EMPTINESS TO THE CORE You Are responsible For Your Relationship With Others ~ AJAHN BRAHM

EMPTINESS TO THE CORE
You Are responsible For Your Relationship With Others
~ AJAHN BRAHM

In the centre of all things is a great space of nothingness, of emptiness. 

All around are these fabrications (Sankharas), and it's only these fabrications which surround this empty core of nothingness. It's these fabrications that we take to be real, which we take to be "me", which we take to be "mine", and which we take to be a "self". All of these things are what delude us. It's hard to go that deep inside the mind. There comes a time when we almost get to the innermost petal - but not the very innermost - and we think that's good enough. As we go deeper into that lotus, the petals are more and more golden, beautiful and brilliant. They are delightful, those innermost petals. 

Sometimes we come to the most beautiful petal, and we think, "That's it. This must be it! 

It's so beautiful, so wonderful, so inspiring. 

This must be the Dhamma!"

However, it's only in the emptiness, in the nothingness, that there can be an end. Ajahn Chah, my teacher, always liked to find the end of things, not things which create more problems and more things to do, but that which stops everything, which finishes the work, and which ends the burden. 

This is when a person becomes enlightened. 

Birth is destroyed (Khina Jati). The Holy Life has been lived (Vusitam Brahmacariyam). No more of all this (Naparamitthattayati).

Haven't you had enough of all this yet? Those of you who have had lots of suffering in the rains retreat, join the club. This is suffering. 

All we are trying to do is to find out that which ends all that suffering and finishes this Holy Life business. We want to end it and to see that the core of nothingness is where it is ended. 

Imagine what that might be like when you know, because you've seen to the very depth of all things, that there's nothing there. That which you've taken to be consciousness, that which knows, you find that it's completely empty.

The Buddha called the appearance of something solid a magician's trick. 

The "magician" makes you think that there is something solid in this consciousness [SN,22,95]. But it is just things arising and passing away. 

That's all there is! That which knows is an empty process. 

Because it is empty it can stop. If there were something there, knowing would be endless. 

There is a basic law of physics called the "law of the conservation of energy". Energy can mutate from one type to another as it passes through the whole of Samsara. But if there is nothing there, if consciousness is empty of substance, only then can it stop.

To see that core of consciousness to be empty is liberating. It means that whether you know happiness or you know suffering, whether you know confusion or you know clarity, you realize that this is just empty consciousness playing a game with you, making you think that this is real. 

When you've actually seen the emptiness of consciousness, it's like finally seeing the television set disappear on which all of this drama of life is carried out.

As I mentioned earlier, I like to use the simile of televisions. Imagine six television sets in line - one is called "sight", one is called "hearing", one is called "smell", one is called "taste", one is called "touch", and the last is called "mind". Only one of these televisions is on at a time - just one, then another and another, flicking into existence and then out. 

It's easy to see the content on the screens and see the content rise and fall, but the way to become Enlightened is not only to see the content on the screen rise and fall, but to see the whole television set come into existence and then completely disappear.

One of the great advantages of attaining Jhanas is that as soon as you've got into a Jhana five "television sets" have completely vanished - not just popped out of existence for a moment, but popped out of existence for many hours. 

It's not as if there's nothing on the screen; there's no screen any more! 

There is no sight. There is no sound. 

There's not even any hearing. 

There's no smell. There's no taste. 

There's no touch. This is because there's no body when you're in Jhana. 

It is pure mental consciousness. 

That's why you can sit for long periods of time. The knees don't ache; the back doesn't ache; the nose doesn't itch because it's got hayfever. 

You've completely left the world.

Five "television sets" disappear, and you've just got this mind left. Be aware though that you can get stuck there. Some people with weak wisdom will think, "That's it - the mind is the ultimate 'television set' that doesn't disappear." However you can either use inference, or you can take those Jhanas deeper, and you can see parts of that last "television set" get hacked away. From First Jhana to Second Jhana you hack away at half the "television set", initial and sustained application of mind (Vitakka and Vicara). 

From Second to Third to Fourth Jhana you hack away a heap more of that "television set". 

You hack away at more of the "television set" and you get into the Immaterial Absorptions (Arupa Jhanas). You keep hacking away until you get to cessation (Nirodha Samapatti), when the whole of that last "television set" is gone. 

Consciousness has disappeared. That which knows has vanished. You come out of that experience, and there is no way that you can miss the meaning. 

That which we thought to be real, pervasive and stable, that which knows is a mirage!

Sometimes people get afraid when I talk like this, and that's to be expected because I'm challenging the very heart of who they think they are. 

Challenging it to its very roots. But imagine for a while what it would be like to have no self. To have no self means that all of this happiness and suffering, this pain and pleasure, this delight and frustration which arises in the mind will not worry you any more. 

Why would it concern us when there is no one there who owns this pain in the body or pleasure in the body? All the frustration, the success or the failure, why would we worry about it? 

You know these are just things which rise and fall. They're not yours. 

There's no one to blame, and there's no one to praise. Praise and blame are worldly phenomena (Dhammas). The Buddha said they don't belong to anybody. They just belong to nature.

- Extract from:

The Ending of Things

A Discourse on “Non-Self”

(  An edited version of the last talk of the 1999 Rains Retreat at Bodhinyana   Monastery, Western Australia.)

http://www.dhammatalks.net/Books3/Ajahn_Brahm_The_Ending_of_Things.htm