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The second half of form is emptiness

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holds the real secret of Buddhism

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Have you noticed something strange

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Many people study until form is emptiness

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then start fighting the world

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They think if everything is empty

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then work is empty

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money is empty

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and love is even more empty

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so all of it should be let go

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They grow more negative as they learn

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and see the world as an obstacle

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They want to erase every phenomenon

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and find a pure absolute emptiness

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But look back at the Heart Sutra

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What does it actually say

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Form is not separate from emptiness

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Emptiness is not separate from form

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Form is emptiness

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Emptiness is form

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You see

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The two halves mirror each other

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If form is emptiness means the nature of phenomena is empty

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then emptiness is form means

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the nature of emptiness is phenomena

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They are not two different things

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Most people digest only the first half

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then try to open the door with half a key

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and it never opens

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Today I want to give you the other half

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Hello

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everyone

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I am Leo Wang

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Buddhism has a concept

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that precisely captures form is emptiness and emptiness is form

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It is called the unity of nature and appearance

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Just four words

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yet perhaps the deepest code in all Buddhist teachings

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Nature

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means the nature of all things

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which is emptiness

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Appearance

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means how all things manifest

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the vivid world you see touch and imagine

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Unity

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means nonduality

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the very same thing

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The unity of nature and appearance means

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reality and phenomena were never separate

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Emptiness is not hidden behind phenomena

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Emptiness is phenomena themselves

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You do not pass through phenomena to find emptiness

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You see it right within the present phenomenon

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These four words matter

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because they expose the two traps practitioners fall into most

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The first trap is clinging to appearance and missing nature

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You see only phenomena

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and miss their essence

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You see money as real and permanent

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and grasp it desperately

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You see status as something you own

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and refuse to release it

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Good times make you ecstatic

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hard times leave you devastated

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Your mind is dragged around by appearances

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like a small boat tossed by waves

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This is ordinary life for most people

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The second trap is subtler

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seeking nature by rejecting appearance

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What does that mean

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After learning Buddhism

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you know phenomena are empty

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so you begin to hate phenomena

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The world feels like an obstacle

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Work is an obstacle

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Family is an obstacle

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Emotions are obstacles

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You want to flatten every wave

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and find a perfectly still surface

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Buddhism has a term for this mistake

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grasping emptiness wrongly

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You mistake emptiness for nothingness

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then use nothingness to deny everything

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Huineng sharply criticized this in the Platform Sutra

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He said if you try to think nothing

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and forcibly extinguish every thought

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when one thought ends you die

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and are reborn elsewhere

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This is a grave mistake

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You think you are pursuing freedom

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but you have put on another set of chains

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These two traps point in opposite directions

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yet make the same basic mistake

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They treat nature and appearance as two things

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then force a choice

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The first person chooses appearance

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and loses nature

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The second chooses nature

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and loses appearance

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But their unity tells you

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there is no need to choose

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because they were never two things

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Interestingly

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modern physics knew nothing of Buddhism

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yet reached the same conclusion

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In the early twentieth century

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physics faced a maddening question

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What exactly is light

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Newton said light was particles

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Huygens said light was waves

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The two camps argued for two centuries

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Then Thomas Young performed the double slit experiment

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showing that light creates interference

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a property of waves

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Everyone thought the debate was settled

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Light was a wave

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Then Einstein demonstrated the photoelectric effect

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showing light truly arrives as individual particles

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striking metal one by one and ejecting electrons

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So is light a wave or a particle

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Bohr finally offered an answer that felt uncomfortable

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but had to be accepted

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the principle of complementarity

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He said waves and particles are not two faces of light

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They are two descriptions of the same thing

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The apparatus you use to observe it

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determines how it appears to you

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Yet in itself it is not purely a wave

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nor purely a particle

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It is an indivisible whole

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Do you hear the parallel

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Wave and particle are not two things

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Just as nature and appearance are not two things

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Quantum field theory takes this logic deeper

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Within quantum field theory

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the foundation of the universe is not particles

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but fields

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Electromagnetic gravitational and Higgs fields

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pervade all of spacetime

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Then what are particles

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Particles are local excitations of fields

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The ocean is the field

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and waves are particles

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A wave is not something apart from the ocean

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It is the ocean taking form at one place and moment

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Remove the wave

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and the ocean remains

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But remove the ocean

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and no wave can exist

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Conversely

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a perfectly undisturbed ocean does not exist at the quantum level

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Even the so called vacuum

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is filled with quantum fluctuations

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as virtual particles continually arise and vanish

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In other words

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fields inevitably produce excitations

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the ocean inevitably forms waves

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nature inevitably manifests as appearance

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You see

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physics wrote in equations an intuition the Buddha had long ago

