Guided Meditations

Kedrup Je’s Four-Step Meditation on Emptiness

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  • Get into a comfortable position. Let the eyes fall closed, and the body fall still.
  • Focus on your breath for a few moments, to calm the mind, watching the air flow out and then into the body.
  • Step # 1: Picture the room you are sitting in. In your mind’s eye, see everything in the room—what’s on the walls, the tables, the shelves, and so on. Go carefully through from one corner of the room to the other, trying to call as much detail as possible up in your mind. Look at all these as you normally do.
  • Step # 2: Then look with a mind of ignorance—as if they were out there, existing from their own side, through some nature of their own. This is the gakja — the impossible thing that could never exist. Take a few minutes here, and try to catch the wrong view you are constantly holding to, every minute of the day. What does it mean to think a thing is self-existent, and why is it impossible?
  • Step # 3: Switch your view and see the same room with wisdom—see every single thing in it as a picture coming from your mind. Stay here for a few minutes, just watching yourself projecting these mental images.
  • Step # 4: This is a crucial point. Now stop the projection—pull back whatever is coming from you and check to see what is left. What is behind what you are projecting? Is there any reality at all to these objects other than the reality you are giving them?
  • When you reach step # 4 and you get that “Oh, my gosh it’s not there!” feeling of absence, you know you’re headed in the right direction.

Helpful Hints

  • As my Lama likes to say, emptiness is slippery – it is like trying to catch a fish with your bare hands. At the beginning, step #4 might be very elusive. You come to it in your mind, and for a split second you think you’ve grasped it, but then it slips away. At that point, go back through the first three steps again and try to bring yourself back to that glimpse of understanding. Work up to brighter and brighter glimpses, for longer and longer periods of time.