The main body of the yoga method

Emptiness meditation

OM SVABHAVA SHUDDHA SARVA DHARMA SVABHAVA SHUDDHO HAM

I and all universally existent phenomena are recognized as non-duality.

(While reciting this mantra, contemplate on the non-dual nature of all phenomena, including yourself. Meditate upon the emptiness of inherent existence; then from the space of this emptiness arise as follows.)

The first thing in the actual yoga method is the shunyata meditation and it starts with the shunyata mantra in Sanskrit, OM SVABHAVA...²²

OM means magnificent, unsurpassed quality
SVABHAVA means nature
SHUDDHA means fundamental purity
SARVA means all dharma means phenomena—all existent phenomena
SVABHAVA SHUDDHO again means fundamentally pure nature
HAM means I am

That’s very simple. Don’t worry. The meaning of this mantra is very important.²³

Our normal view of others and ourselves is mistaken, so this mantra is trying to set us straight. The Western scientific attitude in particular seems to have a very low opinion of what it means to be human. That’s why they can so easily create something like the neutron bomb, which destroys people while leaving buildings intact. The message of the neutron bomb is that the value of property is supreme while that of human beings is nothing. OK, so now I’m definitely going to stop complaining about that!

However, this mantra is important because it talks about the quality of human nature, which we don’t understand at all; our ego’s concepts are artificial. The reason we meditate on shunyata is to become natural, to touch the fundamental reality of our own nature. So the svabhava mantra says that at their deepest nature, all existent phenomena, including ourselves, are inherently pure, not impure as our ego projects.

We’re not talking philosophy or doctrine here; Buddhism does not propound some fabricated doctrine to make people feel better about themselves. This mantra states the way reality exists; it implies that the self-pity image of ourself held by ego is wrong. It’s wrong because the fundamental nature of human beings is pure. We don’t become pure through religious training, practicing pure morality and guarding our precepts carefully; we’re naturally pure, not artificial.

Maitreya said, “Buddha-nature is like gold hidden beneath the earth.” Dirt, rocks and stones are not of the nature of gold; the nature of gold is not dirt. Gold is gold. Similarly, the essence of human nature is precious and not that of disturbing emotions such as ego, hatred, jealousy and so forth.

It’s very important that we recognize this because when we’re overwhelmed by worldly problems we feel that we’re a disaster by nature, that our nature is hopeless, ugly, impure and guilty. That’s how we think whenever we’re under the influence of our weak mind. When we’re clean clear there’s no way such thoughts can arise.

Why is this the case? If our deepest, most profound nature is so pure, how did it get so polluted? It’s because of the artificial concepts of ego. Therefore, the practical thing to do is to investigate how our ego concepts imagine our self and the easiest way to do this is to examine our ego’s moment-to-moment lifestyle—how it holds its preconceived imagination. By doing so we can come to understand how our ego drives our life.

If you’re aware, your own experience will tell you that throughout your life you’ve repeatedly projected a preconceived imagination of yourself, and you can watch that nonsensical history in your mind and discover how ridiculous it is. When you do look at yourself like this you’ll also discover that the way your ego holds its imagination of your self is totally non-existent; it’s only an imaginary projection.

Furthermore, because the West emphasizes physical appearance, the Western ego develops thinking that the essential me is only body and has nothing to do with the mind.

The Buddhist point of view is that there’s no way that the self can exist outside of the aggregates but when you search for it among the aggregates you still can’t find it. No matter how deeply you peer into the cells of your body and examine all your atoms and neutrons, you can never find your self in there. But still, your ego thinks that the self must be in there somewhere.

Does this scare you? We always think, “I am so special, so dear,” but when we search for our precious I we can’t find it anywhere, on the collection of aggregates together or in any part of them divided. There’s no self anywhere. Does this nihilistic idea scare you? It does me!

The Buddha once said something like, “The dharmadhatu has no words and neither subject nor object,” and when this caused a disciple to express fear, he said, “The nature of fear is also dharmadhatu.” What he meant was that fear is also non-dual in nature, so there’s nothing to be afraid of.

Shunyata—ultimate reality—is to be found within all existent phenomena; it’s simply a matter of discovering it. All conventional, relative phenomena are born with non-duality as their nature—they always have been and always will be. We have to understand and recognize that. That means that all phenomena have no self-entity; they are non-self in nature. As I explained before, when we search for a self in phenomena we can’t find one, anywhere, like when we search the aggregates for the I.

