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Web Exclusive
March 29, 2007
Tricycle Q & A: Sharon Salzberg
Insight meditation teacher and author Sharon Salzberg answers the top ten questions from Tricycle readers. See the other questions readers asked Sharon Salzberg.
Read Daniel Goleman's and Mark Epstein's answers from previous Q & A's.
1. i'm a new dharma student. could u please explain the concept of EMPTINESS in plain, simple english?
One way is to see emptiness as insubstantiality or essencelessness or transparency. Internal and external experiences arise and pass away with no unchanging entity at the core of anything or anyone, no little being inside of us pulling the strings, receiving sensory impressions, deciding on a reaction, and then expressing it. In this world of incessant change there is no enduring entity we can lay claim to and call "I" or "me" or "mine" Our lives are a continually changing process of our bodies and minds in interaction with the ever changing elements around them.
Emptiness doesn't mean that nothing happens…actually, everything happens. As translated sometimes from Tibetan teachings, emptiness means "nothing exists from its own side" meaning, no one and no thing exists in isolation, or comes into being apart from conditions and connections and relationships and influences that form it.
The basis of the Buddha's psychological teaching is that to look in the face of impermanence, insubstantiality, lack of substance, and lack of solidity doesn't mean that things are meaningless, that they're haphazard, that they're disconnected. In fact, if we really see emptiness or insubstantiality we see interconnection. We're not any longer standing apart, and so we're not so habitually afraid.
Sometimes, to convey how everything can arise but have no inherent, unchanging substance, the Buddhist teachings use images, like "life is like a dream, like an echo, like a rainbow, like a drop of dew on a blade of grass, like a flash of lightening in a summer's sky." It all happens, and it is all so ephemeral. That's emptiness.
2. to meditate is to still the mind. what i'm wondering is this: can you truly meditate while DOING something? my mind is only quiet when i play piano. am i meditating when i play music? do you have to sit and do nothing to meditate effectively?
I see meditation (in the sense of mindfulness meditation), as about relating in a transformed way to our experience. The stillness isn't so much a quiet state where there are no thoughts arising, but a way of relating to whatever comes up, including thoughts, without grasping and aversion. In that framework, there could be tons of thoughts and sensory impressions arising, but we could be free in the face of them, and that would be considered good meditation. As one of my teachers, Tsoknyi Rinpoche once said, 'it's not the thoughts that are the problem, it is the glue."
The Thai meditation master Ajaan Cha put it this way: "As you practice, your mind will get quieter and quieter, like a still forest pool. Many wonderful and rare animals come to drink at this pool, but you will be still. This is the happiness of the Buddha." I've always liked that image because of the line "many wonderful and rare animals come to drink at the pool, "Everything happens, but we are different with it.
With this sense of meditation, because we can be mindful of anything…sounds and sights and thoughts and feelings and physical sensations…we don't have to sit and do nothing in order to meditate. The key is in the relationship to all that come sour way.
Sitting and doing nothing is also good, as is playing music, as you describe it. The force of concentration enters in, and allows us access to many different kinds of experiences. But mindfulness is independent of a particular experience, and so can support us whatever is happening.
3. I am taking the 28 day meditation challenge. Can any form of meditation be conducted while driving to and from work.
For many daily activities we emphasize mindfulness of the body. Since you have to have an open awareness of seeing and hearing etc in order to drive safely, it is more in the nature of a light awareness on touch sensation. It is not a tight focus, or an exclusive focus, but a regular return to the chosen object, like the feeling of your hands on the steering wheel. There is also lots of opportunity to notice mind states, like agitation, impatience, anger, compassion, joy. The touch sensation gives us an anchor, and allows us to see these mind states arise and pass away without getting lost in them.
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