Quotes about Emptiness

The emptiness bleeds the heart dry of its emotions and drains the tears of the soul

The emptiness bleeds the heart dry of its emotions and drains the tears of the soul

When you rest in quietness and your image of yourself fades, and your image of the world fades, and your ideas of others fade, what's left? A brightness, a radiant emptiness that is simply what you are.

I stood on the balcony dark with mourning...
hoping the earth would spread its wings
in my uninhabited love.

Renunciation mind has nothing to do with sacrificing. When we talk about renunciation, somwhow we get all scared because we think that we have to give up some goodies, somehing valuable, some important things. But there is nothing  that is important; there is nothing that is solidly exisiting. All that you are give up is actually a vague identity .  You realize thigs is not true; it's noe the ultimate. This how and why to develop renunciation

He who, while living an apparently normal life, experiences the whole world as an emptiness, is a Jivanmukta. None is afraid of him; he is afraid of none.

My acts are irrevocable
Because they have no essence...
Where are the doers of deeds
Absent among their conditions?
Imagine a magician
Who creates a creature
Who creates other creatures.
Acts I perform are creatures
Who create others.

The Relativity of Perception

"The primordial purity of the ground completely transcends words, concepts, and formulations."

-Jamgon Kongtrul, Myriad Worlds, translated and edited by the International Committee of Khunkhyab Choling

The definition of emptiness as “infinite possibility” is a basic description of a very complicated term.  A subtler meaning, which might have lost on early translators, implies that whatever arises out of this infinite potential—whether it’s a thought, a word, a planet, or a table—doesn’t truly exist as a “thing” in itself, but is rather the result of numerous causes and conditions.  If any of those causes or conditions are changed or removed, a different phenomenon with arise.  Like the principles outlined in the second turning of the wheel of Dharma, quantum mechanics tends to describe experience in terms not simply of a single possible chain of events leading to a single result, but rather of probabilities of events and occurrences—which, in an odd way, is closer to the Buddhist understanding of absolute reality, in which a variety of outcomes are theoretically possible.

INTERDEPENDENCE

"Whatever depends on conditions is explained to be empty..."

--Sutra Requested by Madropa, translated by Ari Goldfield

There was a part of the mind - perhaps what we call the self-reflective or introspective function - that kept turning to look and, finding emptiness, kept sending the message that something was wrong. It was a reflex that had developed during the years of living in the illusion of individuality, a reflex we commonly consider necessary to our selves. We "look within" repeatedly to determine what we think and feels, to make a study of ourselves and track our states of mind and heart. Now that there was no longer an "in" to look "into", the self-reflective reflex was adrift, but persisted. It kept turning in and turning in, unable to come to terms with the fact that there was no in anymore, only emptiness.

After 48 years, I have said nothing.

The four catagories of existance, non-existance, both existance and non-existance, and neither existance nor non-existance, are spiderwebs among spiderwebs which can never take hold of the enormous bird of reality

Later, it would occur to me it's the emptiness we mistakenly call Innocence.

As you learn to leave alone the activity of unconsciously trying to be the mindbody that you think that you are - the mindbody that this "you" is currently flowing through - and you learn to move as this one that you truly are - this "you" of you; the very heart of existence - steadily, consciously and momentarily, the continuity of the ever deepening of this innermost as it keeps on entering its manifestation, through this mindbody that you find yourself flowing through, allows you to simply bubble in the sheer joy, pleasure, peace, delightfulness and stillness that this "you" of you is.

We live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is a reality. We are that reality. When we understand this, we see that we are nothing. And being nothing, we are everything. That is all.

When perception is stronger than mindfulness, we recognize various appearances and create concepts such as “body,” “cat”, “house,” or “person”… On some clear night, go outside, look up at the sky, and see if you can find the Big Dipper. For most people that is a familiar constellation, easy to pick out from all the other stars. But is there really a Big Dipper up there in the sky? There is no Big Dipper up there. “Big Dipper” is a concept. Humans looked, saw a certain pattern, and then created a concept in our collective mind to describe it. That concept is useful because it helps us recognize the constellation. But it also has another, less useful effect. By creating the concept “Big Dipper” we separate out those stars from all the rest, and then, if we become attached to the idea of that separation, we lose the sense of the night sky's wholeness, its oneness. Does the separation actually exist in the sky? No. We created it through the use of a concept. Does anything change in the sky when we understand that there is no Big Dipper? No.

I've said before that every craftsman
searches for what's not there
to practice his craft.

Once you know the nature of anger and joy is empty and you let them go, you free yourself from karma.

Still others commit all sorts of evil deeds, claiming karma doesn’t exist. They erroneously maintain that since everything is empty, committing evil isn’t wrong. Such persons fall into a hell of endless darkness with no hope of release. Those who are wise hold no such conception.

People who don’t see their own nature and imagine they can practice thoughtlessness all the time are liars and fools.

Empty yourself of everything.
Let the mind become still.
The ten thousand things rise and fall while the Self watches their return.
They grow and flourish and then return to the source.

Great accomplishment seems imperfect,
Yet it does not outlive its usefulness.
Great fullness seems empty,
Yet it cannot be exhausted.

Great accomplishment seems imperfect,
Yet it does not outlive its usefulness.
Great fullness seems empty,
Yet it cannot be exhausted.

When you realise it's a dream you can afford to play. The same thing happens when you realise that ordinary life is a dream, just a movie, just a play. You don't become more cautious, more timid, more reserved. You start jumping up and down and doing flips, precisely because it's all a dream, it's all pure Emptiness. You don't feel less, you feel more - because you can afford to. You are no longer afraid of dying, and therefore you are not afraid of living. You become radical and wild, intense and vivid, shocking and silly. You let it all come pouring through, because it's all your dream.
Life then assumes its true intensity, its vivid luminosity, its radical effervescence."

All that is necessary to awaken to yourself as the radiant emptiness of spirit is to stop seeking something more or better or different, and to turn your attention inward to the awake silence that you are.

 Buddhist words such as compassion and emptiness don't mean much until we start cultivating our innate ability simply to be there with pain with an open heart and the willingness not to instantly try to get ground under our feet. For instance, if what we're feeling is rage, we usually assume that there are only two ways to relate to it. One is to blame others. Lay it all on somebody else; drive all blames into everyone else. The other alternative is to feel guilty about our rage and blame ourselves.

There is no such thing as a person. There are only restrictions and limitations. The sum total of these defines the person.  The person merely appears to be, like the space within the pot appears to have the shape and volume
and smell of the pot.

There was something formless and perfect
before the universe was born.
It is serene. Empty.
Solitary. Unchanging.
Infinite. Eternally present.
It is the mother of the universe.
For lack of a better name,
I call it the Tao.

It flows through all things,
inside and outside, and returns
to the origin of all things.

The Tao is great.
The universe is great.
Earth is great.
Man is great.
These are the four great powers.

Man follows the earth.
Earth follows the universe.
The universe follows the Tao.
The Tao follows only itself.

Our bodies are given life from the midst of nothingness. Existing where there is nothing is the meaning of the phrase, "Form is emptiness." That all things are provided for by nothingness is the meaning of the phrase, "Emptiness is form." One should not think that these are two seperate things.

If there is only empty space, with no suns nor planets in it, then space loses its substantiality.

"...The past is only an unreliable memory held in the present. The future is only a projection of our present conceptions. The present itself vanishes as soon as we try to grasp it. So why bother with attempting to establish an illusion of solid ground?.."