This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Presence, Absence, and Non-Clinging; Emptiness (1 of 5) Introducing Emptiness. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Guided Meditation: Presence, Absence, and Non-Clinging; Dharmette: Emptiness (1 of 5) Introducing Emptiness - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 03, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Presence, Absence, and Non-Clinging

Hello and welcome. Welcome to the Insight Meditation Center, which has become much larger than this place, this building that I'm sitting in, this meditation room. It extends now outwards to wherever you are attending.

I have just come back from teaching a retreat at the Insight Retreat Center, and so it's still a little bit with me. The atmosphere of the retreat—one aspect of it, one way of describing it—is a spaciousness. An experience of vast space inside oneself and outside. An experience of silence, recognizing a silence within and without. A stillness.

As I taught this or pointed to this in the last days of the retreat, I pointed out that these can coexist with their opposites. So space, the experience of space, can be experienced together with the objects that exist within space, forms. It's possible to experience both. It's possible to fixate on either one, but there's wisdom to be found in both being aware of space and form, objects and the space around them. It's a support for not being fixated.

Inner stillness can be there together with movement, and somehow each highlights the other. In that highlighting of both together, there are fewer opportunities or less interest in fixating on any one, or making big conclusions, or reacting—allowing each to be there.

When we're aware of silence, it can coexist with sound, with noise. Inner silence can be delicious because it's an alternative to the constant chatter of the mind. But it's possible to have thoughts and that which is not thinking—the silence which is not thoughts—to coexist, and in so doing, be free of both.

And for today, there can be clinging, attachment, craving, and the absence of those—the experience of what is empty of greed, hatred, delusion, empty of attachments, empty of grasping and clinging. That which is empty of preoccupation. Those can coexist. We can be attached, and we can be aware of the non-attachment that's there side by side.

One way to help with this is to recognize that for anything that you're attached to, clinging to, caught in, somehow fixated on—or it's fixated on you—there is an almost infinite number of things at this very moment that you're not craving. You might have something on your mind, something you're quite concerned with, something you can't put down, something your mind is chewing on quite a bit. So there is some subject, something that you're attached to.

But if you look around in the place you're sitting, there are a lot of things that you're not attached to. I don't want to name particular things, but you're probably not attached to the corners of the room. You are probably not attached to the direction of the grain of wood of any wooden object in your room. There are all kinds of things you are maybe not attached to—the empty space particularly. There's no fixation, unless every time I name something the habit to get attached picks up.

But maybe you can feel that side by side with any preoccupation or fixation you have, there are also all the things that you're aware of for which there is no attachment. The two coexist. So there is attachment, clinging, fixation, and that which is empty of fixation. The awareness that's empty of attachment.

Attachment and the emptiness of it. Attachment and the absence of it can be exquisite. You don't have to get rid of attachment. You can be aware of it in a wider context, a wider field of attention where there's more going on. And the "more" is that there is also non-attachment right here that might keep you lighter, softer, looser.

So, assuming a meditation posture and gently closing your eyes. Feeling whatever degree of stillness, stability you can establish in your body. Maybe with each exhale relaxing into the stability of your posture. Wherever the stability is.

And maybe that stability is part of the stillness you can feel in your body. And in feeling the stillness, even very slightly, you can also be aware of the movements of the body, where they're almost like partners in a dance. Stillness and movement of the body. The movement might be very slight, and there is no need to do any intentional movement. Just a natural movement, maybe as you breathe.

At the beginning of a meditation, maybe you still have a lot of thoughts. Thinking might be kind of like the inner sound, inner noise. And side by side, there's also an inner silence. There is that which is empty of thoughts, right beyond the edges of your thinking.

And then there's a feeling of space. Maybe you can be aware of the space in the room where you are. Even with your eyes closed, that the space is just beyond the edges of your body. The edges, sensations of your body can coexist with the space right next to it. With the eyes closed, maybe the edges of your body and the space around it melt together a bit.

And then there's the space within your body. This inner space which coexists with all the sensations of the body as they appear.

