Speaking like this you will soon be accusing me of giving you a big sales pitch. Don’t think of me as someone hawking the wares of the Buddha in the marketplace, think rather that we are all companions in Dukkha, in birth, old age, sickness and death…
Inner emptiness means to be normal, to have a mind that is not scattered and confused. Anyone who experiences this really likes it. If it develops to its greatest degree, which is to be empty of egoism, then it is Nibbana.
The medicine which cures the disease is the knowledge and practice that gives birth to emptiness. When emptiness has appeared it will be the cure of the disease and alter recovery from the disease there will be nothing save emptiness, the state void of Dukkha and. void of the mental defilements that are the cause of Dukkha
If you don’t want to suffer, then work with an empty mind. Then work will be fun and the results will be excellent.
Every one of us has the disease of ‘I’ and ‘mine’, and we absorb more germs every time we see a form, smell an odour, touch a tangible object, taste a flavour, or think in the manner of an ignorant person. In other words, there is the reception of the germ, those things surrounding us that are infected and cause the disease, every time there is sense contact…
The matter of “I” and “mine” is the single essential point of the Buddhist teachings. It is the one thing which must be completely purged. It follows that here lies the knowing, understanding, and practice of all the Buddhist Teachings without exception.
There is a word in Buddhism that covers this completely, the word sunnata, or emptiness, emptiness of selfhood, emptiness of any essence that we might have a right to cling to with all our might as being ‘mine’…
Often, when we say that there is no self, people get worried, or angry. Their attachment and identification to this idea of a self is so strong that they actually become hostile towards us if we begin to say there is no such thing. We need to explain this a bit, therefore, so that you don’t get mad at us. The idea of a self is common to everyone. Whether we come from the East or the West, we have some kind of idea and belief in a self, every one of us, absolutely; it is a fundamental illusion that arises in all human minds. Indians, Thais, Chinese, everybody, is walking around with this idea of a self, a soul, an atman, or whatever we want to call it.
