Emptiness Is Not the Absence of Thought
El Vacío No Es la Ausencia de Pensamiento
A clarification on what "empty" truly means: not a stopping of the mind, but a seeing through the sense that things are solid and real.
Emptiness Is Not the Absence of Thought
A clarification on what "empty" truly means: not a stopping of the mind, but a seeing through the sense that things are solid and real.
When I speak of emptiness, I am not talking about the mind stopping or becoming empty of concepts. I am talking about something different. The sense that we have, the feeling that there are solid "things" out there, is itself an interpretation. It is a form of perception.
Things themselves are concepts
This is what I mean: things are also concepts and ideas. But you can have concepts and ideas and know that they are empty as well. So emptiness does not mean being empty of concepts and ideas. Nothing needs to go. Nothing needs to change. It is a seeing through.
Concepts and ideas are like waves in the ocean. They are not a problem. The mind does not have to stop. When I describe an event where it does stop, I am simply saying it can happen, and then things can become really obvious. But it is not a requirement.
Realization comes before the experience
In fact, I think the mind stops once as a consequence of seeing through, so the seeing comes first. My position is that the event of realization, the experience, happens after the realization itself. And then people are chasing and searching for an experience that is actually the consequence of a realization.