"Even in our imperfect practice enlightenment is there," says Suzuki Roshi,"We just don’t know it." In our practice the most important thing is to realize that we have buddhanature. Intellectually we may know this, but it is rather difficult to accept. Our everyday life is in the realm of good and bad, the realm of duality, while buddhanature is found in the realm of the [...]
Emptiness and Existence
His Holiness the Dalai Lama takes us step by step through the famed logic of Madhyamika, the Middle Way that defeats all extreme views of reality. To generate the type of love and compassion that motivates you to seek buddhahood, not for yourself but for the sake of others, first you must confront suffering by identifying its types. This is the first noble truth. From the time [...]
Does No-Thought Mean No Thought?
Working with thoughts is a central practice in Buddhism. But what does that mean exactly? Are we trying to stop thoughts or not? Are there thoughts after enlightenment? Wing-shing Chan on how Chan Buddhism addresses these questions. In a famous Chan lineage story we hear that the Fifth Patriarch’s leading student, Shen Hsiu, composed a verse that equated practice with [...]
The Doors of Liberation
No self, no form, no goal: Thich Nhat Hanh on the truth we’re distracting ourselves from. Dualistic notions, such as birth and death, being and nonbeing, sameness and otherness, coming and going, are the foundation of all afflictions. Meditating on the three doors of liberation helps us throw away these notions. The three doors of liberation, which are taught in every [...]
What is emptiness?
A Zen master might whack you with his stick for asking such a question, never mind what he’d do to us for trying to answer it. Nonetheless, here goes. Emptiness is the central insight of Buddhism, and what makes it unique among religions. According to Buddhism, neither we, nor other beings, nor any phenomenon in the universe, has a permanent, separate, and independent core, [...]
The Daughter I Love
Photo by Sharon Holoviak. With the help of Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings on emptiness, Stephen Holoviak realizes that to fully know and accept his autistic daughter he must let go of his hopes and dreams for her. Our daughter, now thirty, is autistic, nonverbal, and has pervasive communication issues. She was an infant when diagnosed in 1981. Back then there was little [...]
Understanding Emptiness & Interdependence
Emptiness and interdependence—they’re more than concepts; they’re key to realizing real-world benefits in our lives. His Holiness The Karmapa helps us put our wisdom into practice. How do you relate to this infinite ground of possibility that your life is built on? How can you create a meaningful life within whatever shifting circumstances you find yourself? Buddhist [...]
The Fullness of Emptiness
Emptiness is not something to be afraid of, says Thich Nhat Hanh. The Heart Sutra teaches us that form may be empty of self but it’s full of everything else. If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The [...]
Love and Emptiness
The first realization on the Buddhist path is our own emptiness—we look at the self and find nothing permanent. The next step is the egolessness of other, says Sakyong Mipham, and the way we discover it, interestingly, is through love and compassion. What is buddhahood? It is the attaining of egolessness. But what are we realizing the egolessness of? According to the [...]
Like Oil and Water
There is a quality of pure awareness that is not fazed by fleeting thoughts, emotions, or sense impressions, explain Ajahn Amaro and Ajahn Pasanno. Even when they are together, pure awareness and the conditioned realm are always separate. Enlightenment, liberation, depends on the recognition of the radical separateness of awareness—“the one who knows” as Ajahn Chah would [...]