Emptiness Really Does Exist (Part 2 of 2)

In my last article, Emptiness Really Does Exist (Part 1 of2), I wrote how the word "emptiness" refers to the idea that we assign meaning to sense contacts and the meaning depends on who does the assigning. Read that before you read this.

Everything comes from our own minds, from our own perceptions. That doesn't mean things don't exist. Of course they do. Things won't change or go away because we wish it so. But everything is empty, something coming from our own minds.

I have been reading the book, The Diamond Cutter: The Buddha on Managing Your Business and Your Life, by Geshe Michael Roach and Lama Christie McNally. In this book, he describes the word "emptiness".

The author, Michael Roach, describes how he was working for a diamond company in New York. Their business was expanding and they needed to find larger quarters. He wrote a long story describing all the possible alternatives they had. Should they move into a larger building closer to the diamond district where it was more expensive? Would that impress potential clients so they could charge more? Would that drive away clients who now had to pay more? Should they rent or buy? What if real estate prices go up or go down?

There were many other possibilities described in the book. Every alternative he described had good points and bad points, depending on the point of view. This is where he described the idea of emptiness as "the hidden potential in things".

He said,

"What if we try to evaluate whether the building, or the acquisition of the building, is in itself a good thing or a bad thing. The obvious answer, if you think about it even for an instant, is that, in itself, acquiring the building is neither a good thing or a bad thing -- it just depends on who's looking. ...nothing that ever happens to us is a good thing or a bad thing from its own side because -- if it were -- then everyone else would experience it that way as well."

First we learned about emptiness. Now it's time for another concept. Any experience gives us a mental imprint of that experience. We can say that the experience makes an imprint on our mind. Our minds are constantly recording our experiences. Those experiences all come through our senses or through our thoughts. We have no other contact with the world.

These imprints are our way of interpreting our sense contacts. When a sense contact is repeated, we remember what happened last time. Based on that previous experience, we respond in a way that gives us more of what we like and less of what we don't like. In other words, our response to and understanding of the world is based on previous experiences. Karma.

The point of all of this is that a sensory contact is just a physical sensation or a thought. That is the reality. Our response to the sense contact is based on our imprints. That is not reality because it is empty.

From The Diamond Cutter again, there are four rules about how imprints work (paraphrased):

1. The type of imprint determines the type of response. A negative imprint leads to a negative response. A positive imprint leads to a positive response.

2. The strength of the imprint increases over time.

3. Every response we have is triggered by an imprint. If we have a completely new sense contact, we don't respond well because we don't have an imprint to tell us how to respond.

4. Every imprint we have leads to a response.

To summarize, "Even a relatively minor action, if undertaken with a conscious awareness of how imprints make us see an otherwise "neutral" or "empty" world as we do, will lead to tremendous results." Those people who understands how imprints make us see the world as we do can go about consciously creating the life they want.

The authors are saying that this is not just creating an attitude that affects our future. They are saying that this process of selecting imprints actually creates the reality we want. We can learn to work back from a desired result to identify the particular imprint that will lead to the desired result. Then we can use that particular imprint to create the outcome we want.

How do we use these imprints? Here is my final quote from The Diamond Cutter:

Giving brings wealth, a good world comes from ethics;

Patience brings beauty, eminence comes from effort.

Concentration brings peace, and from wisdom comes freedom;

Compassion achieves everything we all wish for.

A person who takes all seven of these

And perfects them together will reach

That place of inconceivable knowledge,

No less than the world's protector.

That seems a little strange to people that are accustomed to thinking that things happen to us. Let's put it into a more familiar Western perspective: "As ye sow, so shall ye reap". Let's look at an example. Suppose your business is having difficulty in these tough economic times. It may be necessary to make changes to conserve cash.

The imprint you use determines the result of your actions. If you use the imprint of stinginess, poor morale will result and employees will not voluntarily participate in improving the company. The conversations will be something along the lines of "Money is tight this year. We are not paying bonuses to anyone except the executives. We need you all to work harder to help restore us to profitability." In fact, employees will grumble and will not work hard because of the imprint of stinginess.

If you use the imprint of generosity, good morale will result. Imagine the difference in the conversations when the attitude is something along the lines of "We are having concerns about being able to share profits this year. Profits are way off. Here is what we are doing to help the company weather this storm so we can return to profitability and start giving out bonuses again." Employees will work hard because of the imprint of generosity.

