This came up again when I read a quote by Jnaneshvar:
Unity becomes strengthened by the expansion of diversity.
The more emptiness is realized, the more we can wholeheartedly engage in form, and the more we wholeheartedly engage in form, the more we need and are invited to realize emptiness.
Emptiness is the awake emptiness that is here now, reading these words. Timeless. Unchangeable. Unstained. Always already. Distinct from form, yet also arising as form.
And form is the world of form, and in our case, specifically this human self and its wider world.
Identified as this human self, and resistance
When this field of seeing and seen, of awake emptiness and form, takes itself as a segment of itself, there is immediately resistance.
It identifies as this human self, there is a sense of I and Other, there is a sense of an exclusive and comprehensive identity, and there is something to push away and something to hold onto.
There are experiences, people, places and situations to hold onto, and there are experiences, people, places and situations to push away. In short, there is resistance – to what is, to what may be.
There is drama, confusion, and resistance.
And with resistance, there is a holding back, or a pushing forward.
I hold back from engaging, from experiencing. I try to distract myself, change the situation, modify my experience. I am ambivalent. Half-hearted.
Or I push forward, I push into situation, into experiences, into the world. Which is just another way of resisting.
Field awakening to itself, realizing emptiness and allowing engagement in form
If this field of emptiness, awakeness and form awakens to itself as this field, absent of I anywhere, it all changes.
Now, there is a realization of being awake emptiness, inherently free from the world of form, unharmed by it. Always here, timeless.
There is also the realization of being form, not just this human self but all form, this whole seamless field of form. Anything arising is this field itself. It is just another expression of this same field.
And there is the realization that awake emptiness arises as this field of form. Form arises within, to and as this awake emptiness. They are not two, although they can be discerned as two.
So in that sense, there is full engagement in the world of form since the field realizies it is not separate from form. It is awake emptiness and form. It is beyond full engagement. It is it.
At the same time, and more interesting here, is what happens for this human self. It is realized as having no inherent I. It is just an aspect of this field of awake emptiness and form, which has no I in it anywhere (or we could say it as a whole is an I).
This means that there is no longer anything to resist. With the absence of I and Other, there is also absence of resistance. It falls away.
And this allows for a more wholehearted engagement in the world of form for this human self. It can more wholeheartedly engage with its experiences, and it can more wholeheartedly engage with the wider world.
With no resistance, a more full and wholehearted engagement, all around.
Mutuality of emptiness and form
So the more fully emptiness is realized, the more wholehearted our engagement in the world of form can be. And a more wholehearted engagement requires and invites a more full realization of emptiness.
Engagement without realizing emptiness is painful. The only solution is realizing emptiness, and when emptiness is first tasted, a more full engagement – and the tastes of pain that comes from not fully realizing form as also emptiness, invites and encourages us to more fully realize emptiness, and form as emptiness.
The two go hand in hand. They are two sides of the same coin. They mutually invite and encourage each other.