Gathering space and silence and stillness around your breathing. Feeling the movements of your body, maybe deep in the torso, of breathing. The sensations that come and go side by side with an inner stillness. Where the sensations of breathing arise and pass within the wider space just next to, beyond the edges of your sensations. As if space receives the sensations.

And then to be attuned to the silent awareness of breathing that coexists with whatever thoughts you have. Being mindful with maybe this silent awareness of breathing supports thinking to be very simple. Thinking about mindfulness of breathing. Thinking about silent awareness of breathing coexisting. With silent awareness inviting the thinking mind to calm, be quieter, to be reassured. It's okay to relax into here.

And as you breathe, be aware of what doesn't cling, doesn't grasp, is not attached. Where in the cycle of breathing is there non-attachment? A kind of freedom, an absence of attachment. Where the absence of attachment invites attachment to relax.

As we come to the end of this sitting, I would like to quote Walt Whitman, who said in his poem, "I am large, I contain multitudes." Or based on this meditation: I am spacious. There is space, vast space, within which we have a multitude. We are a multitude, and the two together can foster a peace. A peace that holds everything side by side.

And we might discover in that wider peace an awareness that can hold all of who we are right there. There's also a deeper sensitivity, a deeper kindness, a deeper care in how we gaze upon the world. As if the depth of our hearts and minds can touch and feel and know the depths of others, the multitude of people, gazing upon them kindly.

And may we bring to the forefront our capacity for love and care and goodwill.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

And may we hold a great wide vision that fosters such goodwill.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Emptiness (1 of 5) Introducing Emptiness

Hello and warm greetings on this Monday. I'm happy to be back here after being gone for a week teaching a retreat, happily teaching a retreat at the Insight Retreat Center. Perhaps inspired by the retreat, I would like the theme for this week to be emptiness.

Emptiness—the concept of it, the idea of it, the practice of it, the experience of it—is often celebrated in Buddhism, in some schools of Buddhism more than others. Suññatā¹ is often known as emptiness. Some people have had some contact with this concept and can be quite inspired by it. For other people, it's perplexing. How can an absence be so valuable?

So I want to talk at least for this week something about the concept of emptiness. It's an important part of all forms of Buddhism. In the school of Theravada² Buddhism, emptiness is more of something that happens in deep practice. It's relevant for people who are quite experienced in practice, so usually, it's not a beginner's topic. Whereas in other schools of Buddhism—like when I was studying Zen—people would often hear teachings of emptiness as a beginner, and they were often taught and emphasized quite a bit throughout the practice.

In fact, in Zen, there was a very famous, very common chant we chanted every morning called the Heart Sutra³, and that emphasized this teaching of emptiness. It has this powerful beginning where it says: "Form is empty, emptiness is form; the same is true of feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness." All things, everything is empty.

This chant goes on and has all these negating statements that when you chant over and over again, something gets kind of dropped away. Drop, drop, drop. Even if it's very subtle and certainly not reflective, not that you think about it. And they say: "No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no state of mind, consciousness," and it goes on. No, no, no. Empty, empty, empty.

If you memorize the chant like I did and it resonates or echoes through the day, it's a powerful way of not clinging, of just kind of letting go of taking things as being substantial or real or solid that is almost required in order to become attached, to cling.

The Theravada school doesn't emphasize it that much. It doesn't emphasize it until it becomes relevant in people's practice, when the absence which is emptiness begins standing out in the highlight for a practitioner. So it's not really often offered as a beginner.

In the ancient texts, in the teachings of the Buddha, there's a marvelous story, a very brief little encounter that I delight in, where the Buddha's disciple Sāriputta⁴ comes out of meditation and apparently he's quite radiant. The Buddha points that out and says, "Your features, your face is shining. In what meditation were you dwelling?"

And Sāriputta says, "I was dwelling in the samādhi⁵ of emptiness. I was dwelling in emptiness."

So here the word is emptiness, which can be off-putting and feel like it's nothing. How could emptiness be of any value at all? But for Sāriputta, it provided him with a glow, a radiance that even the Buddha recognized enough to ask him, "What meditation were you abiding in?"

