Dearest sangha,

While attending retreat this past November, one of the teachers shared the most beautiful explanation for the concept of "emptiness". Emptiness is not so much nothingness as it is the purest of potential. She said that we can imagine it as a blank canvas, sitting before an inspired painter. Gorgeous, right? With little effort, we can imagine the many possibilities that might appear (and disappear) within that space. From this nothingness of the blank canvas, all of creation may come and all of it may go. Ask yourself, if not emptiness, what could possible have the capacity to hold everything?

Today's scientists, confirm the teachings, siting that 99.99% of the universe is just empty - nothingness. Most of this is what they refer to as "dark matter" as it does not reflect, absorb or emit light and hence cannot ever be seen. This may seem bleak at first thought, but greater wisdom within can remind us that, on the contrary, there's really something auspicious about such vastness.

The Vedas say that within the nothingness there is an all-pervading unconditioned consciousness that fills it up. This is referenced as "Shiva tattva". Here Shiva, is not a person but the principle (tattva) of this everything and nothingness; the dark matter, from which all of creation manifests and into which all of creation disintegrates, over and over again. Shiva is benevolent, transcendental, innocent, absolute and its energy permeates all of the universe. We cannot be separated from Shiva tattva at anytime because it is the whole of creation. Scriptures say that Shiva is both the world and what is beyond the world. Therefore, we cannot separate the 99.99% from the 00.01%. The emptiness is the unconditioned consciousness that becomes the sacred stuff or space of which all can be created, maintained and destroyed via the 5 building blocks of worldly life or pancha maha bhuta. The black matter is where it all begins, ends, and continues; it is AUM.

To be a being in the world, means that your experiences are comprised of these 5 elements (earth, water, fire, air and ether) and your life is a specific combination of these elements miraculously coming together and falling apart (from the nothingness of all-pervading consciousness) in the form of sensing or perceiving, thinking and feeling. Each of us, billions of us, are made unique (individuality) due to the endless potentials for these combinations to occur. What exactly makes it possible for these sense perceptions, thoughts and emotions to arise and become a person? What is the light in which these experiences (perceptions, thoughts, feelings) are known? Is there a more fundamental dimension than the temporary coming together of your experiences? Who are you beyond those things? The answers do not arise on a conceptual level but as a direct realization here and now. In the space of meditation, in the quiet that precedes doing and thinking, right here, right now you can sense in yourself the very thing which makes the limitlessness of your life experiences possible, and that is the very being that underlies it all.

The subject, or the one who sees, cannot be separated from the object that is seen. They are one. That 00.01% is a brilliant moment of illumination, amidst 99.99% of what remains in a silent presence in the background. That silent presence is accessible to your whole body. This is your truest self, the knowing subject AND that which is known as one.

What... can it be that simple!?

Yes. It's the most immediate and natural thing to know that in yourself but, somehow in our history, humans have lost it. Optimistically you might say that we are on our way home via “the awakening”. I extend the wish that we may continue to contact the gratitude that comes with regaining something that has been long lost. May we come back more deeply. What was originally, a natural connectedness with being, rootedness in being, now can become a conscious knowing in being.

Your motivation for this daily life is to stay connected with that aspect, to more quickly realize it as the essential I am. Practice creates momentum to close the gap of perceived separation slowly, slowly. The silent presence that remains in the background is one with the aspects in the foreground that you interact with in your daily life. In time that which happens in the foreground of your life, 00.01%… doesn't absorb you so completely anymore. You give it what it requires but it does not take up the totality of your consciousness. How wonderful to no longer lose yourself completely or disconnect when you start to think, do, or react. The realization is right there: you are rooted in being which contributes to a new response. The way in which you think, do, experience, undergoes a change and everything you think or do, becomes imbued with a peaceful equanimous energy. 

This month we embark on these teachings by studying deeply a sacred mantra which holds the whole of Shiva tattva in one gorgeous vibrational ribbon:

Om Namah Shivaya

"Om", "Na" earth, "Ma" water, "Shi" fire, "Va" air, "Ya" ether, "Shiva"

When there is peace, love and harmony in all of the five elements, then there is bliss and there is joy not just within you, but also around you and the illusion of separation dissolves.

Here's to an inspiring month of inter-being.

With astounded heart,

Shastri Meg Lucks/ Konchok Dzeden Zangmo