Naturelessness
“What’s left” after awakening is perhaps best described as an open experience that is populated with intangible images, as opposed to everything (including ourselves) having a tangible, physical presence. While these intangible images are still describable in conventional terms such as color and shape, they have no perceived nature or essence that ostensibly makes things such as trees or people “what they are”. Fortunately, though such trees and people are natureless, you don’t forget who or what they conventionally are. When this experiential shift occurs, it can be very disorienting at first, though it quickly becomes the “new normal”, and you can get on with daily life just as before.
It is as if you are in a movie theater, where you have become absorbed in what is happening on the screen before you. For example, if there is a depiction of a conversation between two people in an office setting, it can seem as though there really are two people talking in a real office building. Everything you see appears as real as both you and the chair in which you are sitting. And yet, if the house lights are suddenly turned on, you will realize that the people and office building which seemed so real a few moments ago are in fact just intangible images displayed on the screen in front of you. While at the conventional level the movie characters and the office setting can still be described in certain ways, they no longer appear to be tangible or real (at least until you get reabsorbed in the movie). Since we all have had many experiences of watching people on screens, whether in a movie theater or on our phones, it’s fairly easy to reconcile ourselves to the fact that we mentally interpret what we are seeing.
Awakening involves fully seeing that you and all that you experience is really no different than the “people” and “office” up on the movie screen, a fact which is likely more difficult to reconcile yourself to. And yet, that is the eventual experience of awakening: both you and whatever you experience are natureless, intangible interpretations that have nothing behind them that makes them anything more than that. To extend the movie theater analogy, not only do the characters on-screen become natureless when the house lights come on but, upon awakening, you, the seats, the other patrons and the spilled popcorn on the floor of the movie theater are understood to be natureless as well.
Awakened experience is rather like “walking through town” on Google Earth, where a quasi three-dimensional image of many cities is available, by which you can choose which direction to go and what to see. For example, if you were “walking through Paris” in this way, and someone were to ask you about the inherent essence or nature of the Eiffel Tower that you see on the screen of your computer, all you could say is “um… all I’m looking at is an image of a tower: it has no essence or nature”.
Awakening therefore means becoming reconciled to the fact that mental representations are all that comprises our experience. Like the video card in your computer, we process (visual) data and display it on our mental screen. What we come to understand is that the version of what we see, hear, think or otherwise experience has no inherent nature: naturelessness (in Sanskrit, śūnyatā) is all we can truly know about any of it and, fortunately, is all that we need to know.
The term śūnyatā is typically translated as “emptiness”, which may tend to encourage the view that “emptiness” is an actual quality that everything has, and therefore is something to be realized. For example, we might tend to suppose that phenomena such as a tree have something called emptiness as their essence or nature. However, once we awaken we realize that trees are empty of essence and nature, an important distinction. Therefore, translating śūnyatā as naturelessness more clearly states what exactly phenomena are “empty” of, by which śūnyatā may be less likely to be construed as an actual “something”.
The term “emptiness” might also seem to imply that awakening involves experience going blank, which happens if, for example, you happen to be in a deep meditative state such as the “empty abiding” as it is termed in the Buddhist tradition (see this scripture for a detailed discussion). In such a temporary state, experience is in fact empty of perceived phenomena, and is the result of pausing the normal way in which we process sensory information to produce images in our minds; in essence, we turn our video cards off. However, this meditative state is not necessary for awakening, and the temporary experience it provides is much different than the 24/7 experience of awakening.
This illustrates how there are two different types of emptiness in the Buddhist tradition: one in which experience is temporarily empty of perceived phenomena, and one in which perceived phenomena are forever empty of a presumed essence or nature. The first is a temporary meditative state, while the second is how we experience everything and everyone (including “ourselves”) once we awaken. Once awake, we can easily slip into the temporary “empty abiding” if and when we choose, and then quickly come back to our normal mode of perceiving natureless phenomena to navigate daily life.
It is as if you are in a movie theater, where you have become absorbed in what is happening on the screen before you. For example, if there is a depiction of a conversation between two people in an office setting, it can seem as though there really are two people talking in a real office building. Everything you see appears as real as both you and the chair in which you are sitting. And yet, if the house lights are suddenly turned on, you will realize that the people and office building which seemed so real a few moments ago are in fact just intangible images displayed on the screen in front of you. While at the conventional level the movie characters and the office setting can still be described in certain ways, they no longer appear to be tangible or real (at least until you get reabsorbed in the movie). Since we all have had many experiences of watching people on screens, whether in a movie theater or on our phones, it’s fairly easy to reconcile ourselves to the fact that we mentally interpret what we are seeing.
Awakening involves fully seeing that you and all that you experience is really no different than the “people” and “office” up on the movie screen, a fact which is likely more difficult to reconcile yourself to. And yet, that is the eventual experience of awakening: both you and whatever you experience are natureless, intangible interpretations that have nothing behind them that makes them anything more than that. To extend the movie theater analogy, not only do the characters on-screen become natureless when the house lights come on but, upon awakening, you, the seats, the other patrons and the spilled popcorn on the floor of the movie theater are understood to be natureless as well.
Awakened experience is rather like “walking through town” on Google Earth, where a quasi three-dimensional image of many cities is available, by which you can choose which direction to go and what to see. For example, if you were “walking through Paris” in this way, and someone were to ask you about the inherent essence or nature of the Eiffel Tower that you see on the screen of your computer, all you could say is “um… all I’m looking at is an image of a tower: it has no essence or nature”.
Awakening therefore means becoming reconciled to the fact that mental representations are all that comprises our experience. Like the video card in your computer, we process (visual) data and display it on our mental screen. What we come to understand is that the version of what we see, hear, think or otherwise experience has no inherent nature: naturelessness (in Sanskrit, śūnyatā) is all we can truly know about any of it and, fortunately, is all that we need to know.
The term śūnyatā is typically translated as “emptiness”, which may tend to encourage the view that “emptiness” is an actual quality that everything has, and therefore is something to be realized. For example, we might tend to suppose that phenomena such as a tree have something called emptiness as their essence or nature. However, once we awaken we realize that trees are empty of essence and nature, an important distinction. Therefore, translating śūnyatā as naturelessness more clearly states what exactly phenomena are “empty” of, by which śūnyatā may be less likely to be construed as an actual “something”.
The term “emptiness” might also seem to imply that awakening involves experience going blank, which happens if, for example, you happen to be in a deep meditative state such as the “empty abiding” as it is termed in the Buddhist tradition (see this scripture for a detailed discussion). In such a temporary state, experience is in fact empty of perceived phenomena, and is the result of pausing the normal way in which we process sensory information to produce images in our minds; in essence, we turn our video cards off. However, this meditative state is not necessary for awakening, and the temporary experience it provides is much different than the 24/7 experience of awakening.
This illustrates how there are two different types of emptiness in the Buddhist tradition: one in which experience is temporarily empty of perceived phenomena, and one in which perceived phenomena are forever empty of a presumed essence or nature. The first is a temporary meditative state, while the second is how we experience everything and everyone (including “ourselves”) once we awaken. Once awake, we can easily slip into the temporary “empty abiding” if and when we choose, and then quickly come back to our normal mode of perceiving natureless phenomena to navigate daily life.