A Shallow Experience of Body Emptiness (2025-04-26)

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 down from the cushion in the evening, I relaxed my numb feet, lay down in a very relaxed way, and then dialogued with myself: Manas, venerable one, 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 higher, larger 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. Then 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 I had turned invisible. I don't know how to describe it, but this light, floating feeling was quite distinct.

Assessment: This is mainly a state of meditative concentration (dhyāna), a manifestation of the vital energies moving through the channels within the body. Mere meditative concentration would not produce these phenomena; they arose because contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) wisdom was also mixed in, with concentration and wisdom combined and mutually enhancing each other. Within these 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 attaining srotāpanna.