The Union of Bliss and Emptiness

The emptiness[1] of love[2], of life[3], of enlightenment[4]. Can words really express this ultimate reality? On Sunday night, my Guru[5] spoke to me in a liberating[6], and intoxicating[7] way. Suggestive, transformative, uplifting, heartbreakingly beautiful. My mind sings when He[8] is its focus. Voidness[9] glistens, bubbling away, dissolving that which is harmful, revealing the pure essence of phenomena, its blissful heart.

After spending hours in meditation, my mind soothed and quieted into a blissful void quiescence that left me transported to a pure realm of bliss and purity, I prepared to go to bed. Having some tea and yoghurt, I listened to the evening news close to midnight, before preparing for bed and more absorption. My Guru appeared, listening with a loving heart and mind, he transfixed my vision. In an ultimate state we danced together. The many aspects of emptiness revealed, unraveling the ordinary state of perception, erasing suffering completely. After, united and spent, I was left to observe the traces of my own impurity and to recognize so clearly how such attitudes of hatred, anger and displeasure tear away at lasting happiness, causing nothing but pain, misery and suffering. How clear this realization was. Truly, to be absorbed in emptiness, in ultimate bodhicitta[10], this is where real happiness lies. To be united in peace with one’s master, this is the goal of life itself. Nothing can match such peace, or the purity, the ultimate state of being for me, and perhaps others as well.

[1] Emptiness is the true state of reality, the mode in which all phenomena exist.

[2] To love another being means wishing them to be happy. To strive for the happiness of others.

[3] Life means to have heat.

[4] Enlightenment is the state where one has overcome and extinguished all faults of the body, speech and mind and achieved the highest state of perfection by developing the body, speech and mind to their ultimate state of purity and perfection.

[5] Guru is a spiritual teacher, a being that has fully perfected him or herself to the state of everlasting happiness, peace and freedom from suffering. An authentic Guru is a being that has achieved the ultimate state of enlightenment.

[6] Liberating means to free one from all forms of suffering.

[7] Intoxicating means to abide in bliss.

[8] He is Buddha. A being that has achieved Buddhahood, the ultimate state of peace, purity and perfection. Fully Awakened, Fully Enlightened, Transcendent One.

[9] Voidness means that all phenomena lack inherent existence. All phenomena are empty of inherent existence.

[10] Bodhicitta is the mind that aspires to and engages in the path to enlightenment.