VBT – Meditation 109.4
Emptiness
This technique is concerned with emptiness – they are the most delicate, the most subtle. Even to conceive of emptiness seems impossible. Buddha used this technique for his disciples and BHIKKHUS, and because of this technique he was totally misunderstood. Buddhism got completely uprooted from Indian soil just because of this technique.
Buddha said that there is no God. If there is God, you cannot be totally empty. You may not be there but the God will be there, the Divine will be there. And your mind can deceive you, because your Divine may be just your mind playing tricks. Buddha said that there is no soul, because if there is any soul, ATMA, you can hide your ego behind it. Your ego will be difficult to leave if you feel that there is some self within you. Then you cannot be totally empty because you will be there.
Just to prepare the ground for this technique of emptiness, Buddha denied everything. He was not an atheist but he appeared to be an atheist because he said that there is no God, he said there is no soul, he said there is nothing substantial in existence – existence is empty. But this was just to prepare the ground for these techniques. Once you enter emptiness you have entered all – you may call it the Divine, you may call it God, or ATMA, soul, whatsoever you like – but you can enter the truth only when you are totally empty. Nothing should be left of you.
Hindus thought that Buddha was destroying religion, that he was teaching irreligion. And people who heard him, even they couldn’t follow, because whenever you go somewhere, you go to seek something – you never go to seek emptiness. So those who went to hear him were seeking something – nirvana, moksha, the other world, heaven, truth – but they were seeking something.
They had come to gratify their ultimate desire: to find the truth. That is the last desire. And unless you are completely desireless, you cannot know the truth; the very condition of knowing is to be totally desireless.
So one thing is certain, you cannot desire truth. If you desire it, the very desire will become the barrier. There were masters before Buddha who were teaching, “Don’t desire, be desireless.” But they were talking about God, about the kingdom of God, heaven, paradise, moksha, the ultimate freedom and liberation – and they were saying, “Be desireless.” Buddha felt that you cannot be desireless if there is something to be attained. You may pretend that you are desireless, but this pretension, desirelessness, is also from some desire to be fulfilled. It is false. The masters say that you cannot attain ultimate bliss with desire, and you want to attain ultimate bliss – so you start being desireless, you try to be desireless, so that you can attain the ultimate bliss. But the desire is there. You are trying to be desireless just because of the desire. So Buddha said that there is no God to be attained. Even if you desire, there is no one to be attained… so be desireless. There is no moksha somewhere, there is no goal. Life is meaningless and goal-less.
His emphasis is beautiful and wonderful – no one has tried that way. He destroyed all the goals just to help you to be desireless. If the goals are there, how can you be desireless? And if you are not desireless, you will not attain the goal – this is the paradox. He destroyed all the goals – not that those goals are not there, they are there and they can be attained – but if you want to attain them, if you desire to attain them, it becomes impossible. The very basic condition is you must be desireless – then the ultimate happens to you. So Buddha says there is nothing to be desired, desires are futile. Drop all desires and when there is no desire you will be empty.
Tags: Emptiness
