Life is so full of names, forms, thoughts and emotions. We often feel ourselves cornered by this material fullness which does not leave any room for joy, contentment and satisfaction in life. However, when we are able to get an insight into the potent nature of emptiness, new alleyways emerge from this seemingly empty space.
After spending quite many years on the spiritual path and learning Vedic Wisdom from Acharya Shunya, I reached a sincere understanding that spirituality is merely an unloading process of our samsaric baggage. baggages. The more we empty out, the more wholesome and full we become. The material fullness of thoughts, emotions, relationships, attachments and the whole array of conceptualization and labeling in the mind have to be unloaded in the first place to create space for an entirely different kind of fullness.
Acharya Shunya explained in her teachings some years ago that there are two different types of samsara that we are experiencing. The first one is the cycle of birth and death that we are more familiar with. The second one can be called the mini samsara which is that vicious circle of attachment, aversion and delusion. This mini samsara is constantly creating mini births in our midstream as thoughts, emotions, cravings that are strung together to construct a reality for each one of us.
In almost every human experience there is so much clinging to what is desirable, pleasurable; and aversion for the painful and undesirable. We crave for things and then get attached to them and eventually when things fall apart, we get frustrated and start thinking that life is not fair. This constant wanting of things to go a certain way creates so much anger, confusion and delusion about the true nature of things. Therefore, the rising and falling of these mini samsara cycles is the one that we have to unload from our consciousness to pave the way for an insight into emptiness and what lies there as an unmanifest potential.
However, emptiness, if not examined properly can easily turn into a superficial and vague concept with undertones of nihilism. Therefore, a sound understanding and meditative insight into the true nature of emptiness seems vital. Vedic teachings fortunately provide us the necessary baseline to start from when looking into emptiness.
My first experience with emptiness was practicing Acharya Shunya’s Guided Atmabodha meditation. As suggested by our teacher in this meditation, we are guided to turn our attention from the limited space of our mind which is caught up in mini samsara cycles to that vast, unlimited space of consciousness. Shunyaji defines this in her meditation as the cave of our heart. The cave of the heart is that silent, unmoving place that can act as a springboard for us to jump into the space of meaningful emptiness. From the cave of the heart, we can flush out the risings and fallings of our personal samsaric cycles to rest in stillness.
The biggest hindrance I have encountered as I practiced Atmabodha meditation on a daily basis was that feeling of constriction and hitting a hard concrete wall which would not budge no matter how much I tried. In retrospect, I can see that this impediment was related to my ignorance about the true nature of emptiness. Because this emptiness cannot be a concept produced by our everyday mind. This emptiness is also not a vacant, barren, cold, unconducive area. On the contrary it is the gateway to a beautiful fullness of love, softness and compassion.
This deadlock situation in my meditation and insight into emptiness resolved itself when Bhakti yoga teachings came along. With Bhakti yoga’s soft, loving, devotion based understanding of Brahman and Ishwara, the cave of my heart suddenly filled to the brim with compassion, kindness and joy. I gave up my self- centered approach towards meditation and eased myself into a silent and wordless space of fullness. In this wordless space, I realized that there were no walls to begin with. With this insight, the illusory ice block in the cave of my heart melted into emptiness with the radiance of Bhakti.
Nowadays, emptiness and fullness meditation which is a part of our lineage teachings comes to life with Bhakti yoga’s softness and surrender. Emptying out the mini births in my midstream and filling it with paramprema which is limitless, timeless, formless love for the Divine, helps me to create a space of freedom to act from.
Moving from emptiness to fullness is effortless. It is almost an organic unfolding of what is already there. So there is no effort, nothing to achieve and no fear of losing it. When samsara hits hard and takes hold of my mindstream again and again, I try to remember this soft feeling of love, ease, freedom and ok’ness. And I start from the beginning without getting disheartened. Deep down I know that there is no solace to my heart other than taking a deep dive into this ocean of love and fullness.
Ozlem Tokman
Ozlem is an author of children’s books. She has lived and worked in Beijing, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Seoul in the past twenty years of her life. She is currently living in Chengdu, China with her family.
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