~The Activity of Emptiness~

I have encountered many people working with awakening practices that hold a certain view of the realization of emptiness.  I have even watched my own mind hold on quite strongly to this same view.  It is the view that realizing emptiness (sunyata) or 'essential insubstantiality' would result in an ineffective and unmotivated bag of bones, unable to act in the world for the betterment of the world.

If we took the image of a bamboo flute, this view holds that once we clear blockages in the flute itself, fully surrendering attachments (even the attachment to play this instrument), the flute would become totally mute, dead, and ineffective- because there's no one there to blow through it, right?

But, what we find (and what the sages teach), is that once blockages are cleared from the flute (attachments and identifications are released), the flute plays of its own nature.  And it plays itself very, very well.  How could this be so?

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, awakened Tibetan master, says it this way: 

When you recognize the empty nature of phenomena, the energy to bring about the good of others dawns uncontrived and effortless.  Compassion is the activity of emptiness. 

The point is that emptiness has an active nature in relative reality (everyday life).  When we realize ourselves as inherently empty of anything definable, perceived separation drops away, and there is nothing to impede or obstruct the flow of emptiness, the flow of life living itself.  And when life is allowed to live itself free of egoic narrowness, what results could be called 'unsurpassed compassion and harmony'.  Pure examples of this are readily displayed in nature, in the stars, in the atom, and even in humanity- though we work very hard no to see this.

'Be aware, don't cling', says Joseph Goldstein.  The unattached, non-clinging heart-mind is where all traditions (that I have studied) converge.  Even in the writings of Rumi or Hafiz, beings aflame with love for the mysterious-intimate beloved, the practice woven throughout is uncompromising surrender into life itself.

 Love is the true activity of emptiness.  And emptiness is the true wisdom of love.

offered in humility,

eka