Let’s look at this word “emptiness.” We can be forgiven for thinking it means nothingness. It sounds like it! But we’ve got to be very clear – it’s not saying that.
That’s why we have to understand it in the context of the two truths: conventional and ultimate.
In the Heart Sutra, Buddha tells us this very nicely – it’s very delicious, really. Buddha’s in meditation, blissing out on emptiness, and he channels his thoughts into the minds of his disciples, and they have this conversation. Shariputra asks a question: “How should any son of the lineage train who wishes to practice the activity of the profound perfection of wisdom?” And Avalokiteshvara gives the answer – he’s in human form, a tenth-level bodhisattva – and the rest of the words are from Avalokiteshvara’s mouth, but they’re Buddha’s teachings, right?
There’s this list of groups of phenomena according to the Buddha’s worldview: five aggregates, the Four Noble Truths, the eighteen constituents – all these bits and pieces that make up the Buddhist worldview – and that we’re to “correctly and repeatedly” analyze all of them to realize that they’re empty, you know – something like that.
At the beginning he uses the example of the first of the five aggregates: form. Buddha gave this teaching on what makes up a person: he bundles us into five categories.
First is form, which is the physical: he says, “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Form is nothing other than emptiness and emptiness is nothing other than form.” Something like that. In other words, where you have form, right there you have the absence of inherent form. They come together.
Right now we have conventional and we have ultimate, and we see them as opposite: we see them as completely opposite, you know? He’s telling us in the Heart Sutra that they’re not opposite. What he’s telling us is form – a conventional thing called a “form” – is empty of inherent form. The thing called “form” lacks a characteristic of being inherent form.
Right there on that form, there is a characteristic – right there – of “absence of inherent form.” So form is empty.
Emptiness is one thing and form is another. Emptiness of inherent form is a characteristic that exists: it exists, it can be cognized by the mind. Then you have to ask yourself, well, where does absence of inherent form exist? Well, not in the sky: “Oh, there’s no inherent form.” Right there on the form is where “absence of inherent form” exists. Right there!
You can’t have form, conventional, without “empty of inherent form,” ultimate. This is bringing the two truths together.
When you start to hear the two truths – conventional truth and ultimate truth – instead of going in berserk opposite directions, you bring them towards the middle way. Then you’re moving in the right direction, and finally, as a buddha, these two will appear to you simultaneously: that’s the final nonduality, you know?
You’re on the right track if every time you hear conventional, you hear, “Ha ha, that means it’s empty of existing from its own side.” And every time you hear “empty of existing from its own side,” you hear, “Ha ha, that means it exists conventionally.” Then you’re on the right track.
Otherwise, you’re berserk, living off in la-la land. Because right now when we hear empty, we throw the baby out with the bathwater, become nihilistic: “Oh, there’s nothing there, I might as well kill myself.” Or as soon as we hear there is a conventional I, we go, “Oh, thank God, there is something” – grasp.
How can you have emptiness of tea without there being a cup that lacks tea inside it, you know? As Lama Zopa would say, that’s an ordinary emptiness. Where does emptiness of tea exist? In my cup. Not, “Oh, there’s no tea!” kind of vaguely. You’ve got to pin it down. Everything that exists can be pointed to!
The absence of something has to exist somewhere. Take a simple example like your bank account, you know, that’s easy. There is your bank account. You go to the account expecting five thousand dollars, and instead you observe there’s actually zero dollars there.
Now, what will appear to your mind? You’ll get a huge shock and you will notice the absence of your precious five thousand dollars. Where is that absence of five thousand dollars existing? Again, not in the sky, you know: “Oh, there’s no five thousand dollars.” The absence of five thousand dollars exists in your bank account, precisely where you thought the five thousand dollars would be.
So where will you find the emptiness of I? Exactly where you thought the I was: not in the chair, not in the toilet, not in the sky. Here! Emptiness of I – of inherent I – exists right here on the aggregates.
The two truths come together, can’t have one without the other. That’s ridiculous!