From a book “Emptiness - A Practical Guide for Meditators” by Guy Armstrong
Emptiness – Compassion Comes From Emptiness - Chapter 21 and A Short Summary of the text
Meditation
This is leading to Maha Ati/Dzogchen or Mahamudra
Aware of awareness. Illuminating which often leads to luminosity
Title: The Unity of Emptiness and Cognizance – Your mind
In this meditation: Emptiness is space and Cognizance and Awareness are synonymous
Review
Give summary of what was studied previously:
1. What are the two parts to emptiness?
a. Non-self, this is occasionally referred to as egolessness.
i. Our egos are demanding, critical, and a constant source of suffering.
b. Non-permanence. This includes the phenomenal world and us. The Buddha compared this impermanence as a “lump of foam”.
2. Dependent origination or the Nidana’s. Certain aspects of our world are linked together
a. 6 Senses or Contact
b. 5 Aggregates or Feeling, Craving, Clinging always leads to suffering.
c. Mind and material phenomenon
Note; If we do not have an ego or core self, Sense and Aggregates are what we are left with.
Compassion Comes From Emptiness
How does emptiness lead to compassion?
a. Emptiness makes us realize that we are not as sperate and unique as we thought.
b. Once empty, one feels a bit alone making it more receptive to focusing on others.
c. Once you become liberated you can focus on helping others become liberated. However, this seems to not happen immediately.
But there is more to the connection than the above: Emptiness needs compassion, and compassion needs emptiness. Pg.262
1. If Loving-kindness (Metta) and compassion (Karuna) emotions do not grow in a practitioner, then even a “valid” insight into emptiness can lead to a disconnected kind of nihilism. Pg. 259
2. If love and compassion are strongly developed but the insight into emptiness is not, we have no foundation for equanimity. In other words, we are not balanced. Pg. 262
With wisdom, we know that suffering is empty too. The insight into emptiness reveals that there is no actual being at the center of suffering. Pg. 262
We might say that seeing the ultimates truth of emptiness frees the heart, while seeing the conventional truth of beings opens the heart to compassion. Pg. 264
Follow the Bodhicitta teachings and become a Bodhisattva.
Suffering is only the friction between what is and what is wanted. Pg. 262
Awakened seeing recognizes that there is no actual “being” present anywhere, neither in life of death. Only the aggregates are born, and only the aggregates die. Pg. 262
