When we witness – or experience – suffering or injustice, the medicine of emptiness can give us strength and equanimity. It should also increase our compassion, allowing us to be open, sensitive, and responsive without getting overwhelmed by anxiety, depression, fear, anger, or hatred. I talk about what the “medicine of emptiness” is – and isn’t – and how to access it.
Quicklinks to Article Content:
Troubled by the State of the World
A Story of Narratives
Cultivating Awareness of Narratives
The Medicine of Emptiness and Not-Knowing
Negative Effects from Counterfeit “Emptiness”
Practicing with the Medicine of Emptiness
Picking Our Narratives Back Up for Action
Troubled by the State of the World
In his 2021 book The Burning House: A Buddhist Response to the Climate and Ecological Emergency, Shantigarbha writes:
One way or another it seems as though we are being forced into a kind of planetary consciousness. It’s deeply uncomfortable because our ‘circle of influence’ has stayed more or less the same, while our ‘circle of concern’ has expanded more or less infinitely. No wonder that this stimulates profound anxiety for some of us! [i]
Many people I talk to say they are very troubled by things going on in the world right now. It’s November 29th, 2023, as I write this, and we are witness to a long list of terrifying and horrifying situations. To name only two, the war between Israel and Hamas has resulted in immeasurable suffering, with mostly civilians among the over 1,200 Israeli dead and with the lives of hostages still hanging in the balance. The Health Ministry of Gaza says more than 13,000 Palestinians have been killed, and it is estimated that 70% of Gaza’s population of around 2 million has been displaced from their homes and are facing an extreme humanitarian crisis.[ii]
At the same time, the destructive results of global warming are no longer in question but are becoming part of everyday life for almost all of us, but leaders are still being elected in many countries precisely because they pledge to prioritize economic gain over climate action.
How can we remain aware and responsive to suffering and injustice in the world, but avoid succumbing to anxiety, depression, fear, or hatred? These emotional states are not helpful to anyone, including those who are suffering. They exhaust us, compromise our health, limit our ability to see things clearly, and alienate us from others. They make us reactive or encourage us to shut down. If enduring negative mind states somehow benefited others, maybe it would be worth it. However, most of us experience outrage and horror while feeling incapable of helping in any substantial way. As Shantigarbha put it, our “circle of influence” remains small – mostly our own personal lives, our local community, voting – while our “circle of concern” includes our entire planet and its countless living things.
Today, I am going to discuss how to use the medicine of Emptiness to remain strong and grounded even as you are witnessing – or experiencing – suffering or injustice. Emptiness is an extremely powerful medicine, and it is available to us anywhere, anytime. However, we must pay careful attention to what happens when we apply it. If it gives us more equanimity while expanding our awareness and increasing our compassion, the practice is right. At the same time, we need to be on the lookout for the many counterfeit “medicines” out there – based on incomplete, self-centered, dualistic understandings of Emptiness – which may leave us indifferent, unsympathetic, emotionally cut off, feeling superior, or excused from taking compassionate action.
A Story of Narratives
There are many ways I could approach using the medicine of Emptiness, but I’m going to continue with an idea I started developing in the last episode, 254 – Practice is How You Live Each and Every Moment – Part 2. In that episode, I talked about how you can work on awakening to Emptiness in your everyday life by learning to recognize how you live in a matrix of narratives. These stories we tell about ourselves and our lives are essential – they help us make sense of the world, make decisions, and communicate with one another. However, our narratives – like everything else – are empty of any inherent, enduring, fixed nature. They are inevitably simplifications of reality and are not Reality itself.
To work on awakening to Emptiness, I suggested a practice of noticing the liminal space between narratives when life challenges one of your stories. Liminal means “occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.”[iii] In that sometimes disorienting and uncomfortable place with no landmarks to guide you, instead of rushing immediately to create a new story, you can pause to experience a taste of Emptiness: Vast and seamless potentiality. Over time you can gradually increase your comfort with this liminal space, preparing you to open to its full implications.
