Art and love are the same thing: it’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you.
CHUCK KLOSTERMAN
18
IN PIECES
Before stumbling into this whole writing thing, I worked as an assistant site director for a before- and after-school enrichment program for elementary school kids and was inspired by the children on a daily basis. Sure, kids will be kids, and there were plenty of difficult days that left me questioning my sanity, particularly when all they wanted to do was have a dance party and blast Selena Gomez, Katy Perry, and Justin Bieber. I still get shivers just thinking about it, but in retrospect, I wouldn’t trade any of it (well, minus the horrible music) for the world.
I found myself most fascinated by the kindergarteners’ and first and second graders’ unfiltered sense of wonder toward life in general. Watching the children become captivated by simple magic tricks, their excitement when stumbling across a new kind of bug on the playground, or the joy they’d emanate while playing one of their favorite games in the gym always left me—in a vicarious way—excited and mesmerized too.
I’d usually show up to work with the other staff members around a quarter to seven in the morning, and we’d set up the room with various games, arts and crafts, and other stations for the kids to choose from. We would typically change things up each day, but there were a few staples we made sure were available to the kids on a regular basis. One of them was the Lego station, which a lot of the kids tended to go ape-shit over.
I enjoyed watching their inspired imaginations as they created things like fortresses, spaceships, boats, houses, and castles, all of which started from nothing more than a big bucket of mishmashed pieces from a plethora of different sets, and all without instructions. Once the morning session was over, the kids would toss their meticulously crafted masterpieces back into the bucket, usually pausing a moment to enthusiastically watch them smash apart, and then off to school they’d go.
Now, you may be asking yourself, “What the hell does this have to do with anything . . . especially spirituality?”
As I mentioned in the introduction, one of the fundamental teachings of Buddhism that is extremely beneficial for anyone to study, regardless of their spiritual tradition (or lack thereof), is emptiness, or śūnyatā. As humans, we have the tendency to create conceptual labels for, well, pretty much everything, both good and bad. Before we started naming, judging, praising, and damning things, it all just was as it was (and still, in this very moment, simply is as it is). So we give these people, places, and things labels, believing they have their own inherent existence when, in fact, they don’t. Remember interbeing: all things are dependently arising in relation to one another, from our inner subjective selves to the outer objective world, and thus, it is all empty of an intrinsic and independent existence. Thich Nhat Hanh builds on this concept when he explains:
Because form is emptiness, form is possible. In form we find everything else—feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. “Emptiness” means empty of a separate self. It is full of everything, full of life. The word “emptiness” should not scare us. It is a wonderful word. To be empty does not mean to be nonexistent. . . . Emptiness is the ground of everything. “Thanks to emptiness, everything is possible.” That is a declaration made by Nagarjuna, a Buddhist philosopher of the second century. Emptiness is quite an optimistic concept. If I am not empty, I cannot be here. And if you are not empty, you cannot be there. Because you are there, I can be here. This is the true meaning of emptiness. Form does not have a separate existence.1
There you have it, straight from the pen of one of our most important contemporary spiritual teachers. How truly inspiring is it to know that thanks to emptiness, everything is possible? Those infinite impossibilities apply to you, to me, to every sentient being, and to the entire goddamn universe. Miraculous!
People often misunderstand the teachings on emptiness and think of it as something nihilistic when that couldn’t be further from the truth. Emptiness in relation to ourselves simply means that we’re actually empty of an individual, intrinsic self. It does not mean that there’s no “being” here experiencing life, because obviously, you’re reading these words right now, aren’t you? It’s just that the “you” that you think is reading these words—as an inherent, separate self—actually isn’t. All this, from believing we’re inherently separate to then recognizing that we’re not and instead are interbeing with all things, is happening within the realm of Everything Mind.
The Buddha teaches that the totality of life, including everything we experience, comes into being as a result of causes and conditions. It’s through understanding this that we clearly see the interdependent nature of literally every single thing and how everything depends on something else—other elements and factors—in order to originate in the first place.
This awareness is the first step in breaking our deeply rooted conditioning of living life from a place identified strictly with our physical being and sense perceptions. We then begin to break away from the idea of a separate, inherent self, seeing the emptiness of all phenomena, which the Buddha taught was essential for liberation and being released from suffering.
Once we really begin to contemplate this, I think most of us would be hard-pressed to refute what the Buddha taught. As His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama explains:
Buddha teaches that the very fact that something is dependently originated means that it is necessarily devoid of an essential, or independent, reality. For if something is fundamentally dependent, by logical necessity it must be devoid of having a nature that is independent of other phenomena, of existing independently. Thus it is said that anything that is dependently originated must also be, in actual fact, empty.2
This leads us to the Buddha’s teaching on emptiness as found in the famous scripture the Heart Sutra, the following excerpt of which shares the essence of the teaching:
doing deep Prajña Paramita
clearly saw emptiness
of all the five conditions
thus completely relieving
misfortune and pain.
Oh Shariputra, form is no other
than emptiness,
emptiness no other than form.
Form is exactly emptiness,
emptiness exactly form.
