Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising

Product Information

Rob received a diagnosis of stage four pancreatic cancer in the autumn of 2015, just before he and Catherine were due to teach their first Soulmaking retreat at Gaia House. Rob left Gaia to have surgery, and never returned to his resident teacher role (although he continued to support retreatants there individually whenever he felt well enough). For the next five years Rob worked ceaselessly under the difficult conditions of his illness to refine and fill out these new teachings, recording many series of Soulmaking talks from his desk at home. He continued working in this way as long as he was able, recording his last talk, Perfection and Christ's Blessing, in March 2020. Listen to one of Bhante Bodhidhamma's Talks: Mae Chee Kaew: Awakened! (Duration 41:40. More talks are available on Together with that exploration of fabrication, we also explore it through this gradually developing playing with different ways of looking, and we see how they affect each other. That brings not just liberation in the moment but a deep understanding about the dependent arising of suffering, of the sense of self, and of the sense of anything whatsoever – any phenomena whatsoever. That explains the subtitle of the book, Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising. In Buddhist teachings, when something is a dependent arising, it means it’s empty – it has no independent existence, no inherent existence. And the premise of the book is that we can really have a lot of joy and fun playing with these explorations. Usually gradually, with kind of quantum leaps or whatever – it’s a bit unpredictable – but there comes not just the joy of playing with it, not just the temporary relief of suffering, but there comes kind of radically deep insights overturning our usual assumptions about what is real, what is not real, what is this self, what is this world, what is a thing, what is awareness, what is time, what is space, et cetera. So that’s kind of the way the book works.

GAVIN MILNE has been practicing the Dharma since 2004 and teaching since 2015. He is especially interested in the role and relevance of these teachings towards the individual, relational and societal transformations being called for in this era. And as such embracing and exploring practice in all areas of our life. Michael: What I specifically mean is rather than, for example, doing a yidam practice with a Vajrayāna deity, one might use archetypes as well as just regular objects and experiences. Michael: Can you actually remember that moment of kind of leaving the well-worn trail and going off into – just to horribly mix metaphors for a moment – going off into your jazz improv on emptiness? The most important things about this is the first bit: we ask the community to lead with this. That means you! Thanks for helping us promote good conversations on The Buddhist Centre Online. More than that, though, we see that if I really start practicing this – let’s take that as an example because I started with it – way of looking, ‘not me, not mine,’ it doesn’t just stop there, bringing a momentary release of suffering. I actually start to see, if I really practice it, and I get quite skilled at it, and develop it over a range of different objects of my experience, then I notice other things. The sense of self starts to change. In other words, this way of looking starts to affect not just the dukkha, the experienced suffering in the moment, but also the sense of self, the experience of self in the moment. That becomes, for example, less solid, less separate, more spacious, et cetera, lighter, through that way of looking. And if I take it even further, I find that with that same way of looking, this anattā way of looking, the very perception of the world starts to change. Certainly these objects themselves, of course they’re seen as ‘not me, not mine,’ but that perception of objects itself starts to – in the language of the book, and the other central premise – be fabricated less. They start to appear less solid – not just that they’re kind of unhooked from my identification, unhooked as belonging to me or being me, but they actually, with practice, over time, start to feel less solid, less substantial. It’s almost like they’re less intense as experiences. We say they’re fabricated less, those perceptions are fabricated less. That lessening of fabrication moves along a spectrum with the development of my skill in that way of looking, and in some instances can go all the way to those sensations, et cetera, not appearing at all – they’re not fabricated at all. This is just one example.Leela Sarti's Talks at Gaia House. 19.10.2015: Bowing to Instinct and Embracing Desire (Duration 51:54) Rob: At this point in my journey and my journey as a teacher, I’ve kind of stopped trying to convince anyone that they should care about this. I think some people will be interested, even when they don’t understand. I was saying to a group the other day, you know, “Some people hear the Heart Sutra or something like that and they know they don’t understand, but they’re attracted.” Something just ignites in the consciousness that they want to go towards that, they want to open up that understanding – in the broad sense of the word ‘understanding.’ I think other people maybe won’t ever be.

Here are key excerpts from our community content guidelines, which are designed to help create a positive environment for everyone:MARTINE BATCHELOR lived in Korea as a seon nun under the guidance of Master Kusan for ten years. She is the author of Meditation for Life, The Path of Compassion, Women in Korean Zen and Let Go: A Buddhist Guide to Breaking Free of Habits. She teaches meditation retreats worldwide and lives in France. Her latest works are the The Spirit of the Buddha, What is this? and The Definition, Practice and Psychology of Vedana. Norman has written many books both as a poet and Zen Buddhist Priest: His latest poetry releases are; "Nature" (2021, Tuumba); "There was a clattering as..." (2021, Lavendar Ink) and "When You Greet Me I Bow: Notes and Reflections from a Life in Zen" (Shambhala, 2021).