When you are faced with any decisions on any topic, the imprint you choose to work with absolutely determines the outcome of the action you take.

  

Note: The title Geshe is an academic award for Buddhist scholars. The title Lama is usually used as an honorary title for Buddhist scholars who have achieved the highest level of spiritual development.

© 2011 Eric Borreson

Emptiness Really Does Exist (Part 1 of 2)

I've been thinking about emptiness. No, that doesn't mean I've been thinking about nothing. Emptiness is a word that has a very specific meaning in Buddhism. I had always supposed that it means something like "nothing exists", or "absence of spiritual meaning". It turns out that I was pretty clueless.

From Wikipedia:

In Buddhism, emptiness is a characteristic of phenomena, arising from the Buddha's observation that nothing possesses an essential, enduring identity, by virtue of dependent origination. Thus to say an object is "empty" is synonymous with saying that thing is dependently originated.

This is an example of those Buddhist writings that quickly wander off into the "land of makes no sense". That statement is a lot of big words put into a complex, hard-to-read paragraph. When you read something like this, your mind starts to wander and gets lost. Let's break it down to make it easier to understand. Note: This is not an exact quote. I took out the references to the original Pali words. It's hard enough to read is it is.

The phrase, "emptiness is a characteristic of phenomena", means that everything that exists, including our thoughts, has characteristics that can be used to describe it. Emptiness is one of those characteristics.

The phrase, "arising from the Buddha's observation", means that Siddhārtha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, was a pretty smart guy who had lots of time to observe and think how the universe actually works. His teachings make up what we call Buddhism.

The phrase, "nothing possesses an essential, enduring identity, by virtue of dependent origination", is the most important part of this paragraph. It is the foundation of Buddhism. Whenever we sense (see, hear, touch, taste, smell, or think about) anything, we assign a meaning to that sense contact. That meaning is different for every person. Nothing has any meaning by itself.

For example, suppose I observe a pen. Most of us associate the sight of a pen with the idea of writing. But is it correct to say that a pen has some inherent meaning so that everyone that sees it assigns the same meaning? Of course not. What about a pre-literate society where the people have no idea what writing is, let alone what a pen is? Judging just by appearances, a pen may be designed to clean the wax out of my ears. It's obvious that a pen doesn't have any inherent meaning. We have experience with pens as a writing instrument, so that we can assign that meaning to it.

We can extend this idea to everything that we sense. Let's look at the idea of "heroin". For most of us, heroin has meaning as a drug that destroys lives. Heroin is "bad". What about the person that enjoys using heroin to get high? In that person's world view, heroin is "good". I'm not saying you should go out and shoot up and get high. I'm saying that you cannot assign meaning to things because "nothing has an essential, enduring identity, by virtue of dependent origination".

The phrase, "Thus to say an object is "empty" is synonymous with saying that thing is dependently originated", means that everything in the universe only has meaning that we assign to it and that meaning depends on who does the assigning. This does not mean that our sense contacts are not real, or immaterial.

For every sense contact, we have a story (or stories) in our memory banks that we use to explain what it means. This story is probably a memory of previous experiences with that sense contact or something very similar.

Let's look at an easy example. In one of our dharma classes, Carl had us walk outside, barefoot, in damp grass. Several people expressed dismay at the thought of doing that. The point of the exercise is that the feeling of wet grass on our feet is just a sense contact. We all have a story about what it means and we assign a value to that story. After the experience, we all realized that the sense contact is just a story.

Stories are not real. They are a construct of our mind. Stress appears in our lives when we try to see life as something other than what it really is. We need these stories to understand what is happening. We need these stories to communicate with other people. However, our stress begins when we start to believe the stories.

Next time, I will add to this by discussing how to apply this in your life.

Taiji – Stages of Development

This was originally published in the October 2011 Issue of Yang Sheng Magazine.

There is an old saying in tai chi that says, "The first 10,000 times don't count". You should expect that you need to practice your forms that many times to move through these stages. There are no shortcuts. You can read about it. You can think about it. But in the end, tai chi is an experiential exercise. You have to do it.

In general terms, there are three stages of development of your taiji practice.

Stage 1 – practice your external movements so that they are done with correct posture, pacing, and direction of vision.

Stage 2 – practice how energy is stored and delivered in each form.

Stage 3 – practice moving your qi to where you are delivering energy.

Stage 1 – practice your external movements so that they are done with correct posture, pacing, and direction of vision.

