Buddhism and Emptiness - seeing our relationship with the Universe

Some important concepts of Buddhism, which – if you choose – you can meditate on and make a part of your life, are Emptiness, Signlessness and Aimlessness. I have not done any contemplation on Emptiness. This is however a concept and a way of looking at ourselves and at the world that is revolutionary and is basic to Buddhism.

Basically almost all of us regard ourselves as individual beings separate from the rest of existence. This view in universal to the human race and is the cause of many of our problems and shortcomings.

The concept of Emptiness - as explained in Buddhism - questions our belief that we have a separate self and helps us see ourselves in terms of relationships that connect us with the rest of the Universe.

When we say that something is empty, the obvious question then is – empty of what? If we say that a cup is empty what we may really mean is that the cup is empty of water. The cup however is full of air. Therefore to be precise in our meaning we must specify that the cup is empty of water.

Similarly what does the concept of Emptiness as applied to ourselves really mean? It means that we are empty of a separate self.

When we look at a flower and think a little we can perceive that the flower could not have had its existence without the Earth, the Sun, the rain, and the gardener who tends the plant, the fertilizer and the clouds. In a way of speaking the entire Universe has come together to bring forth the flower. The flower could not exist without each and every element of the Universe that has helped bring it into existence. It is in this sense that we say that the flower is empty of a separate self. It is in no way separate from the clouds, the sunshine, the rain and all the other elements in the Universe that have caused it to have its being. As I said earlier this is the concept of Emptiness and it is basic to Buddhism.

But when you or I or anybody else who is not a poet or a thinker or a philosopher looks at a flower we generally do not perceive all these relationships. Our habits of thinking and conceptualizing cut the Universe into pieces in order to name it and classify it and thus make sense out of it. This however is just the way of our looking at the world. Our conscious attention has this characteristic that it can focus on only one very small aspect of the world at a time and it has to ignore everything else. This is however the way we think; this is not the way the Universe really is.

The concept of Emptiness of Buddhism religion forces us to look at the flower in relation to the rest of existence. It forces us to perceive the relationships between the flower and the rest of the Universe. We see that the flower arises out of these relationships; that the flower has no self and no being apart from its relationship to the Earth, the Sun, the rain and so on. And thus we are able to gain a very significant insight. We begin to see the world in terms of relationships that are interdependent. One cannot exist without all the others.

This way of regarding ourselves – as empty of a separate self and as composed of interdependent relationships with the rest of existence – could transform our ways of dealing with the world. For example the environment. We would not be as ready as we are now to pollute the air, the seas, or the rivers and to destroy the forests. This is Buddhism with social relevance as well as being a path to Nirvana.

This outlook would transform our inter-personal relationships also. We would perceive that we need our friends, our relatives, our parents, our enemies and in fact the whole of humanity for our existence and being. We would not have the sense of separation from them or from life. We would realize that we could not exist without these people and we would be more willing to respect their rights, needs and right to live and to be.

As stated earlier, we would feel connected with the whole Universe. And so the feeling of loneliness, which plagues so many people, would vanish. But for this we need to make this teaching of Buddhism a way of life for ourselves - not just any other intellectual concept.

This outlook would transform each and every aspect of our lives. Both our private lives – as individual citizens – and the public lives of politicians, social workers, nations etc would be transformed. Again as I said earlier - Buddhism with social relevance.

The problem is that these insights are not immediately obvious. We have to do a certain amount of meditation and contemplation to have them become real for us. As stated earlier, our way of thinking, of making sense of the world, our way of forming concepts is that we focus on only one aspect of our environment and ignore everything else and we try to understand it in isolation.

However – as any scientist will tell you – blood in a test-tube behaves differently from blood in our bodies. And to understand an object, or a situation or anything at all we must consider its relationship with its environment and with the Universe.

The concepts of Emptiness and Inter-being of Buddhism force us to think in terms of these relationships and we can gain insights and form a more true understanding of ourselves and of the world as compared to our habitual ways of thinking.

To learn more about this please read The Heart of Understanding by Thich Nhat Hanh and do the practices recommended in the book. It is excellent.