Emptiness

Hi, James.

This is difficult to talk about and I also want to avoid hubris, but yes, I have had experiences with this. I’ve actually had a certain thing happen to my awareness since I was very young that I’ve recently (in the past 10 years or so) realized was an experience of the mindstream. I’ve found a way to work with this that leads to emptiness. Bruce’s Tao Te Ching meditation for chapter 5 works as well. Are you in that group?

best,
matthew

Matthew, I’m not in that group. I’d like to hear more. I think I’m working with it as well. Feel free to email me directly. I’d be curious to compare experiences. It is difficult to know if I’m really dealing with emptiness or just another level of stillness.

Jim

Here’s my email address: matthewjnicholl@mac.com

please write. I’d like to take this out of the forum.

The formless absorption, or that one since i may have had others before it, was basically an “infinite space” “infinite mind” if I remember my buddhist jhana’s correctly. My experience conformed to descriptions that I’ve read of such things, but basically it was like your mind emptied, stilled, expanded, emptied, etc. There was definitely the sense of “one mind pervading everything”, but that mind was formless.

The other experiences did not have expansion, at least not in that way, but were much more “dropping” and then simply resting in that formless attributeless still, whose “pregnant” nature was quite obvious [Ken Wilber uses that term in this context and I find it very well chosen]. You could feel it as a “ground of being”, but it didn’t have the direct “expansiveness” of the jhana above, it didn’t need to. Later I would read the phrase “going home and resting quietly” for a certain type of chinese meditation [was it chan or taoist??? I think it was Taoist maybe that 16th century really famous guy Thomas Cleary has translated from quite a bit?], and that is exactly what it felt like. Normally we experience all sorts of “pushes and pulls”, attractions and aversions, actions and reactions, “stuff” in our mindstream. In this experience all of that was gone. It was like sitting in a still point in the sense of being “undeflected”, before mind arises and before the “stuff” of the mind arises or moves. It sure as hell felt like every description I’ve ever read of such things, but I can’t say that there wasn’t further I could potentially “drop” or “let go.” With that said, as Ken Wilber points out, “beyond the causal lies the non-dual”, which in effect makes two kinds of “enlightenment”. Classical “cessation”/”extinction”/formless/”8th oxherding pic”, and your dzogchen/mahamudra/one taste/”10th oxherding pic”/complete reality/ “form and formless co-emerging” stuff, for example in the heart sutra or diamond sutra or ashtavakra gita.

I really like Ken Wilbers description of stuff. Any book where he talks in more detail about causal level stuff will have helpful descriptions [SES, the mini-SES book whatever its title was, others] but my persdonal favorite was definitely his “One Taste” journal.

I agree with almost everything that has been said above. I feel like it might help clarify or contextualize some things if I say a little more though.

About Ken Wilber, I give him worlds of credit for being more open and descriptive and comprehensible than probably anybody else out there I know of, and its very clear [for example in one taste], thats he is speaking from personal experience and “not just an intellectual making theories.” He points out over and over and over again, in most or all of his books, that he is speaking from personal experience. I can not think of a single individual that I have ever encountered who is more open about their experiences, and even if you do find people who are open it can often be hard to either describe and/or translate things and that another area where I give Ken significant kudos. He does often talk in rather Buddhist-related terms, and is very clear about having prior zen and tibetan buddhist practice, particularly dzogchen/mahamudra. In my opinion both the buddhists and the yoga/vedantins have been much more voluminous in their written descriptions of high meditative states than have the Taoists. What is an easier “entry point” or what is more “comprehensible” will vary for each person.

It’s obviously always difficult to talk about the “beyond the rational” in rational terms, but if you want most people to even have any chance of understanding you your simply going to have to. That problem has been around for more or less ever.

I think its hard to find taoism that isn’t mixed with buddhism, especially anything post ~1000CE. I can think of only one taoist teacher that I know of who isn’t knowledgeable or experienced about buddhism. Bruce does, in my opinion, a good job of trying to teach taoism as taoism without too much buddhist terminology or influence, but I don’t think he 100% pulls it off. He does a much better job than almost anyone else I’ve seen though.

I have significant background in other things, including lots of meditative samadhi experience. I would not find bagua until several years later in my life, and while bagua has done various chi and subtle anatomy things for me it has never done anything “samadhi-like” for me. Not yet anyways.

