Let me tell you today about Sunyata.
But before I explain what Sunyata means, you need to understand something about yourself.
Right now, as you are reading these words, you are not simply reading them.
You are reading them through everything you have accumulated until today.
Your memories are there. Your experiences are there. Your likes and dislikes are there. Your ideas about what is right and wrong are there. Even your idea of who you are is sitting quietly behind your reading and deciding what you should accept and what you should reject.
You may think you are simply seeing the world as it is.
You are not.
You are seeing the world through yourself.
Now imagine for a moment that this “yourself” becomes completely silent.
Not your body.
Not your awareness.
The one who keeps saying I, the one who keeps comparing, judging, remembering, reacting and giving everything a personal meaning.
What happens when that one becomes silent?
This is where the real question begins.
In deep meditation, you can reach a point where the usual feeling of being a separate individual starts disappearing. You are still aware. In fact, your awareness becomes much clearer. But the person who normally stands between you and your experience is no longer there in the same way.
You hear a sound, but you are not immediately saying, I like it or I don’t like it.
You see something, but you are not immediately saying, this is good for me or this is bad for me.
Something happens, but you are not immediately turning it into my problem, my success, my failure, my happiness or my suffering.
For once, you are experiencing what is there without constantly bringing yourself into it.
This is the doorway to what I call Sunyata.
And this is where people often misunderstand the experience.
Sunyata does not mean that nothing exists.
It does not mean that you become unconscious.
It does not mean that your mind becomes dull or empty.
It means that the individual self which normally colours every experience is no longer dominating that experience.
Then something very unusual happens.
You begin to see existence without the limitations that your ordinary mind puts around it.
Until now, you have understood everything through your intelligence.
But your intelligence has a limit.
You have understood everything through your experience.
But your experience also has a limit.
You have understood everything through what you have been taught.
And that too has a limit.
So what happens when all three become quiet and you experience something directly?
You understand it differently.
You don’t have to think your way to the answer.
You see it.
And when you truly see something for yourself, it is no longer just an idea that you can accept today and reject tomorrow.
The meditation ends.
You open your eyes.
You return to your work, your family, your responsibilities and your ordinary life.
But something has changed.
You have seen something without the person you normally call “I” standing between you and that experience.
That experience may have lasted for a short time.
But the understanding you gained from it does not have to disappear when the meditation ends.
This is why I do not look at meditation simply as a way to become calm or to feel good for an hour.
Those things may happen, but they are not the real point.
The real point is much deeper.
Can you see reality without the person you have always believed yourself to be?
If you can, then meditation has taken you somewhere.
And if what you saw remains with you when you open your eyes, then you have not simply had another meditation experience.
You have understood something.
You have understood Sunyata. Congratulations.