It is important to practice your form at this stage until the movements and postures are automatic. This is the easiest stage to learn, but it can be very frustrating for beginners. Everyone else seems so fluid and graceful. It takes time to get past the negative self image and learn to enjoy the movement.

Most teachers and videos do a pretty good job of explaining the movements of a taiji form or set. However, there are many subtleties that can only be learned from a teacher. If you have access to a good teacher, great. Enjoy it and learn lots.

If you do not, do the best you can with videos, books, and other resources. Choose a common form so that you can find an occasional workshop. I recommend either the Yang 24 (Beijing) forms or the Taiji for Arthritis from Dr. Paul Lam Taiji for Health Community. There are many good weekend workshops available.

There are a few simple things that you should know as you begin your practice.

Take your time and learn methodically. Learning faster is not necessarily better. Work through learning the forms at a steady pace and take your time in understanding the details. It's better to learn a few forms or sets well than lots of them carelessly. Plan on learning only 1 or 2 new forms each week.

Remember the 70% Rule. Estimate your greatest ability to perform an exercise. Practice at only 70% of that level. This is not a competition. If it hurts, stop immediately. Apply this rule to everything in taiji, from how far you stretch, to how many repetitions, and to how long you practice. As you become more familiar with the forms and with your own body, you can gradually increase this number.

Control Your Movements. A good first principle at this stage is to learn to control your movements so they are slow, smooth, and continuous. You should move as though there is a gentle resistance. Think of your qi flow as a river. As it flows downhill, it gathers strength. Keep your movements slow, smooth, and continuous to smooth the progress of the qi flow.

Body Alignment. Another way to think about controlling your movements is to work on body alignment. Being upright is very important, but it is not as simple as it seems. A way to approach it is to think of your spine as a string. Imagine gently stretching the string from both ends. Being upright provides the internal organs with more space. An upright body also strengthens the internal deep stabilizer muscles. Try to keep your body upright and supple throughout all the movements. Be especially aware of this when you start bending your knees because your alignment can change. When you bend your knees, imagine that you are sitting down in a straight chair (not the recliner!) and keep your back fairly straight. Use a mirror or video camera to check yourself while practicing.

Practice a little each day. Ten minutes of practice each day will bring you better results than practicing for an hour at a time once a week. You will find that taiji is more challenging than it looks. If you need a break, take one. Frequently, take time to review what you have learned. As you learn the basics of your forms, you will want to practice quite a bit more than ten minutes.

Start to learn the essential principles of taiji. Read Yang Chen Fu’s Ten Essential Principles and start to incorporate them into your practice. Most of them won’t make much sense yet, but that’s OK. Keep returning to them and it will become more clear in time.

As you continue to practice your taiji, you will find that you gradually develop these skills. As you start to get a better understanding of what each form is intended to do, you will eventually start to move into Stage 2 without even being conscious of it.

Stage 2 – practice how energy is stored and delivered in each form.

In Stage 2, study each form in detail and understand the intentions. Most of my experience in is Yang style, so this explanation will follow that experience.

Even the simplest forms have several (many) parts to learn and master. It is a big oversimplification, but we can say that the seven things to focus on at this point are 1) what your feet are doing, 2) what your hands are doing, 3) what your waist (body) is doing, 4) what your eyes are doing, 5, yin and yang, 6) opening, and 7) closing.

According to the classics of taiji, “Internal force is rooted in the feet, developed by the legs, governed by the waist, and expressed in the hands.” This internal force is a spiral force generated at the feet that causes the waist to rotate, which leads the hands in the various taiji forms. Spiral force is beyond the scope of this article, but the comments about the feet, waist, and hands are important at this point in your learning.

1) What is your stance? What are your feet doing? There are many stationary stances, from horse stance with equal weighting on each foot; to bow stance, with the 70/30 weight ratio (brush knee); to empty stance, where essentially all your weight is on one leg (playing lute); and T stance during transitions (fair lady works shuttles). In addition, you should become familiar with dropping stance (snake creeps down) and centering stance (golden rooster stands on one leg). The stance is important in delivering energy (power) during each form.

2) Your hands should be in certain places during the movements of the form. Your hands deliver energy during each form. Understand this and be aware of it during each form. There are many specific hand positions and shapes for different forms.

3) The waist is the part of the body above the hip bones and below the diaphragm. The waist can be moved independently of the hips in some forms. In general, most forms have turning movements. The waist should lead the movement of the arms and the rest of the body. This increases/improves the delivery of energy.

