Preliminary Experience of Body Emptiness (2025-04-26)

Ruchun: This morning as soon as I sat down for meditation, my entire body felt completely rigid, like an iron chest, with only the breath shuttling back and forth through the central channel. After finishing the evening session, I relaxed my numb feet, lay down in a very comfortable position, and began a dialogue with myself: "Venerable faculty of mind, what do you perceive breath to be? What is the body?" A thought instantly arose in my mind: "It is nothing at all; there is nothing whatsoever."

Then I began to observe the breath. As I continued observing, I started to feel a bit drowsy, entering a half-asleep, half-awake state. Gradually, the room seemed to grow taller and larger, and I felt as if my entire being was placed within an extremely vast, empty space. Slowly, I also felt my body dissolving layer by layer, bit by bit. Later, I felt as if I saw myself floating down to the garden below—without a physical body. The body seemed like a shadow, or as if it had completely vanished, resembling emptiness or perhaps an invisibility spell. It's hard to describe, but this sensation of weightlessness was quite distinct.

Commentary: This primarily reflects meditative states (dhyāna), manifestations of the energy channels (nāḍī) circulating within the body. Such phenomena do not arise from meditative concentration (samādhi) alone but are intertwined with the wisdom of contemplative insight (vipaśyanā). It is the combined interplay of concentration and wisdom, mutually enhancing each other, that gives rise to these states. The states also reveal the cognitive wisdom of the mind. The states represent the mind; whatever the mind perceives is what manifests as the state. As the mind grows increasingly empty, so does the body. When the mind perceives the body as empty, these states arise. The mind can transform all things, including the body. When attached to the body, the body exists; when the body is perceived as empty, the body vanishes. Existence and non-existence depend on the conceptualization of the mind.

The states indicate that your body has currently become empty. You are likely approaching the fruit of stream-entry (srotāpatti-phala), not far from attaining the first stage of enlightenment.