Sensation, conception,
discrimination, awareness
are likewise like this.
Oh Shariputra, all dharmas
are forms of emptiness;
not born, not destroyed,
not stained, not pure,
without loss, without gain.
So in emptiness there is no form;
no sensation, conception,
discrimination, awareness;
no eye, ear, nose, tongue,
body, mind;
no color, sound, smell, taste,
touch, phenomena;
no realm of sight,
no realm of consciousness,
no ignorance
and no end to ignorance,
no old age and death
and no end to old age and death,
no suffering, no cause of suffering,
no extinguishing, no path,
no wisdom, and no gain.
No gain and thus the Bodhisattva
lives Prajna Paramita,
with no hindrance in the mind;
no hindrance, therefore no fear.
Far beyond deluded thoughts;
this is Nirvana.3
The Heart Sutra teaches that it’s thanks to emptiness that we are not isolated beings and can deeply touch and experience the place where we’re interbeing with all life. Even simply recognizing the fact that each of us depends on one another is a huge service to all beings. That, in and of itself, is a step in the direction of unity rather than separation, and in awakening Everything Mind. Contemplating that others are responsible for growing the food we eat, constructing the buildings we meditate or pray in, making the clothes we wear, treating us for sickness and physical ailments helps us to realize that without their services, we wouldn’t be able to stay alive.
Everything that we know today—from useless trivia to the knowledge we’ve accumulated from the great wisdom traditions, from our artistic and musical abilities to cooking, snowboarding, yoga—we’ve learned from someone else. And as we become clearer on just how dependent upon and interconnected with others we truly are, the more organically we begin to extend kindness and compassion. As our spiritual practice (whatever it may be) grows deeper, it becomes clear that “us” and “them” are nothing more than concepts we’ve been taught to give others and ourselves. We are in this thing together, and the sooner we become clear on that, the sooner we will become friendlier toward life, and life toward us.
Okay, so that’s nice and all but . . . what about those damn Legos? I’m getting to that, I promise, but first, I need to mention my love for running, as that too plays a part in the equation.
At the time when I was working at the school program, I would go out for daily jogs. I started noticing myself looking at my surroundings—the trees, cars, people, buildings, houses, animals, and so forth—in relation to the Buddhist teachings on emptiness and dependent arising, but in a way that was similar to how the children created their Lego masterpieces.
As I ran, I would imagine the house scattered across the yard in separate pieces, similar to the heap of Lego pieces before the kids got to them and started building. I’d see the wood in one area; the sinks, tubs, and toilets in another; the nails, paint, and siding in yet another, and . . . you get the picture. Just like watching the kids build with Legos, I’d envision all the pieces of the house coming together. Rather than seeing the house as having its own independent nature, I could now understand it as it truly was: in a state of dependent arising. All those pieces, the wood, nails, sinks, and toilets, came together in order for the house to be a house.
Now, that’s a manufacturing example. I would also do this with people and animals. For example, I would see someone working in their yard and mentally break them down, envisioning their arms in one area, legs in another, head here, and internal organs there. Then I would picture it all coming back together, culminating in the person once again, a complete being working on their yard.
Yes, I understand this may sound a bit crazy, but it really is the nature of how things are in life; everything is dependently arising. When we begin to understand this, we experience tremendous liberation from suffering because we’re able to see that things really aren’t as personal or subjective as we make them.
When we look deeper into phenomena, we see their true nature as part of the great indivisible body of reality. We see that nothing exists separately from anything else. We free ourselves from rigid conceptualization and categorization. Of course, concepts, labels, categories, and so forth play a major role in the basic functioning of our day-to-day lives and they’re obvious necessities, but now we’re able to also see beyond their limitations. Sure, we can see that a table is a table by name and function, but looking deeper, we can also see that it has no intrinsic “tableness” to it. We still see the table, but now we’re able to see past the illusion of its separate, inherent existence, noticing that it consists of four legs, a top, nails, and so forth, all of which have to come together to make it a “table” in the first place.
This applies to everything. We can learn to see things exactly as they are, not as we’ve named and judged them to be. When we look at things through our judgments and concepts, the universe appears as samsara—an illusion. Once we’re free of our judgments and conceptualizations, we see that everything is no longer separate or isolated. Instead, it’s completely interconnected as One, as ISness, as the ground of all being, as emptiness, as our inherent nature that unites us all.
Eventually, when we’ve become rooted in a place that’s free of labels and conceptualizations, we may find this teaching frees us from the concepts of interbeing and impermanence altogether. These concepts are wonderful tools to work with, but we want to be careful not to become dependent on them. To again draw from the wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh:
These kinds of concepts are exactly what the Buddha said we should get rid of. He said that nirvana is the complete extinction of concepts, including the concepts of impermanence and nonself. When you want to start a fire, you light a match, and then the fire consumes the match. The teachings of impermanence and nonself are like the match. If you practice with intelligence and succeed in your practice, the match will be consumed and you will be completely free.4
So my friends, set it on fire, watch it burn, and rejoice in the ashes of liberation. This is your true freedom.