Dharma Talk
Today I was going to go to this Zen center in Cambridge after work, but it was kinda 2 hours after work, and I was kinda sick, so I opted for home and comfiness instead of running around looking for a place I'd never been. I was going to go meditate, hear the Zen guys do their Dharma talk explainy-thing and maybe meet some more Megan-people.
BUT
Mom sent me a youtube of Thich Nhat Hahn doing a Dharma talk. He has his audience meditate about a sheet of paper. He says to look deeper, see the trees that were made into paper, and the water and sunlight and the clouds and the sun, but also the logger and the logger’s mom, and the wheat that became the bread that became the breakfast for the logger. Because the sheet of paper wouldn’t exist if not for various other things. And then, logically, it is not a separate entity. The paper wouldn’t exist if not for all the other things. He says that means the paper is empty-it is not a separate-self from everything that came together to result in its existence. Emptiness is a tricky word for it, though (which he says). He explains “empty” as a very nice word. Without being empty, it can’t exist? Seems like backward logic. If it exists, it is because of all the things, and if it didn’t exist those things would exist without it… because everything is FOR tons of other things. SO, It either exists empty, or it doesn’t exist. With that as the options, I think I’d go with empty. OK, that is hard to follow, but for now it’s enough that things don’t exist on their own. I am not megan if I don’t have food… but I am also not the personality-megan without people to react to. Because, then, if you don’t exist except as much as whatever else is interacting to make you exist, you could be different at any time. You could interact with other people and find a different personality (although mostly it’s the same, because you’ve still had lots of the same other input-gene input, psychological habits… But maybe that’s the thing about practicing meditation, you learn how to act in the present moment and so more things can change. The more you let go of the things you think define you, the more you’re open to being changed by what you choose to experience. Takes off the brakes, so to speak, and lets you go flying down the hill, changing. Your self involves much more input than a piece ofpaper (except the paper is connected to all the things! So, so are you. You are connected to all the things. You can’t choose to be connected to these things or those things-you’re connected to all the things. But your puny human brain can only comprehend a certain amount of that connectedness at any given time. And maybe that’s where the attention thing comes in. What you choose to experience of those connections is what becomes your life. You are connected to all the things. You ARE all the things-without the things you would be nothing-but the things would be nothing without everything else. The middle of the onion is empty, or infinite… not sure. But this made me see how everything is everything else, or it’s nothing. It makes sense that it’s nicer to eat local food because you can more easily picture what it was like in the making, and you’d need to picture less of the sad things, like slave-laborers and planes and boats getting stuff places. And if you stopped buying the faraway/bad things, the shelves would be empty, the planes would be empty, the slaves would be unnecessary, and the fields would be empty-everything empty and ready to be filled with something else. I think that’s the way “empty” is nice, useful, good: Empty means ready to be filled with something new. Every time I dig up emotional crap, another past sedimentary layers of “this is just how I am,” and watch it dissolve, I think-wow, I don’t have to be like that? But that was always just who I was… And when you’ve gone backwards, digging up layer after layer like that, untangling all the misery and habits and fears, what will you find at the bottom? IS there a bottom? Is there a “you” when all those things you thought made you you are gone? You’d be empty, ready to be filled with new things.
the link: Thich Nhat Hahn Dharma talk