226. The Emptiness That Is You

There are many subtle ways of binding yourself. You might have a secret desire so powerful that you feel you must fulfill it or not live at all. You might have an aversion to a certain kind of experience that arises regularly and operates quietly throughout your life. You might have a belief buried so deep inside you that it feels like a fundamental part of your being. All of these attachments prevent you from being free, from seeing clearly, and from living joyfully.

It’s easy to fall under the control of attachment, to feel that a particular want or fear or belief is really you, and that there isn’t anything else that could be you but these things. But nothing could be further from the truth. The objects of your attachments are just products of life — outcomes of your discriminating values functioning in the world. What is actually you is none of these things.

You are the subject who perceives, who feels, and who thinks. You are something that does, not something that is. You are the emptiness that is left behind when your attachments are loosened and your desires, aversions, and beliefs become merely objects of experience that arise and then pass. This emptiness terrifies you because it is so immense, vast, and interminable.

On some level, you already know that you are this emptiness. It feels real and present, yet it is also nothing at all. It is both and also neither. Its paradoxical nature makes it even more terrifying, but it’s precisely your emptiness that allows truth, beauty, and goodness to arise through you. When it is properly seen, emptiness does not leave you with the dread of nothingness. Rather, it pushes you towards compassionate and creative actions that will bring you joy.

To see clearly is your responsibility. It is nothing less than the ceaseless aspiration towards greater awareness of both self and world. By seeing how attachment to your own desires, aversions, and beliefs produces suffering in your life, you also learn how to be free of it. And then you can allow yourself to be this powerful emptiness that is also an unfathomable fullness.