PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

Hopkins: Paradigm Change in Meditation 125mind and body, would this be the “I” that goes to the store? Would this bethe “I” that desires? Hates?Still, the question is not easy to settle, and it does not appear that easyanswers are wanted. Rather, the Fifth Dalai Lama emphasizes that deeplyfelt conviction is needed:It is not sufficient that the mode of non-finding be just a repetitionof the impoverished phrase, “Not found.” For example, when anox is lost, one does not take as true the mere phrase, “It is not in suchand such an area.” Rather, it is through searching for it in thehighland, midland, and lowland of the area that one firmly decidesthat it cannot be found. Here also, through meditating until adecision is reached, you gain conviction (see n. 3).Realization of SelflessnessWith such conviction, the decision reached is that the “I” cannot befound under analysis. The decision is not superficially intellectual buta startling discovery of a vacuity when such an “I” is sought. Thisvacuity shows, not that the “I” does not exist, but that it does notinherently exist as it was identified as seeming to in the first essential.This unfindability is emptiness itself, and realization of it is realizationof emptiness, selflessness.Incontrovertible inferential understanding, though not of the level ofdirect perception or even of special insight, 10 has great impact. For abeginner it generates a sense of deprivation, but for an experiencedmeditator it generates a sense of discovery, or recovery, of what was lost.The Fifth Dalai Lama conveys this with examples:If you have no predispositions for emptiness from a former life, itseems that a thing that was in the hand has suddenly been lost. Ifyou have predispositions, it seems that a lost jewel that had beenin the hand has suddenly been found (see n. 3).The perception of this vacuousness, the absence of inherent existence,carries emotional force—first of loss, since our emotions are built on a falsesense of concreteness, and then of discovery of a lost treasure that makeseverything possible. From a similar point of view, the emptiness of themind is called the Buddha nature, or Buddha lineage, since it is what allowsfor development of the marvelous qualities of Buddhahood. However,unless the meditator has predispositions from practice in a former life, thefirst experience of emptiness is one of loss; later, its fecundity and dynamismbecome apparent.