of emptiness is absolutely positive, because it gives the blissful taste of unconditional freedom.

We stuff ourselves with empty pleasure, when the emptiness we already are is the deepest fullness. The fulfillment that we seek is the empty space we were before we filled it with anything.

So why not just be empty, embracing whatever comes without clinging to a single thought, feeling, sensation or material form? We don't even need to renounce anything, since there is nothing there to renounce, and no one here to renounce it. The world is just a mirage arising in the still, clear desert air. And this becomes obvious to anyone who honestly examines their experience of the past week, the past day, the past hour... Where did it go?