A Superficial Experience of the Emptiness of the Body (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 up from the evening sit, I relaxed my numb feet, found a very relaxed way to lie down, and then conversed 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, and gradually 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. Then slowly I felt as if I saw myself floating down to the garden downstairs—no body, the body seemed like a shadow, and yet it also seemed there was 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.

Comment: This is mainly a state of meditative concentration (dhyāna), a manifestation of the qi meridians moving within the body. These phenomena would not appear through meditative concentration alone; they arose because contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) wisdom was also mixed in, with samādhi 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 the myriad things, and it can also transform the body: when the body is grasped, the body exists; when the body is seen as empty, the body does not exist. Existence and non-existence lie in 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.