Here is the second installment of Michael’s Heart Sutra series transcribed, edited, and designed into a booklet. You can listen along here.
In this talk, Michael explains that engaging in the practice of emptiness means working on a physical, psychological, and interpersonal level because other people can’t stand to be a character in our stories. That’s why relations suck—people don’t want to play their part so they ruin our story. When life is empty of separation and we’re not so invested in outcomes, fluidity and compassion can arise.
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Here is an excerpt:
“So emptiness is not a place you get to, and emptiness is also not something you realize. Emptiness is just a strategy you use to see. Emptiness is like a pair of lenses you put on to see the world. What’s the lens you’re seeing the world through? You’re seeing through the lens of realizing with your whole being that things are not what you think they are because they don’t have inherent thingness.
So from the side of the object, there is emptiness. And from the side of the subject, there is prajñā. So what does prajñā, what does wisdom recognize? It recognizes emptiness. But emptiness is not a thing. You see? The great philosopher Nāgārjuna says mistaking emptiness [for a thing] is like catching a snake by the wrong end. Because people do this all the time. They get this teaching of emptiness and they turn it into a thing just like we do with God. And then instead of seeing the world through this lens of emptiness, which is from the subject’s perspective, prajñā (which is wisdom), we turn emptiness into a thing. That’s when you hear people say things like, “Drop into pure emptiness,” as if there’s this void you can go into.
Now, there is a void you can go into and it’s called dissociation, right? That’s what most of us are in all the time. But actually to practice really seeing the way things are and the way things move and the way things change, this is prajñā. This is the wisdom of expressing emptiness.”
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