Change: Wisdom realising emptiness

The hour of emptiness has come. As afternoon draws on, one by one the day-trippers begin to disappear, leaving me blissfully alone, beside a shimmer of turquoise water. The rugged golden cove implores me to relax. I lie down on my back and watch the passing clouds.

Those gallant nomads of the sky that scud about the world but leave no trace of anything behind, least of all themselves, except the darkening rain that quenches life: those sun enchanted whispers of creation, whose phantom roars of thunder come and go as cycles live and die; they are the essence of a changing world. I watch them with a peaceful, half-astonished eye, to think that life is only built to break apart, and all our castles vanish in the end. What bliss and dread to know that nothing comes to anything in the finale of our days: we breathe and breathe again and then, before the look has scarcely touched the hour, we fade into another dream, a different fragment of a different star.

In the sky above, sometimes, a hideous feature appears: a shadowy mask of teeth and horns; an ugly goblin’s face; a wrathful countenance. Sometimes the shapes are more benign, a bunch of grapes, a giant hare with lovely fluffy ears. Yet everything dissolves eventually, the good, the bad, the kind, the cruel, the light, the dark, leaving behind only eternal blue of sky: inherent emptiness of all material things that never live apart from change.

Watching the clouds, an ancient understanding strikes: a wisdom realising emptiness, an ecstasy that binds terrestrial thought with higher planes above. If all these swirling anecdotes of shape eventually disappear, then nothing is entirely real: mere tricks of vapour trapping mind. It is therefore pointless to feel distress at any ghastly thing the world would throw your way. They are but clouds that pass from shape to shape. The evil countenance is just a mask put on unconsciously. No real harm can come from it except the harm we make ourselves and read into it. Although we might experience physical pain, psychological pain does not exist.  So long as we can free ourselves from material discomfort, life has the potential to be endless serenity and bliss.

Throughout our lives we put on different masks, and scare and hurt each other with them, hardly aware of what we’re doing. None of these masks contain essential nature. Like clouds, they come and go from emptiness, twisting and morphing into different shapes, depending on perceptions and situations, before finally, and irrevocably, disappearing. The hurt we feel from dealing with these masks are stories that we tell ourselves: a consequence of taking things by their appearance – solid, immutable, unchanging – as opposed to their reality – fragile, empty, temporary.

By realising emptiness, our understanding lifts: we need not hurt ourselves reacting to the foolishness of others. Why stress about the temporary forms the clouds have taken? The Buddhists say that even personality is unreal (the doctrine of anatta): adopting various shapes throughout our life, dissolving into a “clear light” upon death. Foolishness is everywhere, and though we may lament its prevalence, there is no need to feel personally aggrieved.

I wrote this poem to encapsulate this understanding. In a world of change, the sage’s task is not merely to dream, but house our dreams, preserving them for future times, before the rain destroys them. 

The clouds that rise and fall
Create unreal shapes
The jester’s mask that disappears
The dove that merges with the bull
On Earth below
All things behave the same
A briefly-taken shape now fades
The ugly masks that people wear
A trick of vapour merely
Behind these foggy overtures of time
Is emptiness, eternal blue,
A blissful, weightless light
Only this is true.
And there my fears dissolve.
Nothing can harm us in this world.

There is a danger posed by meditation: a tendency to seek a perch of individual peace and build a wall against the world. If nothing’s real, then surely nothing matters?

I would disagree with this conclusion. I do not think that apathy should be the aim of peace. Wisdom realising emptiness is a way of stilling internal disturbance, expelling darkness born of ignorance, and by these means, enabling us to enter better versions of ourselves. If we are discontent to be ourselves, we cannot possibly help others or serve a worthwhile cause effectively. Storm clouds will follow us in all directions.  The sickness brooding in our heart will find some way of sadly spilling into life.

Appearances may be illusory; the beings that live behind the masks are real. Though emptiness is everywhere; we should tread carefully.