A Preliminary Experience of the Emptiness of the Body

Ru Chun: This morning, as soon as I sat down, I felt my whole body stiffen up, like an iron box, with only the breath shuttling back and forth through the channel in the middle. After getting off the cushion in the evening, I relaxed my numb feet, found a very relaxed way to lie down, and then dialogued with myself: Manas, venerable elder, what do you think the breath is, and what is the body? A sentence popped up in my mind: It is nothing, and there is nothing.

Then I began to contemplate the breath. As I contemplated, I seemed to get a bit drowsy, in a half-asleep, half-awake state. Slowly I felt the room becoming higher and larger, as if I were situated in a very vast, empty space. Slowly I felt my body disappearing bit by bit, layer by layer. Slowly I felt as if I saw myself floating down to the garden downstairs—no body; the body seemed like a shadow, or as if there were nothing at all, like empty space, or as if under an invisibility spell. I don't know how to describe it, but this light, floating feeling was quite pronounced.

Assessment: This is mainly a meditative concentration (samādhi) state, a manifestation of the qi and meridians circulating within the body. Meditative concentration alone would not produce these phenomena; they arose because contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) wisdom was also mixed in, with meditative concentration and wisdom combined and mutually enhancing each other. Within the states, the mind's cognitive wisdom was also revealed—the states represent the mind; whatever way the mind cognizes, that is the kind of state that appears. The mind became emptier and emptier, and the body also became emptier and emptier. When the mind regards the body as empty, these states appear. The mind can transform all things, and it can also transform the body: if one grasps at the body, the body exists; if one empties the body, the body does not exist. Existence and nonexistence depend on the mind's conceptions.

The state shows that your body has currently become empty; you are close to being in the direction of the srotāpanna fruit, not far from srotāpanna.