Emptiness Brimming with Love

As your bodhisattva practice begins to evolve, you realize that ego-pain can be overcome and destroyed. The source of the destruction is compassion, a bodhisattva approach to yourself. When you practice the Heart Sutra, you chant that there is “no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, and no mind.” But that actually means, “I love my eyes, I love my ears, I love my nose, I love my tongue, I love my body, and I love my mind. I feel sympathetic to all of that.” When you develop that kind of sympathetic attitude, all that ego-pain actually begins to dissolve.

This is Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Needless to say, his is not an ordinary translation of the text. In fact, it’s not a translation at all. It’s an interpretation drawn from Rinpoche’s own understanding and a reflection of the teaching: “emptiness isn’t really empty; it’s filled with love.” But where does this love come from? It comes from seeing things as they are.

The most famous line of the sutra is “form is emptiness; emptiness is form.” But something can’t be empty of nothing; it has to be empty of something. If I drink the juice from a cup, the cup will be empty of juice but it won’t be empty of space or of the 330,000 or so molecules of air in it—molecules which are made of atoms, which contain protons and electrons and neutrons, which together form Fermions, standing alongside Leptons which include electrons, muons, taus, and neutrinos…

Emptiness isn’t a void; it’s a no that’s filled with the infinite potential of yes. It’s a container brimming with possibilities. It’s zero, which both nullifies and multiplies.

We could do a cursory reading of The Heart Sutra and conclude that it’s pessimistic, nihilistic, but it’s not. It’s the expression of everything that can be, because of what it’s not.

So what is form empty of? It’s empty of self, empty of our opinions, empty of our memories and associations. It’s empty of permanence, of all our hardening categories. You are not the fight we had last night. You are not a pacifier for my pain. You are not the parent I didn’t have. You are not the life I want to live. Then who are you? Life flowing, karma moving and changing from moment to moment through this body, this mind. To see that not just our senses but everything that the senses perceive—which is everything in the world—is not fixed, but flows… that’s love.

The Heart Sutra is telling us that when we don’t get hung up on what we think we see—when we don’t get hung up on anything—then we can see what is actually there and relate to what’s there.

In the Tibetan version of the Heart Sutra, Shariputra asks Avalokiteshvara, “How should a son or daughter of noble family engage in the practice of the profound perfection of wisdom?” And Avalokiteshvara says, “They should see insightfully, correctly, and repeatedly.” They should see that realizing emptiness makes us kind: it allows us to be who we are, and others to be as they are, without our demands and expectations, without our ideas and misconceptions. Seeing clearly allows me to be me, and you to be you—truly. What could be more loving than that?

We can therefore say that suffering is destroyed with wisdom (which is seeing things as they are), or we can say that it’s destroyed with love (which is also seeing things as they are). The challenge, of course, is to see clearly. But here too, the Heart Sutra points out the path.

So in emptiness there is no form; no sensation, conception, discrimination, awareness; no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind; no color, sound, smell, taste, touch, phenomena; no realm of sight, no realm of consciousness; no ignorance and no end to ignorance, no old age and death and no end to old age and death, no suffering, no cause of suffering, no extinguishing, no path, no wisdom, and no gain. No gain and thus the bodhisattva lives Prajna Paramita, with no hindrance in the mind; no hindrance, therefore no fear.

Avalokiteshvara saw that everything is impermanent, unsatisfactory, and empty of self. Buddhism’s Three Seals. Lasting peace can therefore only be found in nirvana (the Fourth Seal)—far beyond deluded thoughts, as the sutra says. But nirvana doesn’t exclude those deluded thoughts, either. It swallows them right up. We just have to see that.

The Heart Sutra is effectively saying: you won’t find lasting happiness in the eye, the ear, the nose (in the things that your senses perceive). You won’t find it in birth or in health, in thought or feeling. It doesn’t say, but it implies: you won’t find it in money or fame; you won’t find it in anything that doesn’t last. Where can you find it? Dive deeply into prajnaparamita, Avalokiteshvara says. That’s where you’ll find it. Sit still and see that there is something that lasts.

Every single one of us is capable of realizing the truth of emptiness, the truth of love, the truth of wisdom—realizing a little, or realizing a lot, it doesn’t matter. What matters is wanting to see, not as we are, but as it is.

*Photo by Alexandr Marynkin