True Emptiness: A Wesak Meditation

True emptiness is not the denial of feelings, but the womb of compassion, the mother of feelings. Star pollen blossoms from the black hole at the center of a galaxy, so our feelings are rooted in the loam of true emptiness, or Being. To this we can return, nourishing the roots of feeling.

True emptiness does not need to be cultivated by any effort of negation. It is always already here, as the blue sky is always here, a stillness surrounding every cloud, whether it holds a storm or a gentle Spring rain. True emptiness is the total release of every effort to control the mind. Let the mind billow and whirl in vast space, let feelings happen and pass away. Abandoning control is innocence. Innocence is returning. Returning is awareness.

There is a silence not imposed by suppression or authority, releasing the fragrance of true emptiness, and permeating the whole garden of feelings. Without this silence as a measure, how would we know that we feel? True emptiness is the Witness, the one who can say with unshakable clarity, “I know this is love, not mere infatuation. I know this is anger, I have a right to feel it, to taste it, I can embrace it completely, then let it go.” True emptiness sees: “These feelings are energy dancing in consciousness, neither right nor wrong, just waves in the ocean that I Am.”

When asked, "Does the Awakened One have feelings, or has the Awakened One transcended feelings?" the Buddha gave the teaching of the Four Immeasurables. These are the feelings in the heart of a Buddha, rooted in Sunya, true emptiness. The Four Immeasurables are Metta, universal compassion; Karuna, feeling sorrow with all who suffer; Mudita, feeling joy in the joy of others; Upeksha, the silent Witness, mother of the other feelings. For silence is also a feeling, in the ripe core of the heart.

The Buddha's teaching is not esoteric. It is too innocent, too simple, too marvelous to be esoteric. In fact, it is not even a teaching, but the immediate radiant all-pervading emptiness of Love.



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*Wesak is the sacred festival that commemorates both the birth and the enlightenment of the Buddha, occuring at the full moon in May.