Empty Your Mind – Return to Zero

by Brian Thompson | zenthinking.net

The inherent nature of the mind is to make something out of nothing. It’s conditioned tendency is to distinguish forms—all of which are arising within the infinite field of awareness—and then apply each with a label or name, then believing that the conceptual word is the actual thing.

But this is a false assumption. The mind mistakes its conception for a thing as reality and then builds its false sense of a personal, separate self around such illusory contents of thought, rather than with the integral aspect that is the Knowing of them.

The mind becomes hypnotized by the coming and going of the objects it perceives, all while overlooking and forgetting the underlying changeless source of consciousness in which they arise.

As the mind discerns a particular sensation arising within the field of awareness its tendency is to apply a “personal” feeling onto the conceptual to which it has become emotionally invested and attached. All of this seems to happen to someone, to your “self”, but in truth, it’s nothing but an illusion arising within the false reality of imagination. This illusory force of the mind “attaching” itself to its limited and subjective opinions of its “objective knowledge” is what seems to be functioning as “the person”, through which the drama of the world unfolds.

All that is perceived, however, is nothing but the mind making virtual waves within the invisible, formless, infinite field of pure consciousness.

The personal self is imagined—as are the separate “objects” of all thought and experience. There is no entity there who is the subject of any experience; there is only a selfless witnessing of that which arises within the absolute reality of Awareness.

It’s all a dream—none of it personal. The personhood you perceive yourself as is an impersonal object that somehow spontaneously appeared on the consciousness that is your true Self. Your “person” is not unlike any other object within your direct experiece—it spontaneously appeared, just as it will spontaneously disappear. All objects are unreal. They are an appearance only, with no lasting reality.

As such, all objects and their relative objective knowledge are non-existent—this includes the person you believe yourself to be. “You” are a product of your imagination—an illusion arising with the Reality of your true Self, Awareness.

There is only one subject, and that is the Universal Consciousness shining through each apparent being as the light of all Knowing—an impersonal, selfless, limitless Awareness. This eternal subject (which each of us truly is) is not an object. Like space itself, it was never born and can never die—it is That in which all that seems to be arises.

The Ultimate Reality is that nothing ever happens, although it appears as if things do. Realize the unreality of the mind, and you will see that nothing is happening other than the mind creating stories about this, that, and everything else which it subjectively analyses with empty knowledge.

In truth, it is only the mind that “is happening”, nothing else. It’s just as the old Zen parable says: Is it the flag that is moving, or is it the wind? Neither—only the mind is moving.

But, even this is false. The “mind moving” itself is, in truth, a non-happening “event”, as even the mind itself is the stuff of imagination. It is illusory. It is unreal. It doesn’t exist. It only seems to when it is moving. The mind is an empty movement of mentation, going nowhere, doing nothing but creating the false dream of all duality, of you, of me, and of the divisive outside world that seems to be ruled by suffering—otherwise known as Saṃsāra.

The personal “I”—how you perceive yourself, who is “happening” and “doing” things in the world—is nothing but a dream. You must awaken to your person’s objective unreality. You, as you presently know yourself, are unreal.

You are relative only to those conditions in which you conceptually subject yourself. The solution is simple. Empty your mind and be free. Return to Zero, conceptually.

Your absolute truth is the space of empty awareness in which the dream of your “self” and all of its contents are silently observed—free of it all.

In truth, you are already liberated since all limitation and suffering is imagined.

Understand that nothing is at it seems; everything that appears returns to zero. All appearances of phenomena go back to the beautiful emptiness from which they unfolded. Nothing truly exists, as we imagine it. Everything perceivable is nothing but an impermanent appearance within the otherwise spotless Reality of Self. All things change, but That which “always is” is the changeless space in which all appearances appear.

In truth, this Nothing always Is, and this is your original Self-nature—Absolute Nothingness.

You are no thing. You are nothing. Therefore you can never die! Your Self will not fade, as there is nothing there to dissolve. There is only consciousness dreaming. “Nothing” cannot die—because you never “were”. “You” are but a dream—an idea born in mind, a mental form sprouting within consciousness.

Your truth is silence. You are like space—Absolute Nothingness. You are Peace itself.

Realize that all is like a dream. Non-existent. Illusory. In truth, Nothing is happening—but yet, it appears as if things are.

All is imagined. All is an illusion—nothing can be kept, nothing can be attained, and nothing can ever be achieved. To whom could such things exist?

Chasing after the world, the relative concepts of mind, and playing the “game of life” is like trying to capture the wind with a net. What you search and yearn for can never be found, because you are already That.

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