# Emptiness, no-self, and nonduality

Along the way to *full awakening* (as understood by the Buddhist tradition), there are several profound realizations that practitioners commonly mistake for the end goal. Because each one can feel utterly "final," this can stall progress for decades (or perhaps lifetimes). One often hears this in statements to the effect of "_I am the space of pure awareness; ideas of gain and loss can no longer touch me._" What more can be said at that point?

Not only is there the risk of getting stuck in this way, but there is the all-too-common phenomenon of assuming the role of teacher and spreading one's misunderstanding to many others.

Therefore, it is extremely valuable to have a map *ahead* of time. It is difficult to piece together such a map from disparate sources, particularly because language can make different realizations sound the same. This has resulted in much confusion in the literature (some of which we will explore below).

This piece is meant to be (part of) such a map. These are not my original ideas. I am deeply indebted to [Soh Wei Yu and John Tan](http://www.awakeningtoreality.com/) (and [their community](https://www.facebook.com/groups/AwakeningToReality)) for tirelessly sharing these insights. Numerous serious practitioners have found them invaluable, and I hope you will, too.

---

This map focuses on stages of nonduality (i.e., the realization(s) that one is not ultimately separate from the world). There are realizations that go beyond those listed here, as well as other paths that do not take this route at all (but perhaps meet up with it later). Some will be discussed briefly later.

Two core tenets of Buddhism are useful to explain briely at the outset. The doctrine of **no-self** (*anatta*) refutes one of the most fundamental aspects of our experience: the sense of being a subject in a world of objects. The tenet of **emptiness** (*sunyata*) goes even deeper, to question whether there is any way that the world *really is* at all. Both of these doctrines are profoundly misunderstood, as we shall see.

---

## Summary of the stages

### Stage 0: Pre-realization

At the start of the spiritual search, the practitioner feels completely identified with the body and mind. When there are happy thoughts, the practitioner "is" happy. When there are sad thoughts, the practitioner "is" sad. Whatever the contents of the mind, the practitioner feels identical to, or identified with, them. Therefore, the goal appears to be to calm the mind --- because when my *mind* is calm, *I* am calm.

### Stage 1: I AM

The practitioner becomes aware of an aspect of herself that's deeper and more fundamental than her thoughts. She notices that even when there are no thoughts, her *consciousness* is still present. Moreover, when thoughts return, her consciousness isn't sullied by them. It is more like a passive observer, allowing the contents of mind to freely come and go.

When realized in its fullness, there is a major paradigm shift, both regarding her self-identity as well as the very nature of reality. Consciousness feels like the One Real Thing, and its contents --- which include not just thoughts but all sensory perception --- are illusory and extraneous. Pure consciousness is what one *is.*

### Stage 2: One Mind

This state is fundamentally alienating: the contents of her experience --- i.e., her entire life --- are intrinsically *foreign* to her, and so she can never be truly intimate with them. Nonetheless, this state is far preferable to her prior state (when she was being constantly buffetted by thoughts) so she overlooks this "minor" detail.

Although it feels like emotions are being incorporated (by being *allowed* in the space of awareness), they are actually being subtly avoided. Because deep emotional issues are not being resolved, they recur, forcing the practitioner to recede further back into the depths of "pure" consciousness for refuge.

The way forward is to realize that the contents of consciousness are actually *made of* consciousness. Consciousness is not some static entity passively witnessing things, but the active principle that manifests *as* one's apparent reality --- and you are that. This may sound abstract, but the realization that *you are the world* is anything but.

It turns out I actually *am* my sadness after all --- but I am *also* the loving space that hosts it, and is more fundamental than it. I am therefore not overwhelmed by it like I was in Stage 0.

### Stage 3: No-self (anatta)

Stage 2 is what is most often called "nonduality," but if the space of awareness is more fundamental than its contents --- existing *prior to* and *indepenently of* them --- then the two are not truly nondual.

The error could be humorously summarized by riffing on a quote from George Orwell's *Animal Farm*:

> *Subject and object are nondual, but the subject is more nondual.*

It seems to be *extremely* difficult to move beyond this stage without careful guidance (and sometimes even with it). No matter what guidance is given, the practitioner instinctively inquires: *what is that which hears this guidance?* and rediscovers *pure subjectivity* --- again proving its existence. This is the same inquiry that took the practitioner from stage 0 to 1, so why shouldn't it work now?

What one cannot see is that the very assumption that there *must be* an answer is what *creates* the answer. And one cannot see that it is an assumption, because this assumption that *I exist* is the hardest of all to give up.

