Duality

This is so brilliant! The Dalai Lama is discussing "emptiness and existence" in an article in the Shambhala Sun, and in this one paragraph he very much hits upon a profound truth; we are constantly operating under the illusion that things exist, when, in fact, they do not exist at all. Only emptiness exists. This is why asking questions is the only way to truth. Using them as a tool is the best way that we can deconstruct reality (which is illusion); when our deconstruction is complete, we end up finding that the only thing that exists is emptiness (which is truth) itself. An easier way to say this, I think, is "everything is nothing and nothing is everything".

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Because all phenomena appear to exist in their own right, all of our ordinary perceptions are mistaken. Only when emptiness is directly realized during completely focused meditation is there no false appearance. At that time, the dualism of subject and object has vanished, as has the appearance of multiplicity; only emptiness appears. After you rise from that meditation, once again living beings and objects falsely appear to exist in and of themselves, but through the power of having realized emptiness, you will recognize the discrepancy between appearance and reality. Through meditation you have identified both the false mode of appearance and the false mode of apprehension.

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Tenzin Gyatso is the Fourteen Dalai Lama of Tibet. This selection is from How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, Ph.D. Excerpted with permission of Pockets Books, a division of Simon & Schuster. © 2003 by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Jeffrey Hopkins, Ph.D.