The Empty Fullness of Life

Some strains of Buddhism point us toward emptiness. They show us that if we trace any experience to its core, it dissolves before our eyes.

This dissolution happens, for instance, within the psyche. Our core identity feels solid until we try to locate it in the mind, where we discover only a shifting mass of competing influences without a fixed axis.

If we seek solidity in "real-world" experience, we find that our minds serve up a hall of mirrors. Perceptions are merely reflections—traces of reality rather than direct contact with it. This obvious truth has been explored by philosophers as far back as Plato in his Allegory of the Cave. The experienced world is highly useful for survival, but it is a simulation, manufactured in resonance with whatever is actually "out there."

Emptiness also shows up in physics. Down at the level of the atom, solidity vanishes. In its place, we find energetic swirls that are simultaneously point-like and diffuse. Matter that appears solid is mostly empty space, its subatomic components describable only as mathematical abstractions. It is as if we peek into a room expecting heavy furnishings, but find only shifting shafts of light.

Insight into this emptiness is deeply valued because it reduces suffering. Knowing that mental and physical processes are diaphanous and shifting frees us from taking them too seriously—or too personally.

The Call of the Relative World

That is all well and good. But when we come home to an injured child or a sick pet, we rush to assist, no matter our realization of the void. The world demands our fierce participation even as it vanishes upon close inspection.

How do we reconcile the emptiness behind the screen of experience with the human call to act compassionately? In one Buddhist practice, personal angst dissolves into a void; in another, the practitioner entreats, “May all beings be freed from suffering.” How is it possible to hold reality as illusory while caring so deeply about the distress within it?

MindfulBiology aims to encourage love for our physical forms. But why should we harbor affection for an organism that disappears, at a subatomic grain, into a buzz of abstractions? Wouldn’t it make more sense to declare the body an illusion and focus entirely on the vast, crystalline emptiness behind it?

Perhaps. But Life insists we take it seriously.

This, I suppose, is the true point of Buddhism’s Middle Way. The Buddha emphasized that neither attachment (sensual indulgence) nor denial (extreme asceticism) provides relief. Human and other life-forms arise as temporary processes that endure for a time and then dissipate, stamped all the while by contingency. We are empty of permanence, but we still feel.

The Cushion and the Care

Recognizing emptiness helps us let go of entrapment, ownership, and personal affront. Seeing it clearly is profoundly useful in the face of physical discomfort, chronic illness, loss, and aging. When we hold the psyche at a slight, spacious remove, we feel cushioned against visceral distress.

At the same time, our bodies, other beings, and the world at large deserve our fierce affection and care. Denying the body’s or the world’s importance because of a rarefied sense of emptiness is an intellectual trap. Knowing life to be an evanescent swirl in the currents of time should cause us to appreciate it all the more.

For all the dizzying emptiness of matter and mind, the grounded experience of daily life compels our participation. We cannot ignore the ceaseless activity that begs our involvement at every turn. Even though it is a play of formless energies, we must engage reality exactly as it presents itself.

Contemplative practice teaches us to see reality as it actually is. With the help of both introspection and science, we find truths of great power. Part of this truth is emptiness, but an equal part is our fundamental interconnectedness. And so, we love and care for this world, even as it shimmers before us like an empty mist.