Emptiness

So by now, you've probably come to appreciate that although thoughts and feelings arise in the mind, they're actually transient in nature. However much you might want to chase them or hold onto them, they're ultimately intangible. The backdrop for this phenomenon is sometimes referred to as emptiness. After all, if everything is intangible, what is it that's there? But emptiness is a loaded word. It can imply nothingness. It may even sound negative to some. The truth is, though, we could just as well say fullness rather than emptiness or somethingness rather nothingness. The traditional analogy to help explain this phenomenon is a rainbow. So the rainbow is bright, clear, vivid, beautiful to look at. It's there right in front of us. We can't say it isn't there. But even if we somehow find the rainbow, we can't touch it. In fact, if we try to touch it, our hand just goes right through it. So though it sounds paradoxical is both there and not there. So we can say there's a fullness to the appearance and yet an emptiness to the quality. This is such a useful analogy to remember in our meditation practice. Sure, thoughts appear as vivid, full, as though they're tangible, and yet when we look a little closer, we see there's nothing to touch, nothing to chase, nothing to resist, and nothing to hold on to....