Emptiness is Form

That line is from The Heart Sutra, and old essay on the nature of reality. It presents a paradox around how we view reality that has sparked many discussions. It describes my recent quandary at work.

Here, Sariputra, form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form; emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness; whatever is form, that is emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is form, the same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness.*

What I came up with:

1. Since entering the healthcare profession as an EMT, I've seen many people who appear to value the bureaucracy over the patient care. And I've seen a lot of tension around it. It has occurred to me (perhaps fertilized by many comments around the subject!) that many of these people started out more idealistically but then surrendered to the stresses of competing priorities - and resented that mindset.
   
   
2. Since entering Nursing, especially, I have been presented with numerous priorities that appeared to be in conflict. I have repeatedly framed them into two conflicting roles: idealistic caretaker and embittered burnout. Duality.
   
   
3. When presented with what I framed as related mistakes at work, I (my ego) regenerated the scenario of conflicting roles from memory and created anxiety around it.

Most of that is pretty obvious, I'd imagine. However, it is the nature of such anxiety structures that they are more obvious from the outside than from in here! I knew my intuitive mind would sort things out given a chance to work, so I slept on it.

The roles described above, and the conflict around them, do not exist, of course. I know people who have mingled the various parts (that I assembled into those roles) in a way that fits neither preconception. The roles seem real to people who buy into them, but they are concepts - mental creations, illusions. Take a few selected pieces of the Whole, bind them together with emotion and rationalizing, then set them up as Real. In this, we have the recipe for human misery.

Cars are not real. They are collections of parts temporarily connecting in certain ways. We call this collection "car" and think of car as a real thing, separate and distinct from all around it. We create form out of emptiness by making a concept called car. In out own inner Reality Model, car is real.

In the same way, I collect various tasks and anxieties together, create a form called "Charge Nurse" and make it real (to me.) I nourish my aversion to this role, which causes me increased anxiety when I see myself associating with it. Charge Nurse will rob me of my compassion, my human contact with my patients! It will slowly seep into my bones and transform me into embittered burnout!

Hogwash!! As many have proven with their own approaches to it, it is possible to arrange things so the paperwork waits in line behind the people we care for. But, being human, I gloss over these examples when faced with my fear of Charge Nurse - an imaginary form which represents to my fearful ego, entrapment onto the path to embittered burnout.

Therefore, Sariputra, in emptiness there is no form, nor feeling, nor perception, nor impulse, nor consciousness; No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind; No forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touchables or objects of mind; No sight-organ element, and so forth, until we come to: No mind-consciousness element; There is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance, and so forth, until we come to: there is no decay and death, no extinction of decay and death. There is no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path. There is no cognition, no attainment and non-attainment.

Therefore, Sariputra, it is because of his non-attainment that a Bodhisattva, through having relied on the Perfection of Wisdom, dwells without thought-coverings. In the absence of thought-coverings he has not been made to tremble, he has overcome what can upset, and in the end he attains to Nirvana.*

There are no embittered burnouts, there are no charge nurses, there are no paths to doom. There is only this moment and the choices I make right now. All else is emptiness: forms I have created in my head to give structure to Reality so my ego can do its work. These forms are valid tools for the ego, but I must never forget they are not real. To suffer over a mental construct is to imagine one's own way into distress. Not very smart!

Love your enemies whether they are people or illusion, for they represent priceless opportunities for growth.

D

* Thanks to http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/emptiness.html for the Heart Sutra quotes!

Emptiness

For anyone lost in the unfamiliar verbiage, the general idea of Emptiness is that reality is a constantly shifting, evolving process in which everything influences everything else. The key point is that our minds, because of the way they are formed and the way they work, sort out conceptual structures for things and label those structures. Thus, I am seen as an animated body and labeled "man" even though this barely scratches the surface of what I am.

The usefulness of this is determined by what the observer considers as significant in the observation. There is, for instance, no practical reason to consider the dead cells lysing in my body, or the new cells forming, when trying to project my next move in heavy commuting traffic.

Emptiness, in the sense used here, can be considered to refer to the utterly conceptual nature of the structure created to represent me. I exist as a constantly changing process of physiological activities, mental processes, environmental influences and so on, but your mental image of me, which is the reality you interact with, is simply a snapshot of me from your point of view.

As children, we all saw things as bright and new and fascinating. Over time, we reduce our world to these mental snapshots and see things as repeated or bland or worn-out in a familiar kind of way. Yet the realities, upon which we based out models, continue to churn and evolve and grow, this way and that, depending upon the influences exerted on them. The reality changes, the snapshot model often does not keep up. Many traditions suggest it is beneficial to relearn to see the reality through the illusory models.

In a recent discussion on the way we see certain locations as sacred or special, the significance is that we do so because we build models of them that represent them so. The question I asked was whether all reality is sacred and we are the ones which build models that make some of it seem profane or ordinary. This captured my feelings of relativity around this subject.

My own thoughts are that sacredness and other labels are relative. Not insubstantial or without worth, but simply relative to individual perspective. Someone once said he could see the whole world in a grain of rice. Everything is sacred, of "ultimate importance", as James Livingston put it in Anatomy of the Sacred.

In the book The Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman, the lead character expresses an epiphany on this subject with the revelation that "there are no ordinary moments!" I've always liked that thought...:).

There are indeed no ordinary moments, nor any ordinary objects, places or happenings. Unless, of course, we choose to filter and label them so!

D