The truth is that I *don't* exist --- at least, not in the way I think. What *does* exist is more like a spontaneous dance; a radically alive, primordially uncaused, miraculous, radiant expression that can't be pinned down as *this* or *that* or any way whatsoever. Pure paradox, laughing off all attempts to "get it." Subject and object are both merely expressions of that infinite joyous laughter.

---

## Distinguishing the stages

Now let's look at some quotes that exemplify the stages. (Emphasis always mine.)

### Stage one

Thai Forest patriarch [Ajahn Chah](
(https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/chah/the_teachings_of_ajahn_chah_web.pdf)). Although he was a Buddhist teacher, here he is not expressing the full Buddhist insight:

> This is what we call separating the mind from the feeling. If we are clever we don’t attach, we leave things be. **We become the ‘one who knows’**. The mind and feeling are just like oil and water; they are in the same bottle but they don’t mix. Even if we are sick or in pain, we still know the feeling as feeling, the mind as mind. We know the painful or comfortable states but we don’t identify with them. We stay only with peace: the peace beyond both comfort and pain.
> ...
> We say that we separate mind and feeling in this way but in fact **they are by nature already separate**. Our realization is simply to know this **natural separateness** according to reality. When we say they are not separated it’s because we’re clinging to them through ignorance of the truth.

Jack Kornfield:

> What’s left is enlightenment, always found here and now, a release of identification with the changing conditions of the world, a resting in awareness. This involves a simple yet profound **shift of identity** from the myriad, ever-changing conditioned states **to the unconditioned consciousness** — the awareness which knows them all.

This really does feel like "enlightenment." As Soh describes:

> [It is] a conviction so powerful that no one, not even Buddha can sway you from [it] because the practitioner so clearly sees the truth of it. It is the direct and unshakable insight of ‘You’. This is the realization that a practitioner must have in order to realize the Zen satori. You will understand clearly why it is so difficult for those practitioners to forgo this ‘I AMness’ and accept the doctrine of anatta.

### Stage two

Author Sam Harris:

> [T]he duality collapses when you recognize that the contents are, in some basic sense, made of consciousness. ... [T]he claim [...] is often made that consciousness in some sense transcends its content... it does; it's the **prior condition** of anything that's appearing, but anything that does in fact appear is also of a piece with whatever consciousness is in itself.

Notice marker words like "prior" and "transcends." This indicates a *container* view of reality. The Buddhist term *emptiness* is then misunderstood to mean that mind is like an empty container.

Harris again:
> If I were a Buddhist, I might talk about the “dharmakaya of **emptiness” in which all apparent things manifest**.

Nonduality teacher Judith Blackstone:
> Fundamental consciousness is experienced as luminous **stillness**, or **emptiness**. ... **Within this luminous, all-pervasive stillness** moves the constantly changing dance of our thoughts, emotions, sensations and perceptions. The more fully we come to **know ourselves as the stillness**, the more effortlessly, deeply and vividly the movement of life occurs and flows.

Philosopher Bernardo Kastrup:
> [I]n order to directly experience the nature of reality for himself; he might then find out that that **'emptiness' is mind at rest, a subject without objects**, pregnant with the potential for every conceivable internal relationship.

Nonduality teacher Ken Wilber:
> ... realizing your True Nature—which you can call God, Allah, Jahweh, Brahman, Tao, Ein Sof—it doesn’t really matter, because the core of the Big Mind Process is **Emptiness itself, which, having no specific content** at all, can and does embrace anything that arises, integrating it all.

Notice the recurring theme: we are the stillness; emptiness; the ultimate Self; a subject without objects. But this is not what *sunyata* means in Buddhism. Practitioner-scholar Karl Brunnholzl:

> Emptiness means that things do not exist as they seem, but are like illusions and like dreams.

In Buddhism, absolutely everything --- including *consciousness itself*[^Nagarjuna] --- is "empty." Not in the sense of being *devoid of content*, but in the (admittedly unusual) sense of *not being what it seems*. In particular, "consciousness" is not the container or Self that it so clearly seems to be.

The other common mistake at this stage is to believe that this is what the Buddha meant by *anatta*, because the *individual* self is seen through in favor of a universal Self[^Buddha].

Harris:

> Consciousness [...] does not feel like a self. ... If I were a Hindu, I might talk about “Brahman,” the **eternal Self**.