For example, Paula exists only in name but our ego doesn’t want to accept that. It wants to find the real Paula, the beautiful Paula, the wonderful Paula, the Paula who exists apart from the artificial name; it can’t accept the Paula that’s merely labeled on her aggregates; it wants more than that. It wants to find the self-existent beautiful Paula, which is totally non-existent. The ego always wants a concrete self. If it can’t rely on a concrete Paula it thinks there’s nothing there; if it can’t grasp a concrete Paula it feels that Paula’s non-existent.

You’ve heard shunyata translated as emptiness. What does this “empty” refer to? Normally it means if a glass is full of water and you tip it out, the glass is now empty. In Buddhist philosophy, what phenomena are empty of is self-existence, existence from their own side. There’s no self-entity contained anywhere in or around Paula—that’s what she’s empty of. Her physical body is the container of Paula, but still her ego holds the self-notion of Paula. That is what’s non-existent; that’s what she’s empty of.

Anyway, I’m not sure that the English word “emptiness” is the best way to translate shunyata because it gives the impression of loneliness: “My life is empty.” Also, through misunderstanding the concept, many early Western professors concluded that Nagarjuna’s philosophy was nihilistic, which is a wrong conception.

So now, a very simple, practical approach to understanding shunyata, to realizing the non-self-existent I, is first to just mindfully investigate how your ego holds the self-notion of your I, your self. That’s the first thing to seek. Then, when at a certain point you discover that you’re holding something heavy, solid, truly existent within you, a heavy concrete blanket, when through investigation you discover these hallucinated, nonsensical concepts, at the conclusion of this observation you can experience shunyata, non-conceptualization—let go and contemplate that.

In the superficial view of your ego, your self, or I, is something solid within either your body or your consciousness, but when you use wisdom and intensive awareness to investigate how your ego holds that self somewhere within your body or mind, you discover that there’s no such solid, independent self anywhere. Contemplate on that discovery by remaining mindfully on the conclusion you have just reached and simply let go into that. That’s the way to meditate.

Think of TV advertisements. First there’s a loud, colorful commotion to get your attention, which then disappears as quickly as it came. The ego’s a lot like that. First it puts on a big show, makes a big mess—the self-existent I is this big thing in the mind, at the heart or somewhere— but when you investigate, it too disappears.

Once when Lama Tsongkhapa was giving a teaching on emptiness one of his disciples, himself a great yogi, suddenly gasped and grabbed at his lapel because he’d completely lost his self; he thought he’d disappeared and got scared. Of course, his self soon re-appeared. This is a good example of what happens. He completely lost his concrete conception of ego, his entire mental universe disappeared, he thought he was becoming non-existent and to reassure himself that he was still there he grabbed at his shirt. That’s the way to listen to your guru’s teachings. We should all have such experiences in teachings and, because we have the intelligence to examine reality correctly, we can.

So in my opinion, the way to approach meditation on shunyata is to contemplate your own thoughts. Don’t worry whether they’re good or bad; at all times just be mindfully aware of whatever you’re experiencing without engaging in discursive thought about either subject or object. Just contemplate.

Actually, I’m also not sure that “contemplate” is the right word here; you might not get my connotation. Similarly, I don’t like the word “meditation” that much any more either, because these days people misunderstand that, too. However, irrespective of the word, at all times simply be aware of whatever you’re experiencing, good or bad.

You have to be like a lamp. A lamp illuminates its surroundings without thinking, “I’m sending out light, brightening the area.” It doesn’t think anything, does it? It just is. That’s how you contemplate. You’re aware of what’s going on but you don’t react; you don’t think, “Beautiful, good, bad,” or anything. No conventional relationship or conversation. Just be aware. That’s all. Even if bad thoughts come, don’t react; their nature is clear as well. Bad thoughts are beautiful too; don’t feel unpleasant when they arise.

Why do we meditate like this? Because it helps us with our non-conceptual discovery of shunyata, universal reality. How? Because it’s our consciousness that experiences the moment and the nature of our consciousness is always clear; when we’re clear we can see the games our ego plays, how it holds the notion of a self-I. Our ego’s very cunning; if we don’t meditate with intensive awareness it can easily escape our attention but if we apply intensive awareness to mindfulness of our own experience, we can catch our ego’s concepts and realize them as nonsense.

All our experiences are mental energy; all experiences are consciousness. And the nature of consciousness is always natural, always clear, irrespective of how confused we are.

So the emphasis of today’s meditation has to be on shunyata. I want you to research how your ego reacts every minute; you can learn every time it does. When your ego’s not reacting it’s in hiding.

