Seminar on EMPTINESS

Mike and I attended a wonderful seminar at the Dipamkara Center this past Saturday. The speaker was resident teacher Holly MacGregor. She is a gifted presenter and we were blessed with the information she presented. Emptiness, in the Buddhist perspective, is the development of one's Buddha nature through the use of compassion and wisdom.

It was interesting for me to realize just how often I dwell on negative things instead of how these things are attachments and delusional in nature. When I place my thoughts on these things I am actually MEDITATING on them. When I see it this way, I see how fruitless and even self-destructive this habit can be. Emptiness is clearly seeing things for what they are in reality without our individual judgments of them. Nothing exists in a fixed way. Everything, including ourselves, is in a constant state of change. Everything is impermanent. Everything dies, everything ends. I am reminded that I must "make friends" with this impermanence to truly enjoy each precious moment.

We cannot allow ourselves to see things or people as a source of happiness. We can enjoy every moment and not be attached to joyful moments remaining joyful or painful experiences remaining painful. Everything ends. Relationships end, people die, and moments are gone as quickly as they appear. We saw this recently in our own lives when a couple we thought were friends of ours later turned out to be very angry, emotionally ill, and were toxic to us. We had to let them go from our lives.

When we see things and others as a source for pleasure we become aware of how this can never provide what we really are searching for. For example, if chocolate cake is seen as providing happiness how do we feel when we have eaten so much of it that we become ill at the mere sight or smell of it. It is the same chocolate cake. But, we have changed in our relationship to desiring it. Holly likened these desires to trying to find a rainbow. We admire it and want to see it closer. If we try and locate it we discover that we cannot. When we view it, it is sharp and clear;but it is a delusion.

We are what we think. Our thoughts can change our world.

We need to develop the ability to look past our self-oriented mind. Through meditation and acting from compassion and love we respond to every situation with a supreme good heart. I am even more aware than ever before of my self-grasping.