Narratives provide another entry gate to Emptiness when we aim to use Emptiness as a medicine for mental and emotional distress. In this case, we start by becoming aware of the story we are telling about any upsetting situation. It may be a story that we believe to be true down to the depths of our bones – even a story we would be willing to die for. For example, I maintain and rely on this story: “Most of humanity has been over-exploiting nature – and other human beings – for the sake of unbridled greed. This has gone on so long that we will destroy our civilization if we don’t quickly change our ways and live sustainably on this planet.” To me, this statement seems self-evident and extremely important for everyone to agree with, but it is still a narrative.
Now, it may seem dismissive for me to call a serious statement or belief about a terrible situation a “story” or a “narrative.” The word “story” can imply subjectivity – “just” a story you are telling yourself – as opposed to truth. “Story” or “narrative” also implies a degree of relativism, because the people on the other side of an issue will also have their story. Everyone has a right to their opinion, right? So all stories should be respected and given equal weight? However, I don’t mean to say our beliefs, understandings, opinions, and convictions are trivial, disconnected from the truth, merely subjective, or unimportant. When I call them “stories” or “narratives,” I simply mean that they are coherent descriptions or evaluations created by human minds, involving words, concepts, actions, consequences, and protagonists.
Before I move on to discussing how we can cultivate awareness of our stories and what to do next, I want to say something about the distress we can experience when a satisfying narrative about a distressing situation eludes us. We need our narratives to make sense of things, and many times – as is the case with the conflicts in the Middle East and with climate change – things are so complicated that we may not be able to find a story that clearly identifies those to blame and lays out a definitive path to a solution. (You may think you know who is to blame; if so, you probably have a story that satisfies you and I’m not talking about you here.) When a coherent story eludes us, our minds continually struggle to process information and try to make sense of it all, causing us considerable stress.
Alternatively, we may have an understanding of a distressing situation that feels very clear, but it is a terrible story that involves death, destruction, or injustice with little likelihood of redemption for anyone involved. In this case, we have the security of a story, but it’s one that will probably make us bitter, unhappy, and despairing. Finally, our story may feel true and satisfying to us in and of itself and may even include a clear course of action toward the relief of suffering or a correction of injustice, but no one else seems to care or agree. This can be painful, alienating, and frustrating. Narratives are our minds trying cope with reality, but not all narratives give us peace of mind.
Cultivating Awareness of Narratives
When we are witnessing or experiencing suffering or injustice, our stories about the situation – whatever they are – get activated. Unless we’re actively involved and trying to help real living beings in the moment, our primary response is to start reciting our story – internally or externally – or improving it. How bad are things, really? Who is to blame? What should be done? Can anything be done? Are you responsible in any way? What does this situation say about the people involved, or about humanity in general? As long as our story is reasonably satisfying, our stress is at least momentarily relieved.
The utility of stories for coping with distressing situations is beautifully illustrated by a comic called “Tom the Dancing Bug,” by Ruben Bolling. Bolling created the comic shortly after the mass shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007:
[In the comic, a man is listening to news about the shooting. A large, amorphous blob hangs in the air behind him, and the caption reads, “One morning, something incomprehensible showed up.” As he hears more about the shooting, the blob follows the man around and the caption reads, “I couldn’t control it – there was nowhere to put it. It just hung there, pushing down on me… so I waited to hear more about it.” Once the man hears the shooter was South Korean, he takes out a box labeled, “I hate policies on immigration,” and stuffs the blob into the box. He walks around with his box, saying, “And now I feel back in control.” Other people walk by with different boxes: “Coddled criminals are put back on the street,” and “We need strict gun control laws,” and “There is too much violence in our culture.”]
This comic makes clear the costs of relying on our narratives to deal with complex situations of suffering and injustice. We need to carry our narrative around all the time. We need to defend it. We tend to miss other aspects of complex situations. We set ourselves up for conflict with those who have different narratives. And these are the costs for fairly satisfying stories; as I discussed earlier, if you can’t come up with a satisfying story, or you come up with a story that’s bleak and discouraging, the incomprehensible blob of anxiety and ambiguity may continue to follow you around.
