In Buddhist philosophy when we say things are “empty”, we mean they are empty of independent existence. All things are conditioned; they are products of thousands of separate conditions and only exist because those conditions have come together at that moment in time.
Our slice of toast depends on the baker, the miller, the truckers, the farmers, the grain, the sun and rain, etc. Remove any one of those, and this one slice of toast at this moment cannot exist.
The illusion of independent existence creates a sense of expectation. But that expectation is dependent on conditions and is empty of real separate truth.
This is easy to say but deep down most of us disbelieve it very strongly. How can my food go bad? How can my body not work like it did? How can my partner seem different than they were? These all feel like betrayals. They are! They are betrayals of our expectations. And so we suffer.
Is it possible to live in a way by which we won’t feel these betrayals?
Payton guided our discussion this week. Here’s his notes:
Empty apple
When we see an apple and we think, “I like apples!”, we have a concept in our heads of what an apple tastes like. But then, if we take a bite and we don’t like the taste, we are momentarily confused. How can this be? We like apples. Is this not an apple?
We are forced to invent a new concept to explain it. This is a bad apple, which is like an apple but does not taste good. Then we give the apple to our dog and the dog happily eats it, enjoying every bite. How can this be? It was a bad apple and that means it doesn’t taste good, and I know my dog doesn’t like things that don’t taste good (I’ve seen them spit out medicine and raw broccoli before) so why did the dog enjoy this?
We must invent a new concept again. The dog likes rotten food. But what if the dog doesn’t eat a particular rotten food? We have to refine our concepts yet again.
All of these concepts and investigations can be useful, but it would be much simpler if we just didn’t assume that the thing we bit into was an “apple”, or that “apples are a thing we like”. Instead, we could have had the same experience of biting into an apple, encountered an unpleasant taste, and put it down. No more investigation required.
When the dog smells food, they may try to eat it. If it tastes bad, they spit it out and go on with their day, unperturbed. We, on the other hand, may get frustrated. We want to find out why a bad apple was allowed to be served to us. We want to find a more pleasant tasting apple because we now are craving that taste. We long after something or get angry at something. This is suffering created by the illusion of a separate, sustainable thing called “an apple” which is a thing we like to eat.
If we were eating a mystery food with our eyes closed, the problem would not exist. Good taste, bad taste, we wouldn’t have or build an expectation.
We build and use these expectations constantly with objects, but also with people, with ourselves, and with our own emotions. We think we know how something is, and when it is not how we expect, suffering happens.
Of course we need to have expectations and they can healthily guide our life, but at the same time we need to avoid getting trapped by them when they inevitably prove to be false.
The apple is empty of “apple”-ness. It’s a mystery, really. As are all things, really.
The idea of an apple or the idea that we like apples are like soap bubbles; they seem real and solid but then, suddenly, they vanish.
Disappointment
Payton also played an excerpt from a talk by Kate Munding on the topic of Disappointment, which you can listen to here: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/85877/
