Shunyata

Hi Friends,

Last night during the Monday Night Meeting, we were talking about a more useful way of understanding a key Buddhist concept, Shunyata.

 

Shunyata is often translated as Emptiness, Nothingness, the Void because It is free of all concepts, experiences, beliefs and positions. It is the Unborn Mother of everything.

In The Heart Sutra, the Buddha says, “ SHIKI SOKU ZEKU, KU SOKU ZE SHIKI.” This means Emptiness IS all phenomenal experience, all phenomenal experience ARE empty. Not two. This realization is a fundamental pillar of Zen Buddhism. In Non-dual Tantra, it is expressed as Shiva/Shakti or Dynamic Stillness.

 

Perhaps a more useful way of recognizing Shunyata is as our Being open, spacious awareness welcoming everything and everybody without fixation.  Everything appears, exists and disappears within open, spacious awareness. Now. The transient nature of all phenomena is fully recognized as appearing and disappearing in awareness.

 

As we rest as Awake Awareness, it is useful to notice and release without judgement any fixations on experience, thought, feeling, beliefs or concepts. When we fixate, we contract into fear and limitation and actually believe our thoughts instead of abiding as open, free  intelligent awareness.

 

It is true that in our daily lives we have to focus and concentrate on many things. We may often feel overwhelmed in our lives. This is perfectly natural. The key is to focus without fixating. And take Mini-Meditation Vacations through-out the day. Just a few minutes practicing a HeartMath technique or resting as open, spacious awareness can completely reset your brain, nervous system and endrocrine system and make all the difference in the world. Life works better when we are relaxed. 

 

Life is shorter than we imagine. It is like a lightening flash on a hot summer’s night. Here. And then gone forever.  Do you want to spend your life struggling with yourself, everything and everybody? Or do you want to let go into the flow and relax into your life as it wants to be lived?

 

“What you seek is seeking you.” – Rumi

 

I look forward to seeing you next Monday!

 

Love always,

 

Tom