-my bagua, and tai chi and hsing-i, experience are pretty limited and admittedly quite basic. I remember pointing that out multiple times while training with Lee Burkins last spring. We did have some very in depth conversation about different types of buddhism, comparison with taoism, talk about formlessness and emptiness, etc.

I’ve probably diverged from the primary topic at hand, but wanted to at least somewhat put some context to where I was coming from. Like I said, my neijiaquan background is limited and low level, but I have significant experience in other things. A question was asked, to the best of my awareness I do have experience with said topic. For one curious what emptiness is like, there are plenty of descriptions already out there, whether in zen/chan, mahayana/vajrayana, historical taoism, historical taoism/buddhism hybrid, yoga, advaita vedanta, Ken Wilber, and other places as well.

What I’ve said has come from my own personal experience. That experience does not derive from bagua or neijia practice. For one looking for how other people have tried to describe emptiness I have listed a number of areas to start looking at. Others can find such information interesting or discard it at their own choice.

Not everyone here is straight up Taoist only. I’m definitely not. My hope is that by writing these things maybe other people could find things that would interest or help them.

“Emptiness” is an exhilarating experience.
And bagua is an activity that explores emptiness.

Caveat: Even the best metaphors always miss the target.
As in exploring Taoism, as soon as you label it, it disappears.

In my experience, emptiness is balancing “Effort” and “Non-effort.”

I like to explore emptiness with bagua’s Four-part Stepping.
Part four is the clearest example.

1. One foot forward–sort of like dropping off the body and mind of the Self as well as the body and mind of the Other.
2. shift weight onto front foot–takes balance
3. all the weight on the front foot–EFFORT!!!
I use an inhalation to drum Qi downward into the back heel.
4. Here’s Emptiness. From the earth rebounds emptiness from the earth’s energy vortex. Empty Qi cascades up the unweighted leg, to the lower dantien, up the spine then out the shoulder then elbow then wrist then palm then fingers–and the whole bodymind is filled with emptiness. noneffort …
Back foot effortlessly swings forward, remaining suspended in air.

Cool, eh?

Buddhists define emptiness in the context of the doctrine of dependent origination–that is, nothing is independent, therefore any one “thing” is “empty.”
In terms of “cause and effect” every “effect” has a “cause.”

After 60 years of trying to relive an early childhood experience of emptiness (almost died) I finally re-experienced the experience through decades of prayer, meditation, taiji, acupressure and recently bagua.
Of course, it was there all all along. But you’ve got to practice to experience it.

Gayasata asked his teacher Samghanandi about the phenomenon of the tinkle of a bell.
What tinkles? the bell, the air, or the mind?
They agreed that neither the bell nor the air tinkles
(doctrine of dependent origination–both are empty.)
So in Zen it is generally agreed that it is the mind that tinkles.
(In a new book, “Super Brain,” Deepak Chopra and neuroscientist Dr. Rudy Tanzi, also agree that the “mind” nurtures the brain.)

Dogen (13th century Zen monk) builds on this.
In his view it is the tinkle of the air, the tinkle of the bell, the tinkle of the stirring air, the tinkle of tinkle–each abiding in its own position as an expression and activity of EMPTINESS. But furthermore, to Dogen the “mind” is not only the totality of the psycho-physical world, but also “something” more.

Consider “zero,” the null-set in mathematics.
Roman numerals: no zero, no power, just I, II, III, IV, V
Arabic system: zero leads to calculus, calculus to the moon and beyond.

Same with ‘EMPTINESS:”
it is the absence of everything that leads to the, “something,” the power of the FULLNESS of EMPTINESS.

Anybody see this latest bruce interview on taichimaster.com, his personal blog website?

Lots of interesting stuff there. I think for me what was most interesting was watching him jump between taoism with its practices and terminology over to zen, tibetan buddhism, tantric and kundalini yoga, and maybe some other stuff too. He really made a number of references and comparisons to tibetan stuff, for example he just compared taoist stuff to dzogchen/mahamudra and mentioned how he felt they were “too similar” to be coincidental and must have come from the same place.

He talked about emptiness some, though I think he spent more time avoiding talking about it, at least in more depth or explanation. Anyways, lots of interesting stuff!