The Happiness of Emptiness. A Guided Meditation

Transcribed from a session. Hosted by SanghaLive

Let's have a quiet minute together, and then we'll get the session underway.

Thank you to Sangha Live,  the team and Marnie, our host, who makes these precious connections and gatherings possible.

We have a theme for the evening - the Happiness of Emptiness.

The session falls into three areas - a guided meditation, a talk and question and answers. I will take a  couple of minutes on on the theme. (The transcribed talk on the Happiness of Emptiness will be available on a later blog/post).

To make it clear here,  the understanding of emptiness has nothing whatsoever of anything negative in the tone. In the English language a person may say, “My life feels empty.”  Emptiness has nothing to do with such a state of mind. Emptiness is important, profound, insightful and  genuinely beneficial, which frees us up from any kind of clinging and the suffering that comes with it.

Photo taken an hour after sunrise. Morning frost and the bareness of a winter’s day in January 2024. An hour or so later, the frost had gone leaving the countryside empty of frost. 15 minutes walk from home in Totnes, Devon, England.

This evening, my endeavour  points you in the ‘direction’ of emptiness.  The Buddhist tradition invites you to ’lend an ear’ on the teachings. In this session, please lend two ears.

Let's get underway, with the sitting posture, whether you are sitting in the chair as I am, or on the meditation cushion or in the kneeling posture with a stool. The firm presence of the upright posture is genuinely valuable. This period of time for around 25 minutes is a guide meditation/reflection. Let's get the posture well established.

A small reminder here. Sitting is a common posture, hours every day,  worthy of our presence, our interest and our attention, whether you are sitting on the bus going to work,  underground train, sitting in your car,  at your desk, at the kitchen table. Remember to sit mindfully for your welfare through calm and clarity.

Get the posture straight right from the very beginning. It will be a real support for you. Here we are  sitting with a straight back, sitting rather tall. You can have your eyes open or closed as you wish. I'm going to close my eyes and we'll have this meditation period together.

I will say a sentence or two, then silence for 20 seconds or so, then another sentence or two

A Guided Meditation on Happiness of Emptiness

We are sitting.

We experience sitting.

We can feel the form of the posture, perhaps the hips moved forward a little. There is is expansion in the diaphragm and stomach area.

This is a contribution to energy to being alert, to being present.

This is the voice of the speaker. This is the silence.

There is the bareness of our experience

There is the bareness of our existence.

Right now, this  bare experience is empty of our variety of roles in daily life -

the son, daughter, mother, father, student, worker, traveller, unemployed, friend, associate,  employer, employee and other roles in our socialised existence.

This bare experience has none of that. It is empty of all of that.

This experience is empty of identity with the aims of the nation state, empty of being male, female or other.

Our socialised mind is absent, irrelevant.

Accumulated information and knowledge gathered in our history is empty of all of that, too in this immediate experience.

Right now there is no indulging in all the historical experiences, nor indulging in all the stories, nor other experiences.

There is the emptiness of the future, of fears hopes, plans, daydreams, projections and visions.

There is the bareness of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching, of transitory sensations/feelings of the mindfulness, meditation.

All of this is changing as well. There is nothing substantial or permanent about anything in the present. It is empty of lasting for eternity, or of any kind of permanence.

Such meditations on emptiness  and reflections on clinging in our daily life free us up, offers fresh ways and insights into the field of the human experience.

There is a deep happiness found in non clinging to the present presentations, past presentations and future presentations.

This deep happiness reveals itself through seeing/knowing  the emptiness of clinging and holding on to anything since all presentations are transitory.

THANK YOU.