The Medicine of Emptiness and Not-Knowing
To investigate the medicine of Emptiness, we don’t have to deny, discount, or reject our narratives. We just need to recognize them for what they are: Descriptions and evaluations we have constructed to make sense of life and know how we should respond to it. We don’t need to judge the stories as false or try to get rid of them. They may very well be our best effort at relating to the world and may contain important truths. As soon as we become aware of our narratives, we also become aware that Reality is bigger than our narratives. We are bigger than our narratives.
We may be willing to give our lives for what we believe in, but we can still partake of the medicine of Emptiness. Let me share a classic Zen koan that points to what I’m talking about. This is case 20 in Thomas Cleary’s translation of The Book of Serenity: One Hundred Zen Dialogues:[iv]
Dizang asked Fayan, “Where are you going?”
Fayan said, “Around on pilgrimage.”
Dizang said, “What is the purpose of pilgrimage?”
Fayan said, “I don’t know.”
Dizang said, “Not knowing is nearest.” [v]
Later in the chapter, it says Fayan was “greatly enlightened” at this point in the conversation. What is going on here? In other translations, Dizang says, “Not knowing is most intimate.” He is not talking about ignorance. If Fayan has decided to leave the monastery and go traveling on pilgrimage, he probably has thought a lot about it. He has his reasons. Pilgrimage isn’t just wandering around; it’s going to specific places because they are meaningful. Fayan doesn’t say, “I don’t know” to Dizang because he doesn’t really care what he does next and figured he might as well go on pilgrimage. So why does he answer this way?
Fayan says, “I don’t know,” from a place of Emptiness. You might phrase this as, “Ultimately, I don’t know. Life is a mystery.” Why are we inspired to go on pilgrimage? What are we seeking? Why do we practice? Remember, though, this “don’t know” is not a shrug of ignorance, even in the face of life’s mystery. It’s a wholehearted showing up, a vulnerable, sincere, caring, I don’t know. To dwell for a moment in midst of things-as-it-is, without taking refuge in any stories, takes courage. It’s like the character in the Tom the Dancing Bug comic sitting quietly with his incomprehensible blob, turning to face it instead of shoving it in a box, letting the horror, sadness, fear, anger, and sense of powerlessness wash over him.
As we spend a few moments in the space of not-knowing, we must be careful not to take on the suffering of the world as if we alone are responsible for it. This is lapsing back into narrative, into our need to know. The empty space of not-knowing occurs this moment, then this moment, then this moment. We are not trying to hold or contain the pain. We are not trying to fix it or figure it out. We are just with it. It flows through us and disperses into the vast potentiality of Emptiness.
Shorn of our stories, we are fully present and able to hear the cries of the world. Our sense of being a small, separate self (responsible or not responsible, to blame or innocent) fades away. The pain of others is our pain, the joy of others is our joy, and an appropriate response can arise in the next moment. This is most intimate. This is nearest to everyone and everything which is not you. The stress of maintaining and defending our stories is momentarily absent. The totality of things-as-it-is embraces and supports you. As the Heart Sutra says, Emptiness, or prajna paramita, is great medicine: “With nothing to attain, a bodhisattva relies on prajna paramita, and thus the mind is without hindrance. Without hindrance, there is no fear.”[vi]
Negative Effects from Counterfeit “Emptiness”
Now comes the part where I give warnings about possible side effects of the medicine of Emptiness, just like the list of unfortunate results at the end of ads for medications on TV. Although what I’m going to talk about is technically not side effects of the medicine properly applied, it’s about negative results from taking counterfeit medicine – when someone thinks they are benefitting from their perception of Emptiness, but in fact their understanding of Emptiness and its implications are incomplete, and they end up indifferent, unsympathetic, emotionally cut off, feeling superior, or excused from taking compassionate action.
