Emptiness is in everything around us

We’ve just had several days of teachings on emptiness, and sometimes we have the idea when we think about emptiness that it’s very far away. The ultimate nature of phenomena is far away. Our own natural nature is in some other dimension, completely cut off from where we are now. It’s some kind of absolute reality that’s out there in space, independent of everything else. And we’ve got to get to it.

And when we get to it, we’re going to be sitting there, and there’s still going to be a head and an I inside of our head, and we’ll feel, “Now I’ve realized absolute truth.” We have this kind of image when we’re meditating that this is what’s going to happen. This big I is going to get bliss, and we’re going to go, ‘Oh, now I feel so blissful.” It’s this kind of idea that this is what’s going to happen when we realize emptiness.

But if you listen to the teachings, our idea doesn’t match what the teachings are saying. It’s an experience of nonduality. I have no idea what it means to perceive something nondually. I have absolutely no idea what that means. I have no experience. How do you perceive something nondually? Because with everything I perceive, there’s always me here. There’s something out there, and we’re quite independent, separate entities. So, what perceiving something nondually is about is a big mystery.

I remember Lama Yeshe used to say, “Don’t think emptiness is far away like that. It’s right here. It’s in everything around us, because ultimate truths and conventional truths depend on each other.” So, it’s not like the table is here, and it’s ultimate truth is some universe away. It’s right there with the table. And it’s the same thing with our own lack of inherent existence, our own emptiness.

It’s right here with us; we don’t have to go somewhere else or do something weird. Lama used to say, “You just have to realize what’s here already.” But that’s hard, isn’t it? Because we’re so stuck in perceiving what’s not here. [laughter] Aren’t we? All the time whenever we’re grasping true existence, we’re perceiving what’s not here, and it’s a definite hindrance to perceiving what is here. But we just have to keep working at it and peeling away the layers of the onion of ignorance and delusion.