[Blackstone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tyb5_kqNXB8):
> So instead of "I am Judith" and "I am a teacher" [...] we have this experience, this nonverbal experience, which we can say is no-self because it's not that [...] autobiographical self. But there is this **underlying experience** and **we could call it Self**, we can call it no-self, I don't think it matters.

But it is this very sense of an "underlying experience" --- and not what we call it --- that is the core illusion.

Kastrup (emphasis his):
> People think that in Buddhism there is no self, but actually what is really meant is that there is no *individual*, stand-alone self.

And:
> Literally everything can be reduced to the **ultimate subject** of experience.

Wilber:
> When we realize that there is always no self (and this is happening right now) we realize that **our true identity** is always the **Supreme Identity**.

### Stage 3

Zen master Thích Nhất Hạnh (*[The Buddhist Understanding of Reality](https://www.mindfulnessbell.org/archive/2015/01/dharma-talk-the-buddhist-understanding-of-reality-2)*):
> Without subject, there is no object; **without object, there is no subject**. They manifest at the same time. ... **[T]he notion of a permanent consciousness is illusion, not reality**.

Buddha, in the Bahiya Sutta:

> Then, Bāhiya, you should train yourself thus: In reference to the seen, there will be only the seen. In reference to the heard, only the heard. In reference to the sensed, only the sensed. In reference to the cognized, only the cognized. That is how you should train yourself. When for you there will be only the seen in reference to the seen, only the heard in reference to the heard, only the sensed in reference to the sensed, only the cognized in reference to the cognized, then, Bāhiya, there is **no you** in connection with that. When there is **no you** in connection with that, **there is no you there**. When there is no you there, you are neither here nor yonder nor between the two. This, just this, is the end of stress.

Practitioners at this stage will often eschew the word "awareness," tinged as it is with the aspect of subjectivity. Unfortunately, this stage seems to be exceptionally rare, even within the Buddhist community.

---

It is hard to overstate how difficult it is to move past each of the first two stages unless one has careful guidance and/or a roadmap from the start. This is especially true of stage two (as we can see from numerous examples).

On the other hand, some Buddhist practitioners (particularly from [Theravada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theravada) lineages) face the opposite problem: having intuited *anatta* from the start, they consider stage one to be nothing but delusion, and may never touch the Radiant Heart of Reality that is only later realized to be selfless[^Soh].

It is my hope that sharing this map helps practitioners avoid these traps.

🙏🏽

[^Nagarjuna]: 2nd century adept Nagarjuna was the prime expositor of *sunyata*. Here's what he has to say (with added context in brackets mine):

> Since sight and hearing, etc., and feeling, etc., exist, he who has and uses them must exist prior to those, some say.
>
> [They say that] If there were no existent thing, how could seeing, etc., arise? It follows from this that prior to this, there is an existent thing.
>
> [But] How is an entity existing prior to seeing, hearing, etc., and the felt, etc., itself known?
>
> If it can abide without the seen, etc., then, without a doubt, they can abide without it.
> ...
> Seeing and hearing, etc., and feeling, etc., and that from which these are arisen: there is no existent there.

In other words, some people (e.g., at Stage 2) say that there *must* be a Self existing prior to experiences. But how could such a Self be known if it weren't itself an experience? If a subject can exist independently of objects, then --- by the symmetry implied by "independence" --- objects could exist without subjects.

[^Buddha]: This idea of the Universal Self already existed at the time of the Buddha, from the Hindu Upanishads. Ask yourself why the Buddha would go to such great lengths to differentiate his teaching from this view if it is actually the same.

[^Soh]: Practitioner Soh Wei Yu describes this clearly here:

> I noticed that many Buddhists trained under the doctrine of anatta and emptiness seem to be put off by the description of “I AM realization” [stage one] as it seems to contradict anatta. This will prevent their progress as they will fail to appreciate and realize the depth of luminous presence, and their understanding of anatta and emptiness remains intellectual. It should be understood that the I AM realization does not contradict Anatta realization but complements it. It is the “original face before your parents were born” of Zen, and the unfabricated clarity in Dzogchen that serves as initial rigpa, it is also the initial certainty of Mind discovered in the first of the four yogas of Mahamudra. ... [it] is a direct taste and realization of the Mind of Clear Light. The view gets refined and the taste gets brought to effortless maturity and non-contrivance in all manifestation as one’s insights deepen. ... [T]here is no forgoing of this ‘Witness’, it is rather a deepening of insight to include the non-dual, groundlessness and interconnectedness of our luminous nature.