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Dear Friends,
This Sunday I will be facilitating our now on-line Sangha. We are offering a Chapter of Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay)’s book, The Art of Living, as a theme for each of the next 7 months. The first three chapters are named after the Three Doors of Liberation: Emptiness, Signlessness and Aimlessness. The last 4 chapters are the last 4 of the 16 Breathing Practices taken from Thay’s book, Breathe, You Are Alive: The Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing. March’s theme is Emptiness. Facilitators are free to use the theme or not, so it doesn’t impose a restriction on anyone, but offers ideas and structure to those who enjoy using it.
Thay said that if you understand one teaching deeply you understand all the teachings. Each point in the direction of deep “looking,” and to the awakening that comes from looking deeply. The teachings are in words, but the insight is a transformation of our whole being, our whole way of experiencing reality, including ourselves. Chapter 1 is titled, EMPTINESS, THE WONDER OF INTERBEING. Emptiness is shorthand for empty of a separate self, and to “grok” this fully is to experience the deep meaning of Thay’s teaching’s “the self is made entirely of non-self elements,” and “we are empty of a separate self, but we are filled with the entire cosmos.” The great benefit of this teaching is the liberation from the suffering we create for ourselves and others when we have the delusion that we are a separate self and that other beings in the world are separate selves, and the great liberation to be free and open to the flowing nature of all realities. With the insight Interbeing we dwell in the Ultimate, and we know it.
When we transcend our illusion of separateness, we are free to dwell as the whole cosmos and to enjoy the spontaneous energies happening in us and around us in our very beautiful world. We’ll explore and practice with this enlightening mode of being.
I look forward to being with you.
Smiling,
Keith
Universal Emptiness of the Heart
True Enlightenment Garden
practicing mindfulness in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh