Appreciating the Space Element
Often I hear people say they want to be more grounded, more open, more accepting, and freer.
They usually think they must (1) rearrange something in their life to accomplish this or (2) develop something new, but these are qualities of their own nature. They are qualities found in the spaciousness of the nature of mind.
In order to recognize these qualities, one must (1) recognize and (2) abide in the essence of the space element, in the empty luminosity of the natural state.
Many teachings talk about this space, about emptiness, but generally people don’t appreciate space as space. They have more appreciation for the things in space.
In Dzogchen, the space element is the most important element to work with. Space is boundless, beyond form and colour and shape, beyond birth and death. It is the basis of the four external elements—earth, water, fire, and air. It is the great source from which all environments and beings arise, abide, and dissolve. Space is the Great Mother.
Sometimes the Bön are called “sky-worshipers,” but that’s not quite right. What is true is that Bön recognizes the sacredness of space and that the sky is the external representation of the space of the kunzhi, the basis of all. Though everything that has ever existed, does exist, or will exist, arises in space, space is unstained. It neither judges nor discriminates. It does not react and is not conditioned. It remains pure and luminous.
These statements also apply to the nature of mind. Everything arises in it but it is not conditioned. Everything is born and dies in it but it is not born and does not die. Although external space is not the nature of mind, integrating with it in experience can help us recognize the nature of mind.
Most people are uncomfortable in too much space. If a house is too empty, it is considered barren. If a room is too empty, it needs furniture or screens—something to break it up, to make the space smaller. It’s easy to feel disconnected in too much space, so we fill it with things we can connect to: the bed, the kitchen table, the couch, the shrine, art on the walls, books on the shelf, mementos.
This is how we live internally, too. If someone says you have an empty mind, it is an insult unless you are a practitioner. An empty life is lonely and sad. Feeling empty is associated with depression. When we start to feel empty, we go to the movies or read a book or turn on the television or pick up the phone or shop. We don’t want emptiness, silence, stillness—or we want to visit them and then leave. Even when going on vacation to “just sit around and do nothing,” we end up reading, swimming, playing games, eating big meals, and drinking wine.
We don’t really want to do nothing, and if we see someone doing nothing and staring into space too much, we think that person has a problem.
One of the most important meditations in Buddhism is on emptiness. Often people don’t like that word; fullness sounds better, or suchness. But it’s the same.
So what does emptiness really mean in Buddhism? Wisdom. Wisdom is the realization of emptiness, the realization of shunyata. Wisdom is knowing the empty essence, not the qualities that arise in the empty essence.
The realization of qualities is called the method. It is the other half of the path. Developing and realizing qualities like compassion and generosity is the means, and realizing the empty space in which qualities arise is wisdom.
If you have practiced dharma for a long time, you’ve heard a lot about emptiness. Probably every teacher you’ve ever studied with, every dharma book you’ve read, talks about emptiness. But has it changed you? You may be able to explain the interdependent nature of all phenomena or lack of inherent existence, but if this is just theory it may not have much of an effect in your life.
Even if studying dharma and philosophy is the main activity of your life, if you believe that the empty essence is something far away in experience and almost impossible to realize, then you will not experience it directly.
This is unfortunate because the luminous emptiness is your own nature. It is not far or remote—the problem with recognizing it is that it is so close that it is hard not to look beyond it.
Realizing the nature of mind, we find that what we are is the inseparable state of awareness and emptiness. When we realize that, we realize the essence of space.
If we abide in the nature of mind, merged with space rather than identified with what arises in space, there is an effect in life.
There is nothing to defend, no self that needs protecting, because our own nature is spacious and can accommodate everything. Emptiness needs no defense. Space cannot be damaged. No one can do anything to it.
An opinion or image can be attacked and hurt but the space in which the opinion or image exists is indestructible. It does not age, does not develop or deteriorate, isn’t born, and doesn’t die. Through this realization, confidence and fearlessness arise.
Though experience arises without ceasing, we remain connected to the unchanging space in which it arises. We need not try to own it or claim it. It is here already, beyond hope and fear.
When the nature of mind is realized, the spontaneous perfection of all phenomena is understood and primordial purity is realized. The practitioner of Dzogchen first tries to understand this space of the nature of mind. Then he or she must recognize it through meditation and the pointing out instructions of the teacher, then develop the connection to it.
Finally, the practitioner integrates with space, which is what “abiding in the nature of mind” means.
It’s not that the practitioner becomes something different. We have to use the language of development to talk about the path, about how to get somewhere we want to go. But really there is no place to go, there is nothing to develop. It’s a question of waking, of recognizing what already is. When the space of the nature of mind is realized there is still a flow. This is the luminosity; there is movement, sensation, liveliness. Experience is richer than it was, not poorer. Qualities arise endlessly. Compassion or sadness, anger or love may arise, but the practitioner doesn’t lose the connection to the space from which they arise.
Space is the ground of everything, the fundamental reality.
We generally think of earth as representing groundedness, and it does as long as we believe ourselves to be one thing separate from everything else. In duality, earth is the ground, space is the absence of ground.
But in Dzogchen, space is the ground. The practitioner merged with space is more grounded than earth because he or she is the space in which earth exists; is more comfortable than water because space has no obstructions; is more flexible than air because air can go no place that space is not already; is more creative than fire because space gives rise to fire.
Space is what we truly are.