Date: 07/12/2025 07/13/2025
Location: Star River Meditation Center
Teacher: Yunquan Huang
Sitting Meditation
The Experience of Inner Emptiness
“Emptiness” does not mean nothingness; it means that phenomena—including body, mind, and thoughts—lack a fixed, independent, permanent essence.When practitioners experience inner emptiness, they often feel openness, lightness, and freedom from self-centered tension.This experience reveals wisdom, but it is a beginning rather than a conclusion.
1.What Is the Experience of Inner Emptiness?
1.Not absence, but non-solidity
You still feel the body, sensations, and thoughts,but they no longer appear solid or absolute.
2.Everything becomes lighter and more transparent
Phenomena remain,but without heaviness or stickiness.
3.The sense of “self-boundary” softens
The rigid central “me” loosens.
4.Awareness expands like open space
There is a sense of vastness without confinement.
2.How Does This Experience Arise?
1.Fewer thoughts and weaker grasping
As mental proliferation fades,phenomena appear more clearly as they are.
2.Sensations become objects rather than identity
Pain, pleasure, tension, and emotion are observed rather than owned.
3.Awareness becomes more vivid
Awareness outshines the contents of awareness.
4.Deep relaxation
Releasing physical and mental tension opens inner space.
3.Key Characteristics of Inner Emptiness
1.Lightness and ease
No mental weight pressing down.
2.Non-identification with thoughts
Thoughts arise and vanish without becoming “me.”
3.The body–mind experienced as a process
Not a fixed structure, but a dynamic flow.
4.Freedom and non-attachment
Phenomena no longer control the mind.
4.Wisdom Emerging from Emptiness
1.A direct sense of impermanence
Everything is changing moment by moment.
2.Realization of non-self
The “I” is not a fixed entity but a shifting aggregation.
3.Insight into the mechanism of suffering
Suffering arises from grasping, not from experience itself.
4.A natural compassion
Seeing others trapped in grasping softens the heart.
5.Common Misunderstandings
1.Confusing emptiness with nihilism
Emptiness is fullness without fixation.
2.Treating emptiness as a final achievement
It is a doorway, not the destination.
3.Chasing the “empty feeling”
Craving blocks genuine insight.
4.Fear of losing the self
Emptiness dissolves the false self, not existence itself.
6.Deepening the Experience
1.Do not cling to the experience
Emptiness is not an object of possession.
2.Observe dependent arising in daily life
See how everything depends on conditions.
3.Watch the arising–changing–fading flow
This reveals emptiness directly.
4.Practice steadily with a normal mind
Emptiness often appears in simplicity, not drama.
Conclusion
Inner emptiness is a light, open state where body and mind lose their solidity.It reveals freedom and wisdom,not as a final destination but as an entrance to deeper insight.No need to chase it—simply observe, and it naturally unfolds.
