EMPTINESS

 Ancient teacher Huineng said:  If you see everyone’s bad and good,  but do not grasp or reject any of it and do not become affected by it, your mind is like space-this is called greatness.”
 
How do you do that?  How do you see bad and good and not pick one over the other?  And if we don’t pick and choose, then what are we seeing?  What are we accomplishing?
 
I suggest this is a state of mind we might call “no preferences,” as in the first line of that ancient poem  “Shinjinmei:”  “The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.”
  
It is also reminiscent of a line from Dogen’s Instructions to the Tenzo:  “Judging others from within the boundaries of your own opinions, how could you be anything but wrong?”  Or these words from The Sutra of Huineng:  “If you see the error of others, your own error abets them.  If others err but you do not, your own error is still faulty.”
 
Challenging thoughts, especially right now, in this moment of our society, our world, when so much feels to be at stake and divisions of opinion so strong, so absolute.
 
Who is it that picks and chooses?  It is, of course, the “self,”  the “I am” that stands in distinction to something or someone else, that picks and chooses according to personal preferences.  To have “no preferences” is a selfless, “no self,” position.   
 
Life, my life, our lives are, of course, made possible by the posture of a self that picks and chooses.  But it is also the case that, ultimately, you “can’t take it with you.”  Like the one who, shortly before her death, called out, “Take my shoes to the thrift store!  I don’t need shoes anymore!”   Eventually, we have to let everything go, including this thing called “self.”  
 
Breath demonstrates coming going in the form of inbreath and outbreath.  The two activities are distinct, yet constantly moving in relation to each other.  When inbreath and outbreath separate, the self arises, is born, that distinguishes one from the other.  
 
Each activity also comes to an end, where it rests together with its opposite.  Then distinction between them disappears.  Then the self that distinguishes one from the other disappears. There are two such resting points:  one, the completion of inward directed activity, of inbreath;  the other the completion of outward directed activity, of outbreath.
 
Such is emptiness, also called “greatness,”  empty of distinction between inward activity, outward activity, and self;  empty of distinctions, like bad and good.  All of consciousness is like this: one thing and another discriminated from the standpoint of a self.  Like day and night, like life and death, like male and female - the list is endless.  And the basis of all such dualities is unity, (fullness of mind or ‘mindfulness’)  empty of distinctions, a unity whose completion includes both inside and outside, empty of separate identity, empty of distinction between self and other. 
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In the words of Advaita teacher Nisargadatta:  “When I look inside and see that I am nothing, that is wisdom.  When I look outside and see that I am everything, that is love.   My life turns between these two.”