The ego is not something intellectual; it’s totally an innate part of our nature; we were born with it and it’s been with us ever since. Therefore, in order to eradicate the concepts of ego we have to meditate with the clearest and most refined levels of mind; without meditation we can’t completely destroy our ego’s deep roots. Our ego is very intelligent, clever, manipulative and elusive. For that reason, students in Lama Tsongkhapa’s tradition are sometimes told to search the whole world for the self-existent I.

There’s a story that once a lama told one of his young incarnate lama disciples very seriously, “You definitely have a self-existent I; I want you to look for it everywhere…it must be somewhere, on the plains or in the mountains. You have to find it.” So this young lama took his teacher’s advice literally and ran around the whole day looking for his self-existent I. That night he came back to the monastery exhausted and very disappointed at not having found it. We all laughed a lot when we heard that.

Still, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to make looking for the self-existent I a full-time job. Sometimes we’re not serious in our practice; we don’t take it as a job. When you have a job, you do it; you act. That’s good. So your job today is to check out your ego and how it holds preconceived ideas about yourself. Decide, “Yes, today my practice is my job.” That’s the way to make your practice sincere.

Of course, there’s no such thing as physically running about searching for your ego—that’s just a metaphor. Instead, what you have to do is to place intensive awareness on the energy of your own experience, to continuously keep your mind on whatever you’re experiencing, to remember it constantly. When you get distracted, practice mindfulness of breathing; when that clears your mind, go back to awareness of experience.

Q: I find it difficult to search for the I in all the parts of my body because you’ve already said we won’t find it.

Lama: Well, I gave you merely the intellectual answer; now you have to experience it. Actually, this is an important question. That’s why the Gelug tradition has its students running about everywhere looking for the self-existent I. When I first heard this I thought they were just playing games but then I checked further; they’re not stupid. You have to get your answers through experience, don’t you? It’s not an intellectual thing.

Then I felt grateful; this is serious, not hypocritical. Getting introduced to the non-self-existent I directly in this way makes it a very powerful experience. That’s why I told you yesterday that during this meditation course we’re more interested in experience than theory. In that way we help each other. That’s the main point.

So, when you’ve had the experience of not finding the self-existent I, whenever your ego reacts emotionally you can apply that experience to everyday life. That’s the way you become buddha.

Q: What’s the relationship between the individual mindstream, which always exists, and the self-existent I, which does not exist at all?

Lama: There’s no self-existent continuity of consciousness whatsoever, just as there’s no self-existent I. Neither is there any self-existent God, Buddha or Dharma. That’s the beauty of Lord Buddha’s teaching. There’s no exception, like, Buddha is self-existent but everything else is not. Lord Buddha himself said that sort of talk is rubbish. All phenomena in the universe are one in the total unity of non-duality. That’s what we mean when we say that samsara and nirvana are the same thing. This is the beauty of Lord Buddha’s psychology—its main concern is for the suffering sentient beings who hold onto the extreme of the self-existent I, thinking, “These [self-existent] six paramitas are fantastic! God is fantastic!” Lord Buddha says such thoughts are rubbish, symptoms of a sick mind.

In other words, Lord Buddha negated all self-existence; in his Perfection of Wisdom sutras he said that there’s nothing that’s self-existent— samsara, nirvana, enlightenment…anything. It’s not possible. That’s why his teachings are so profound, so universal. There’s no emphasis on something special; reality is completely universal. Lord Buddha wanted people to be perfectly healthy so he didn’t want any partial, self-existent object appearing to the human mind.

However, from the moment of conception, our relative mind and our ego’s view have continued, changing, changing, changing—just not in a self-existent way.

Q: Which part of the mind is it that recognizes or sees non-duality?

Lama: Awareness—which is always with you, always there. It’s simply a matter of developing it. For example, you have love and compassion within you right now but you need to make them bigger and better. So when we practice Buddhism it’s not as if we’re trying to acquire something that we don’t already have. Something is there; we believe that humans do have love, compassion and wisdom. It’s simply a question of developing them to their ultimate potential.

 Notes

²² See Appendix 1 for another Lama Yeshe teaching on this mantra and a short mediation on emptiness. [Return to text]

²³ See also Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings from the Vajrasattva Retreat, pp. 432–4 for further explanation of this mantra. And in Rinpoche’s tsa tsa commentary he says, “This is the dharmakaya meditation. Meditate that your own mind is the actual result-time dharmakaya of the deity you practice. If it is Maitreya, think: “This is my actual result-time Maitreya holy mind, the dharmakaya.” This is the basic meditation according to the meaning of this mantra. Details of this meditation can be explained only after you have received a maha-anuttara initiation. There are three basic meditations: dharmakaya, sambhogakaya and nirmanakaya. This one is dharmakaya.”  [Return to text]