Understanding emptiness
Dear Volker, good morning!
This is the most complex subject we can have to get in.
Understanding emptiness for us, Buddhists, is the gateway to achieve enlightenment.
Emptiness is not nothing, just the opposite, is everything in a subtle way with a subtle mind. We have many 3 levels of awarenesses, gross, subtle and very subtle.
We can perceive emptiness only when we can have an experience of our subtle mind, meantime everything will be only intelectual understanding of emptiness and a wrong view of all phenomena. We need to meditate, there is not another way.
Self-existence is not nothing. Please forget about nothing. Emptiness is not that. Emptiness is full of life is “the real soup of life”, is the criation, is everything, but again perceived and experienced with a subtle mind.
Is almost like that: experiencing awake state with a dream mind. When we have dreams, bad or good, immediately after we’ve waken up we know for sure, they were just dreams, we do not believe in their self-existence, but we believe we know we have experienced them. But where they come from? I might say they come from our imprints, from the imprints over our minds.
Same it happens in our awake time, everything come from the imprints of our mind, the difference between them we believe these imprints durings the awake time are real, we believe they are inherent existent.
For sure, we have our chakras, these chakras are the place where we have some important energy concentrations, they are essencial for our lifes, but again do they exist from itselves?
What happen to whom doesn’t not believe in chakra?
I am not sure if I’ve understood the picture, because i do not know if the picture you have to add on here, it’s showing me that the enlightenment chakra is outside of our body or it is located on our crow of our head? What do you think?
You have asked what’is going on with us…I can tell you: we are trying our best to attain our true happiness. That is not so simple, so easy, Buddha Shakyamuni spent 12 years on meditation to achieve it, so do not be desapointed if we are going up and down, if we are going on circles… life is a circle of death, intermediate state, birth, growing, ageing, sicking and death again until we attain enlightenment and permanent freedom from all our suffering.
I can ask you, go and get some Geshe-la’s book about this subjetc Clear Light of Bliss, Heart of Wisdom or even Ocean of Nectar. They are complex but i am pretty sure you will can get some imputs.
We are here together, you from Germany I am from Brazil, we have met in 2006 in London, Why? How could it be possible? I am very declined to say: Our Karma, we have lived and developed some commun karma before. Otherwise why can I not have with other the same experience as I am having with you right now?
For sure we are not just pupped or pop in and out to nowhere. We are helping each other…the path is even important as the end.
Love and Kindness (L&K)
Marcelo