So this experience of emptiness... In Theravada Buddhism, the Buddhism I'm teaching from here, emptiness is less a philosophy. It's less a philosophy of reality—"this is what the nature of reality is, reality is empty." The emptiness teachings that emphasize the non-reality or the non-substantiality of all things, or emphasizing that everything is interdependent and inter-conditioned—nothing exists alone without arising in dependence on other things, there's nothing that's essential—it's a non-essentialist teaching. But that is kind of a generalized view of everything. It's a philosophical metaphysics of sorts.

The earliest Buddhism tends not to make these metaphysical broad statements about reality, but rather keeps focusing on what's happening here with us, our direct experience. And there, in Theravada, emptiness then is not a philosophy, but it's an experience. I'll talk about that more as we go along.

In the early texts, there are two related topics: there's emptiness itself, which is often presented as an experience, and then there's the insight that things are empty. Things are empty of attachments, or our state of mind becomes empty of attachments. Not clinging to anything at all.

And that is fantastic, to have a mind that is not hindered. A mind which has no obstacles. A mind that's not been hijacked by anything. A mind that is completely free, open, flexible, relaxed, ready to respond to the world, ready to be intelligent and be creative, but is not caught in anything that interferes with that openness and that clarity.

So there's a teaching about how certain things are empty and how they're empty. And then between teachings about how things are empty, there's also the practice of emptying.

The path of Buddhism, the early tradition, has two distinct ways in which the path of practice deepens and unfolds over time. One is through awareness practices—becoming more aware, having insight, having mindfulness, seeing clearly what's here. The other is the process of emptying. Emptying out. Emptying out the projections. Emptying out the views, the beliefs, the ideas of self that interfere with freedom, interfere with seeing the freedom, seeing the phenomenal, wonderful emptiness that makes someone radiant. So there's a kind of delusion and ignorance, and by that delusion falling away—that's the emptying process.

So there's what's empty, there's the emptying, and there's emptiness. In the next three days this week, I'll go through each of those, and then have something to say on Friday, tying it all together with the mindfulness practice that we do.

But for today, I would like to highlight that what emptiness, empty, and emptying all have in common is absence. Absence might seem to have no value at all. You know, what's valuable is things. Absence of money is not as good as having money. Absence of having a relationship is not as good as having a relationship. We always want something, and that's what the mind gets caught by.

But the absence of it doesn't mean that they don't exist for us. It means that the mind is absent of preoccupation, being caught in it, being constricted and narrowed by it. The mind becomes spacious. The absence of fear, the absence of greed, the absence of hostility, resentment, the absence of confusion and doubt.

So there's this absence. I'll give you an example of how an absence might be quite significant, so that you might give some orientation to absence this week and how it could be quite helpful for you and meaningful and maybe even profound.

If someone spends a long time in jail, in prison—I visited people who have been in prison for a long time. I met a man once who spent 25 years in solitary confinement. He was a remarkable man. He had been transformed in some powerfully good way during that time; I think he'd found a practice. But in any case, people can stay a long time in prison. Always behind bars, always behind locked doors, always inside the walls of the prison.

And then one day maybe they're paroled and let out. In the next week, months, maybe years—rest of their life—when they walk down the street, they might look to other people just like an ordinary person, nothing special, just a person. It's just an ordinary day. And people who see the prisoner who's been released might stay preoccupied in their thoughts and what's next and what they have to do, when they're suffering or whatever.

But for the former prisoner who's walking down the street, the absence of jail, the absence of being confined is ever-present. It's so wondrous. It's so amazing. It's so clear that now there are no bars, no doors, no walls. That absence might stay present for the rest of their life. It's really there. It's right next to them. They appreciate it.

And in the same way, the absence of attachment, the absence of clinging, the absence of being caught, the absence of suffering—to have that drop away in a significant way can be as significant for you as coming out of prison can be for a prisoner. The possibility of a transformation, of letting go, of emptying out can be so full and so clear. It stands in dramatic contrast to what it's like to be—hopefully you'll forgive me—full of yourself.

Being empty of yourself is not a loss. The loss comes from being full of yourself in all the negative ways that expression is used in English. A kind of conceit that is actually a disconnection. There's a profound emptiness, empty of self, which is a profound intimacy with oneself in life.

So emptiness is the topic of this week. Thank you.