Thoughts on Emptiness
Early in the morning, there is so little light, maybe the moon if it's full to half. When I'm up at this early hour, everything is the same color, almost black and white, or more blue and gray. That's how illuminating light is; it allows us to see more information about the world around us. But is it more information? It's just light reflecting off of surfaces and molecules in different ways. Does that really make things different? In the dark, with less light, we are of the same family. There is no distinguishing me from you, or me from the life outside the window, or me from the room I sit in. One important teaching in Zen Buddhism is a very difficult concept to grasp because it's intangible. This is that the relative truth and the absolute truth are both true and happening at the same time. What that means is that our relative reality, the world around us that we see and feel and smell and taste, is truly happening. We can prove it to ourselves by touching it, seeing it, hearing it, tasting it, smelling it, and conceptualizing it. In using our senses, though, we inevitably look at the world around us as outside of myself. It is separate from me because I am using my senses and that object is obviously not inside me or part of me, so therefore there is a distinct difference between me and the world around me. However, the absolute truth in Buddhism is that there is no difference between me and the world around me. Our senses are not a reliable source of information. The truth is what Zen calls "emptiness." No separation between me and you, between me and the world outside the window, between me and the room. In one of my favorite writings translated as The Harmony of Difference and Equality, it says, "In the light there is darkness, but don't take it as darkness. In the dark there is light, but don't see it as light." The light here refers to the relative truth, the world we see around us, and the darkness refers to the absolute truth, that everything is not separate. Each exist in both. Early in the morning, when there is very little light, everything looks the same color. My hands look the same as the tree outside the window. I and the tree are of the same substance. We become distinct with light and my perception. Both realities are true. Even with light, just because my eyes separate me from the tree, I am still of the same substance as the tree. The absolute truth of all of us and everything existing as one, connected underneath all of our perceptions, is the way to universal harmony. If I remember that there is no difference between me and the person I am angry with, maybe I can lessen my anger by empathizing with them, realizing that hurting them is the same as hurting me, and letting go of the anger.