It’s natural to want freedom from mental and emotional distress, so it’s very tempting to use our spiritual practice to obtain it. For some people, it’s possible to retreat from thinking about difficult issues by “staying in the present moment” in a way that excludes from consciousness anything but what is within their immediate environment. You might use Buddhist teachings like “all things are empty” to create a comforting story about how the suffering of others essentially exists only in their own minds. Or you might have had an inspiring spiritual insight into how all things are precious just as they are, and then use this a rationale for inaction when witnessing suffering and injustice.
All of these ways of practicing can increase your equanimity, but they decrease your compassion. When we use an incomplete understanding of Emptiness – what I’m calling “counterfeit medicine” – we find a little freedom from mental and emotional distress for ourselves, and then stop there. We don’t take the practice all the way, to where we realize we are boundaryless and interdependent, and therefore that all things in the universe are Self.
In the commentary on the koan “not knowing is nearest,” Chan master Wansong (1166-1246) says:
Nanquan said, “The Way is not in knowing or in not knowing. Knowing is false consciousness, not knowing is indifference.” Now when people hear it said that not knowing is nearest, and that this is where Fayan was enlightened, they immediately go over to just not knowing, not understanding, “Just this is it.” They hardly realize that a phrase of the ancients covers everywhere, like the sky, supports everywhere, like the earth.[vii]
Generally speaking, our first response to things is dualistic. When we hear the Zen teaching, “Not-knowing is most intimate,” we figure we’re off the hook. When we witness suffering and injustice, we rarely know how to permanently remedy it, so it’s easy to shrug and say, “I don’t know what I can do, so I don’t/can’t/shouldn’t worry about it.” It may seem like Buddhism is encouraging us to turn away from any suffering and injustice that isn’t clearly within our power to change as an individual. All we need to do is pay attention to our own lives: “Just this is it.”
Wansong warns us that that the teaching “not knowing is nearest” is not about indifference. “A phrase of the ancients” is the authentic Dharma passed down through the generations, and such Dharma excludes nothing, “cover[ing] everywhere, like the sky, and support[ing] everywhere, like the earth.” This image of sky and earth is inclusive, comforting, and beneficent, hinting at the vast compassion of the bodhisattva. The ideal bodhisattva cares for each and every living being without exception – caring so much, she or he is willing to give anything that is required to help free them from suffering – and yet the bodhisattva is able to maintain equanimity as they work. This equanimity is due not to indifference but to being grounded in Emptiness.
The medicine of Emptiness is never in opposition to the need for compassionate action. If you perceive it that way, you are right to doubt what you think it means. You have more to learn about Emptiness and its implications.
Practicing with the Medicine of Emptiness
In my own practice, it took me a very long time to even be willing to investigate the medicine of Emptiness. I was sincerely afraid that if I took it, I would stop caring about suffering and injustice – that I would attain some disengaged state where I would be able to appreciate how none of it mattered. That I would lose my sense of empathy, responsibility, compassion, and urgency. I was suffering emotionally with a sense of despair as I witnessed the unimaginable suffering and injustice in the world, but suffering like that for the rest of my life seemed preferable to taking the easy way out through some kind of spiritual inoculation against distress.
However, I kept approaching an understanding of Emptiness because so much of the Dharma had already proven so helpful, and because I trusted my teachers. I held on to the phrase from my Dharma grandmother, Roshi Kennett, “You are right to doubt what you think it means.” Fortunately – wonderfully – I came to understand how following our experience of Emptiness all the way through allows us to swim in an ocean of compassion. We feel even more intimate with all life, even more willing to lend a hand, even more touched by the suffering of others. Despite this sensitivity, we are not easily overwhelmed. We are grounded in Emptiness, and do not try to hold either the suffering or the compassion within our limited being.
If you remain mindful as you explore using the medicine of Emptiness, you will be able to avoid – or escape – the pitfalls I have mentioned. Start in circumstances that are relatively calm and peaceful, and call to mind a situation that is distressing you. See if you can let go of your narratives of it. Promise yourself this is only for a short period of time; you will pick your story back up as soon as it is needed. At the same time, open your heart and mind to the suffering or injustice that is distressing you. Let it be what it is. Let yourself be who you are. Grief, sadness, or anger may arise. Breathe in the suffering of others, breathe in your own suffering, and as you breathe out, imagine all of it dispersing into Emptiness.
