This article was adapted from our online course, Awakening Here and At present, with Korean Zen monk Haemin Sunim. In this six-part grade, Haemin Sunim—an internationally all-time-selling writer and the founder of the School for Broken Hearts in Seoul—presents a clear and direct perspective on enkindling to our true nature in this very moment. Enroll today at learn.tricycle.org .

For me, coming to understand the central thought that form and emptiness are not 2 dissimilar things but the aforementioned thing, happened with a simple realization. In the hope that you can likewise come to know this kind of direct experience, I'll endeavour my best to explain how I've come up to understand what information technology means to be aware.

The commencement step in understanding the inseparability of form and emptiness is to investigate what'southward going on for you right now, and and so to enquire yourself a few simple questions. Right now yous are looking at your reckoner monitor (or your phone) and yous are too probably looking at a photo of me, Haemin Sunim.

There is your awareness and the object of your awareness (me!). The next step involves request the questions that pick apart this duality.

Can you divide the object of your awareness from awareness itself? The Haemin Sunim that y'all meet here—does he exist apart from your awareness? Or is information technology that awareness and the object of your awareness appear in the aforementioned unmarried instant? Tin you find me somewhere outside of your awareness?

Knowing what's external to being enlightened—that is, exiting your sensation and seeing what's beyond it––is impossible. Whatever you can "know" outside your awareness is withal awareness, since yous're aware of it! The photo of me you lot were just looking at (and the text of this article, for that affair) is inside your sensation. Even though "Haemin Sunim" is the object of your awareness, he does not, and cannot, exist apart from your own sensation. Haemin Sunim is sensation.

Perhaps I should refrain from referring to this awareness every bit your awareness, because the awareness does not have an owner, it simply is. Withal, you can admission that sensation considering yous are aware of Haemin Sunim. Effort once more and see if you lot can separate the two: the sensation of the object and the object itself. Are they two different things, or just ane reality? Observe that the sensation of Haemin Sunim and the very existence of Haemin Sunim are not ii carve up things. You lot'll notice that there is just one reality, once yous do some investigating.

That there is zilch but one reality also implies that in that location is no object. There is no Haemin Sunim that stands apart from your own awareness. There is nada but the image of Haemin Sunim, an appearance made by awareness and recognized by sensation.

I'm not the only object that is inextricably bound to awareness. Next time you sit down to eat an apple, accept a hard expect at it, and ask yourself whether this particular fruit exists apart from your sensation. Like what you did with my photo above, try again and run into if you can access its being outside of your awareness.

Yous probably see by at present that there's no apple outside your awareness. "Apple tree" and "awareness" are just contained within one reality.

This reality is like a huge and extensive ocean. In that location may be dissimilar kinds of fish and seaweed and rocks, but they're all contained inside one ocean. In the aforementioned way, there's just one awareness, with seemingly multiple objects within of it. If y'all expect closer, you'll see that in that location are no contained objects or distinctions––in that location is cypher but this ane awareness. If you push this agreement one stride further, you'll realize that since it is just 1 awareness, you lot cannot even it call "1" awareness. When you know that in that location are ii awarenesses, and then you can phone call this "one awareness." But when there is no "two," in that location is no "ane" either. Information technology merely is.

Peradventure, as a kid, you went to the beach and made all kinds of things––you drew faces, built sandcastles, and so forth. Even at a young age you realized that all those things were made of the aforementioned thing: sand. What your pocket-size hands rendered might have been in the form of a sandcastle or a face, but you were aware that all of it was all sand. When the tide came in and washed your creations away, you weren't extremely sad. I mean, you might have been if you were very attached to those sandcastles. But if y'all see at present that they were only ane thing––sand—you realize that nothing was really lost.

Everything you see in the world is made of awareness. Buddhism teaches us that all shapes and forms are impermanent; they come and go. Truly realizing this phenomenon too involves understanding that aught in awareness is lost . It's like dreaming: everything yous run into inside a dream is made up just of your ain awareness. You might meet a tiger or your loved ones or fancy furniture, but you know, at least afterwards yous wake up, that your mind is projecting, or manifesting, those images.

Enkindling involves realizing that this reality is just like our dream land. Everything you run into is made of awareness, the same awareness that creates the three dimensionality of a dream. It is the same sensation yous're using right now to read these words. (If information technology wasn't the same awareness, you wouldn't be able to remember your dreams!)

If you expect deeply at the forms around you, you'll find that they practice non exist apart from your awareness. This is i way we can offset to grasp the true meaning of emptiness, and begin to awaken hither and now.

♦

Further reading: Read more than about Haemin Sunim'due south efforts to revive Buddhism and mend "broken hearts" in his home country of South Korea, or learn to use a similar kind of skillful questioning to enter into sensation with former nun and Secular Dharma teacher Martine Batchelor.

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