4) During most forms, your eyes should follow your hand(s) during movement. When your hands are moving separately, your eyes should follow the dominant hand. The dominant hand is the one that is delivering energy. This is usually the higher hand or the one that is the most forward. For example, during brush knee, the hand that pushes forward is dominant and should be followed with your eyes. The hand that brushes the knee is not dominant. However, this statement is a little misleading. Your eyes really should be looking “through” your hand at a point beyond the hands to where you want your energy to be delivered.

5) Learn the yin and yang of each hand and foot during each movement. As we begin to move, wu ji separates into yin and yang, the opposite poles of the universe. In other words, our body manifests yin and yang throughout the forms. Yin corresponds to empty/insubstantial and storing energy. Yang corresponds to weighted/substantial and delivering energy. Throughout a form, our hands and feet continuously transition between yin and yang.

6) Every form has an open. This is the part of the form where power is developed and stored. Think of it as a bow and arrow. Pulling on the bowstring is opening and storing energy. For example, during brush knee, one hand goes back while the other one is placed somewhere near your elbow. This is the opening where you are storing energy.

In general, you should inhale sometime during opening movements. Chen Jin, a Chen-style taiji master, wrote that when you are opening, you are solid outside and soft inside. You can feel your body soften as you inhale and expand your abdomen.

7) Every form has a close. This is the part of the form where power is delivered. Again, think of it as a bow and arrow. Releasing the bow string is closing and delivering energy. For example, during brush knee, one hand goes forward while the other one brushes past your knee. This is the closing where you are delivering energy.

In general, you should exhale sometime during closing movements. Chen Jin, a Chen-style taiji master, wrote that when you are closing, you are soft outside and solid inside. You can feel your inside harden, or become more solid, when you are delivering energy as you contract your abdomen.

In summary, continue to learn the essential principles of taiji. Read Yang Chen Fu’s Ten Essential Principles and start to incorporate them into your practice. They should be starting to make more sense now. Keep returning to them and it will become more clear in time.

Stage 3 – practice moving your qi to where you are delivering energy.

In Stage 3, you begin to learn to use your intent to direct the flow of qi through your body. Mental focus is essential to this step.

Circulating Your Qi

The next phase of understanding open and close, as described in Stage 2, is to start moving your qi as you open and close. When you open (inhale), move your qi from your dan tian, through your perineum, and up your yang meridian (along your spine) toward the bai hui point at the crown of your head. When you close (exhale), move your qi down your yin meridian (the front center of your body) to the lower dan tian.

Keep your mouth gently closed with your tongue touching your upper palate. It may take a long time (years) to become comfortable with this. It is important that you do not force your breathing here. If you are not sure where to be inhaling and exhaling or you get tired, just allow your body to breathe naturally.

Intent

There is a statement in the taiji classics that says something like, “The mind (intent) moves the internal energy and the internal energy moves the body.” This is an important principle, but it is difficult to learn. It is important to practice your way through the three stages of development before you can really understand intent.

Intent is discussed in Yang Cheng Fu's Ten Essential Principles of Taijiquan, where he says, "use intent, not muscular strength.". Intent has 3 common meanings in taiji practice. First, intent means thoughts or expectations. Second, intent means qi or internal energy. Third, intent means to be aware of and pay attention to your own internal strength.

The emphasis on intent is important in taiji because the use of strength is very different than other martial arts. Taiji uses slow, soft force to deflect or divert an opponent’s energy instead of meeting force with force. This allows time for your mind to contemplate the movement and imagine the movement in your mind before your muscles actually move.

Intent also involves the use of your eyes. In the taiji classics, it says something like, “The eyes and the hands must follow each other.” However, this does not mean that your eyes must exactly follow the movement of your hands. It means that your eyes and hands must arrive at the same point at the same time.

When you are practicing taiji, move slowly and continuously and use intent to move beyond the physical part of the form. This helps to develop a strong mind-body connection. Qi gets stronger as it continues to flow, just like the force of water gets stronger as it flows downhill. If you stop moving during the forms, your qi also stops moving.

Don’t forget that taiji is an internal art. This means that the movements begin in your mind. Your intention leads the movements of your energy. And from that energy, you create an internal energy. As you move, think about applying a soft, gentle energy to your movements. Use that to lead your movements. Eventually, you will begin to feel the internal energy move within you. The key is to practice regularly.

© 2011 Eric Borreson