“Here, form
is emptiness and emptiness is form.
Here is no
eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue.
Here is no
birth or decay or death.
Therefore the
Bodhisattva ceases to tremble,
For what
could go wrong?”
(‘To Be and not To
Be’, p.171)
“Ten thousand
times, O Holy One, I have recited your precious words announcing
that form is emptiness. Ten thousand times! But the forms that this
despicable monk comes across are full. Bark encloses solid timber,
right to the heart of the tree. Broken stones turn out to be stone
all through. Wounded men are plainly made of flesh and blood. Even
empty pots are brim-full of air.”
(Ibid.
p.172)
The compassionate Buddha promises to equip Chiao
with his own “specimen form that is plainly empty” that will always
be to hand, with many clues that will point the monk to it, even
though others will not see it. Chiao is understandably overwhelmed
with this enlightening gift, for as a Buddhist monk he would love
to realize that which so many have failed to grasp over the many
centuries since the Buddha had walked the Earth. Moreover, the
Buddha arranges for Chiao’s eyes, ears, tongue and nose to be
amputated, in line with the passage from the Heart Sutra quoted
above. Although reassured that this will be beneficial and not
painful at all, doubts remain in Chiao, in that he cannot
comprehend exactly how his sample emptiness could be or contain
anything without ceasing to be empty. In reply to the monk’s query,
the Buddha reassures him with the following words:
“Only give it
a trial, Chiao, and you’ll find it all makes good sense. Just now
it may sound to you quite impossible, but I promise that you will
be able clearly to see that your own absolutely speckles Void
contains innumerable forms. Or rather that it is those
forms, which are infinite in number and scope and variety. Your own
personal parcel of emptiness, though small enough for you to handle
all over, will be visibly packed with the blazingly colorful,
gigantic, rip-roaring world. And therefore as big, if not bigger,
than that world.”
(Ibid.
p.173)
Here, the Buddha talks of how Nirvana is
realized in the midst of Samsara, and that beyond the
world of opposites they in fact merge into the seamlessness that is
enlightenment. This Void contains all that is experienced, and
because it is void of any separate substance, it is the very
objects and processes that appear in it. On top of all this
excellent news the Buddha reveals that wherever the monk goes he
will be able to see the dissolving of duality whenever he
chooses to observe the facts of the present moment. Chiao, however,
has one more thing that troubles him regarding this matter, which
is that the sutra states that there is no decay or death, and yet
to his dismay he notices that he is made of “very perishable stuff
indeed.” Indeed, the next morning when he awakes, the dream remains
just a dream, and he fails to notice the “specimen form that is
plainly empty” that the Buddha had promised would be his. He
laments this to the novice Tsung who suggests that perhaps Chiao
already possesses the boons offered in the dream, but that he fails
to see them. The latter dismisses this idea as nonsense, preparing
to recite the Heart Sutra for the ten-thousandth-and-first time,
apparently incapable or unwilling of taking heed of the Buddha’s
final words to him the night before:
“Instantly on
waking, everything I have promised shall be yours, on these
conditions. You must really want it, and you must let it in, open
yourself to it, actually look at it and look out of it, instead of
thinking about it and believing in it. In actual fact, it’s already
yours anyway, unconditionally, whether you choose to let it in or
not.”
(Ibid.
p.175)
This charming tale of Douglas Harding’s is
beautiful in its simplicity, which is most suitable when realizing
the simplicity of the message it contains. This message hinges on
the last quotation above, in which the emphasis is put on opening
up to the way it is right now, focusing solely on the emptiness
that lies at the heart of one’s being. But is Chiao correct in his
assumption that this is no more than a pleasant dream, and that
clinging to doctrines and rituals is more likely to lead to
spiritual awakening than simply paying attention? Thanks to Douglas
Harding, we neither have to rely on “thinking about it and
believing in it” or disbelieving in it. We can test the hypothesis
presented in this salient story by using techniques invented and
promoted by a man that I was privileged to have met on several
occasions. He was someone not so much full of himself, but full of
the world, and because of this his words (and ‘experiments’) are
all the more worthy of our attention.
Douglas Harding often used the word ‘experiment’
to describe his style of investigation into what he called “seeing
who I really, really am.” These experiments do not require a
laboratory or tertiary knowledge of the sciences; they do require
an open mind, however, for if conducted in the shadow of long-held
views & opinions, their results may well be misunderstood.
Let’s start with one of the most basic experiments developed by
Douglas, usually referred to, for reasons that will become obvious,
‘the Pointing Experiment’:
Do you get it, dear reader? At heart,
you do not exist; instead there is a void that’s full of the world:
“Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form.” The objects and
creatures, not to mention people, that you encounter exist in the
light of this naked awareness, that itself is not a thing as such,
and was therefore described by Douglas as ‘No-thing.’ Everything
lives in this knowing, which itself is simply capacity for things
and processes to occur in, without any sense of individuality or
separateness. (Of course, unless this awareness is completely
surrendered to, the sense of self will continually be reborn, with
what Douglas referred to as a ding-dong battle between selflessness
& selfishness.) One objection to all this may be that it is
centered on the sense of sight, and anything dependent upon a
particular sense cannot lead to true spiritual freedom. A second
experiment might help to answer this apparently powerful argument:
‘The Listening Experiment’:
Again, as with visual data, does not the nature
of sounds differ to that which hosts them, in that the sounds have
specific qualities, whilst the emptiness only finds form in the
arising of audible things? This silence has the same (lack of)
qualities that we noticed with the pointing experiment; it is the
knowing that accepts all sounds for what they are, neither liking
nor disliking them, but simply being the spaciousness in which they
find expression. (It is the ego that has likes & dislikes, and
that too can be seen to exist in the context of this naked
awareness.) Alongside vision & hearing, the third focus for
these short series of experiments will be thoughts
themselves:
Here, thoughts are seen as so many mental mirages
appearing and disappearing in the quiet space that sees them. It is
emptiness itself, the capacity for things & processes to occur
in, and yet no division can be detected at all – it is the
thoughts that it contains. If emotions are observed in the same
manner, they too can be seen to exist in this dispassionate void,
as can the remaining physical senses of taste, touch, and smell.
All phenomena can be experienced as arising in this formless,
soundless, and thoughtless awareness, that, paradoxically is the
very things that occur in it, as no separation can be found. And,
in this transcendence of one’s self that includes all others,
genuine happiness and compassion can be found. A happiness that is
not the result of certain people’s actions or particular events
taking place, but a quiet bliss that accompanies experience, and a
compassion that is independent of the biases of the personality,
but which goes out to any being in need that is
encountered.
If all this sounds way too good to be true, or
just a bunch of airy-fairy ‘spiritual’ talk, the challenge is to
try it out. Do the experiments described above, taking as much time
as you need to see what they are getting at, and then take that
awareness and apply it to everyday life. Don’t be like Chiao, who
knows every word of the Heart Sutra by heart, but has no inkling of
how to apply its teachings to his life. In doing so, you may find
that ‘Buddha Space’ to which this blog’s title partially refers; at
the very least, you’ll have a new & interesting mindfulness
practice to experiment with. You might even be surprised what you
can achieve without any ‘you’ to get in the way, engrossed in the
realization that “emptiness is form and form is
emptiness.”
'To Be and not To Be,
that is the answer' by Douglas Harding can be obtained from The
Headless Way website, a link to which can be found to the right of
this page.