From the standpoint of ultimate truth, all phenomena, including all the phenomena that we misapprehend as physical matter, are empty of any inherent existence.
Though they appear to be very solid and real to us, they are in truth mere illusory appearances lacking any substantial reality – like a light show in space, like the aurora borealis, a rainbow, an echo, a flash of lightning, a mirage, a magical display, a dream, an hallucination, like the images in movies and on television, or like the reflection of the moon in water.
None of these illusory appearances, including what we take to be matter, have any true, separate, permanent, solid or substantial existence independent of ever-changing equally non-existent causes and conditions.
When scientists today investigate and scrutinize the atoms which we for centuries have thought of as the building blocks of the material world, they find no indivisible and, therefore, permanent particles of matter.
They find mostly space with variously described sorts of energies rushing around within it. These energies are also insubstantial, impermanent, and unpredictable. They cannot be said to have any kind of permanent existence. The more scientists investigate, the more illusory the nature of matter appears. The Buddha discovered this same truth in meditation 2,500 years ago, and the Buddhist tradition has been teaching it ever since.
All phenomena are ephemeral, constantly changing in the same way as the appearances within a kaleidoscope constantly change. None of these illusory appearances—including the appearances of sickness and disease, which are also mere empty appearances—have the power to cause us suffering unless we mistakenly apprehend them as real and substantial.
When we misapprehend these appearances, when we take them to be real, we fixate on them and thereby cause them to solidify in our experience. This gives them the appearance of solid, substantial reality, and then in our lives these illnesses do, in fact, become for us very real and solid, and we suffer from them.
Still, though everything that we experience is empty of any kind of substantial existence, we still experience something. What is it that we experience? We experience mind.
In discussing the nature of things, or the nature of appearances, which in the ultimate analysis are merely empty, insubstantial radiations or light-manifestations of an equally empty and insubstantial, though luminous, mind, Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche expresses the teachings of the Buddha given 2,500 years ago in the third turning of the wheel of dharma, his third great cycle of teachings:
Before meditating, before recognizing things to be as they are, one will have seen the radiance of this mind as solid external things that are sources of pleasure and pain. But through practicing meditation, and through coming to recognize things as they are, you will come to see that all of these appearances are merely the display or radiance or light of the mind which experiences them.
When one is able truly to recognize sickness and disease as “merely the display or radiance or light of the mind which experiences them,” empty of any inherent substantial existence, then one’s suffering disappears.
Regardless of which of the first three categories of illness one is suffering from, if one is able to recognize its true nature — that it is merely the empty magical display or radiance or light of the mind which experiences it — one will experience no suffering, and depending on the level and completeness of this realization, one’s illness will dissolve in the empty pure primordial expanse, and one will be cured.
Even if one is afflicted by the fourth category of illness and it is karmically inevitable that one will die from that particular illness, one will die without suffering or fear, because all phenomena, including illness, are empty. They lack any kind of substantial, permanent reality independent of equally empty and interdependent causes and conditions. They are all merely insubstantial, ever-changing, kaleidoscopic light shows in the primordially pure open expanse of empty luminous awareness.
This is the view of illness and disease from the standpoint of ultimate truth, and it is very useful and helpful to understand. It must be remembered, however, that ultimate truth can never be accurately expressed through words and conceptual constructs. Words and concepts, even the verbal concept “ultimate truth,” can never be more than “the finger pointing at the moon.” They are not “the moon” itself. Ultimate truth ultimately is inexpressible in words or concepts.
Although the Buddha Shakyamuni gave many teachings on ultimate truth, he recognized that were he only to give teachings on ultimate truth, the vast majority of sentient beings would neither be able to understand them nor be able to make spiritual progress based upon them.
Therefore, the Buddha also taught what is known as relative truth, which is the truth of things expressed in terms and ideas that ordinary people can understand. They can understand relative truth more easily because it accords more closely to the manner in which they currently perceive and understand the world and their own personal experience.
The Buddha taught a great variety of relative truths, because there are a great variety of beings who have a great variety of differing dispositions, interests, and aptitudes. In this way, the Buddha presented truths, and spiritual paths based on these truths, that would be beneficial to people in the short run, while gradually pointing the way to progressively deeper and more profound spiritual understanding in the long run.
Source: Based on Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche. Medicine Buddha Teachings. Oral translation by Lama Yeshe Gyamtso. Introduced, edited, and annotated by Lama Tashi Namgyal. Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion Publications, 2004. (pp. viii-x)
Before meditating, before recognizing things to be as they are, one will have seen the radiance of this mind as solid external things that are sources of pleasure and pain. But through practicing meditation, and through coming to recognize things as they are, you will come to see that all of these appearances are merely the display or radiance or light of the mind which experiences them.
(Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche)