From the infinitely open perspective of the summit, we realize that we are not what we think nor what we feel. From a limited, egoic view, we are simply an attachment to the activity of our minds, always believing we are only what we think and what we feel. In other words, the very things that arise in the mind are precisely what we are in that moment, yet at the same time we are much more than what is arising. In The Heart Sutra, we chant that, “Form is Emptiness, and Emptiness is form.” Put another way, we are here in human form, yet we are simultaneously infinite Emptiness. Negating this Infinity is at the core of all the thoughts that give birth to our pain and suffering. Negating our conscious expression of Spirit perfectly describes the prison from which we seek to escape.
So in a way this realization renders Descartes’s famous statement, “I think, therefore I am,” as the articulation of our fundamental delusion rather than an articulation of anything close to authentic existence. If we are defined by thinking and feeling, we are then clinging to the mind, which is exactly what obscures Awakening. If, on the other hand, we blew the translation, and Descartes was actually suggesting something closer to, “There is consciousness, therefore I am,” then he’s pointing us directly toward the summit of the Mountain of Spirit. In other words, if we are aware of our awareness (“there is consciousness”), and we allow this awareness to support the recognition of our own existence, we come to the experience of “I am.” This “am-ness,” or Presence, or Being, is the very same thing as what we’ve referred to as the Big Self: the uncontracted, always present, timeless, primordial opening that is who we ultimately are. We are here in this mental and bodily form, yet at the same time we are only awakened Emptiness. Regardless of how we might translate Descartes, our practice is to walk this razor’s edge between the relative truth (form) and the Ultimate Truth (Emptiness). This tightrope of a Path, with the relative on one side and the Ultimate on the other, is what in Buddhism we call “the Middle Way.”
Most of us do our best to let the Ultimate extend its boundless clarity into our relative, often messy, conventional circumstance. At least this is where the Middle Way points us. Instead of being trapped by our feelings, the Middle Way shows us that we can become free of our attachment to them as we watch their arising and their ceasing. From this place of open observation of all that is going in our experience, we are consciously resting in Emptiness, or what we might just as easily call “No-thing-ness.” When we are no longer caught by things, peace informs our walk as well as our work.
Even if the label “No-thing-ness” confuses the mind, it is important to remember that “No-thing-ness” is inseparable from the flow of “Everything-ness”, including our feelings. It goes beyond and yet brings along the flow. As the still source of all things, Nothingness, or Emptiness, or Awareness, is unchanging and always already present at every point of this flow. The flow itself, as well as our feelings, are born from and die to this Source. Walking the Middle Way occurs when we align ourselves with the felt sense of this Source as we go about our day. For example, when we consciously witness our joy when we cheer on our college football team; or when we are consciously witness our pain when our significant other says something that cuts to the quick. Walking the Middle Way, while tricky at times, is nothing other than letting observation infuse and inform our participation in all aspects of a life that builds itself from a spacious and deep connectivity.