At first, do this just for a few breaths. Eventually you may work up to living like this most of the time.
Do you need to “understand” Emptiness in order to do the practice what I’m talking about? As you embark on your journey of practice, your perceptions of Emptiness may be very fleeting. You may wonder whether what you experienced was related to Emptiness at all! However, Emptiness is really not such a mysterious experience; its medicine is not something you can only use if you’ve practiced diligently for many years, learned all the teachings, and achieved so-called “awakening experiences.” We all live on the edge of Emptiness at all times… even if our stories are so compelling we feel like we can’t let go of them for an instant, we sense the vastness underneath them. Even if we think we’re far from any transcendent insights, at some point in our lives we have found ourselves relaxing into the silence. We all intuit Emptiness; practice means to overcome our karmic fear of what we think it means in order to investigate it – and, ultimately, to make friends with it.
To benefit from the medicine of Emptiness, you don’t have to conclude that you’ve mastered the teaching. Just get more and more comfortable with the calm, quiet, and receptive space between your narratives. Dip your toe into the spaciousness, then pull back to safety and comfort. Work up to stepping into it, then wading in it, then letting yourself float in it. It takes courage, faith, and patience to let go, but the effort is indescribably rewarding.
Picking Our Narratives Back Up for Action
How much of the time is it good to be hanging out, being intimate with life, paying little attention to narratives? We don’t want to fall into the pitfall of obliviousness.
Narratives are necessary for when we need to act – to develop an understanding, make a decision, say something, or do something. Most of the time we are not about to take action on a distressing situation, however, especially when it involves witnessing the suffering or injustice experienced by others. Most of the time we are just going about our daily lives – sleeping, eating, working, cooking, cleaning, exercising, walking the dog. At such times we don’t need to carry around the incomprehensible blobs that haunt us, locked up in boxes made of stories we need to maintain.
When no action is required of us, we can rest in the spacious emptiness of this moment. Breathing deeply, we do not turn away from the suffering. Centered in our bodies, we do not deny the suffering, the injustice, the senseless destruction. We Bear Witness to it, opening our hearts and minds without creating a story to protect ourselves. Breathing in, we acknowledge the suffering, breathing out, it disperses into Emptiness. We may create or adopt practices that remind us of suffering and injustice and remind us to Bear Witness.
When we need or want to act, we pick up our best narrative for the task. We will remember it. Things might have changed. Maybe we have learned something new, and our story can change to reflect reality more accurately. We can mindfully decide on times to engage with narratives about issues that concern us, so we stay connected to what human beings are trying to do about it.
Even as we engage our narratives and take a stand, we aim to remain mindful of what we are doing, and how fixated on our story we may have become. In his commentary on the koan “not knowing is nearest,” Wansong continues:
If not knowing is nearest, then what about Heze’s saying, “The one word ‘knowing’ is the gate of myriad wonders.” Just affirm totally when affirming, but don’t settle down in affirmation; deny totally when denying, but don’t settle down in denial. Passing through all the five ranks, absolute and relative, how could you die under a phrase?[viii]
Endnotes
[i] Shantigarbha. The Burning House: A Buddhist response to the climate and ecological emergency. Cambridge, UK: Windhorse Publications, 2021. Page 11.
[ii] Mediators try to extend Israel-Hamas truce as last planned release of hostages in Gaza starts, National Post:
[iii] Definitions from Oxford Languages through Google
[iv] Cleary, Thomas (translator). The Book of Serenity: One Hundred Zen Dialogues. Boston, MA: Shambala Publications, 2005. Case 20.
[v] Ibid
[vi] https://www.sotozen.com/eng/practice/sutra/scriptures.html
[vii] Cleary, Thomas (translator). The Book of Serenity: One Hundred Zen Dialogues. Boston, MA: Shambala Publications, 2005. Case 20.
[viii] Ibid
Photo Credit
Image by Seksak Kerdkanno from Pixabay