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Reality and phenomena cannot be separated

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The field is the nature of particles

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particles are manifestations of the field

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Nature and appearance are one

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And this is not only a discovery of physics

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Philosophy independently reached the same wall

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Three hundred and fifty years ago

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Spinoza proposed an idea then considered heretical

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Mind and matter are not two substances

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They are two attributes of one substance

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Like the front and back of a coin

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that remains one coin

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You can describe it through the mind

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or describe it through matter

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but you describe the same thing

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Modern consciousness science calls this dual aspect monism

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It is becoming a working hypothesis for more researchers

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Why

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Because consciousness research faces the hard problem

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How can a material brain produce subjective experience

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Neurons firing is an objective physical process

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yet when you smell coffee

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you have a subjective feeling physics cannot fully describe

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Matter and experience seem divided by an unbridgeable gulf

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But what if you view this through their underlying unity

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Perhaps matter and experience are not two things

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Perhaps neural activity and experience are not causally related

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one does not produce the other

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They are two descriptions of the same event

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just as wave and particle do not cause each other

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They are two faces of one thing seen in different ways

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The physical process is the experience

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and the experience is the physical process

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Nature and appearance are one

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Three completely independent paths

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Buddhism physics and philosophy

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converge on the same conclusion

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That is unlikely to be coincidence

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Now

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back to practice

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Once you understand this unity

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how will your life change

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First

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you no longer need to flee the world to find awakening

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Every phenomenon in this world

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every thought that arises

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every emotion arising and fading

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is emptiness revealing itself

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You need not destroy waves to find water

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The wave itself is water

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While carrying water and chopping wood

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emptiness is present

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While managing a company

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emptiness is present

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Even while you are angry

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emptiness is present

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Emptiness has never left you

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because it is not a destination waiting far away

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It is the ground beneath you now

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Second

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you no longer need to cling to the world

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because you know every wave will fall

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Money comes and goes

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status rises and falls

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relationships gather and part

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But when a wave falls

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does the water diminish

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No

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You will lose many things in life

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but from the perspective of water

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you have never lost anything

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This is the Middle Way

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Neither clinging to appearance

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nor denying appearance

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Neither obsessing over the shape of waves

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nor trying to destroy them

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Recognize water within the surging wave

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then surf it wholeheartedly

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Take an example

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You start a company

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give it everything

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and hold nothing back

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That is appearance

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and it is what you should do

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Yet you also know

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the company arose through causes and conditions

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It may succeed or fail

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Success does not increase your worth

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and failure does not reduce it

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because you are not the wave

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You are the water

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The rise and fall of waves does not change water

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This mindset is not indifference

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It does not mean you do not care

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Quite the opposite

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Because you do not fear losing

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you can finally act without holding back

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Not abiding in appearances

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lets you act with greater force

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The Diamond Sutra explains this perfectly

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The Buddha said

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Let the mind arise without abiding anywhere

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Not abiding means not clinging

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but the Buddha did not say do not let the mind arise

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He said let the mind arise

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You still need a heart

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still need aspirations

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still need to act

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still need to love

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Only let your mind abide nowhere

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What is that like

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Like the vacuum state in quantum field theory

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The vacuum is not nothing

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It is filled with the zero point energy of fields

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ready to excite particles

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and produce phenomena

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Yet the vacuum clings to no particle

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When particles arrive

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the vacuum does not reject them

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When particles leave

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the vacuum does not hold them

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The vacuum embodies a mind that arises without abiding

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At this point

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I want to answer a concern viewers often raise

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Someone says

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Understanding emptiness made me more anxious

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Before I had a solid self to rely on

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Now even the self is empty

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I feel no ground beneath my feet

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as if suspended in midair

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This feeling

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was anticipated long ago in Buddhism

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It is the symptom of rejecting appearance to seek nature

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You split nature from appearance

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then stand on the side of nature

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fearfully watching the world you abandoned

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You feel lonely empty and ungrounded

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But notice

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your fear arises

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because you quietly assumed a position

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You think emptiness means nothing exists

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You think no self means you disappear

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That is not emptiness

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It is the nihilistic view

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Nagarjuna devoted the Middle Way Treatise to refuting this view

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The unity of nature and appearance says the opposite

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Emptiness does not mean nothingness

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Emptiness is the ground of everything

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Just as the quantum vacuum is not dead nothingness

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but an ocean alive with possibility

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Your self has not disappeared

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Your self is still here

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It has shifted from solid to dependently arisen

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from a fixed stone into an ever flowing river

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Has the river disappeared

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No

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It simply exists in another way

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one far freer than a stone

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A stone cannot change shape

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cannot turn

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and cannot adapt

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A river can

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It flows around a mountain

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fills every hollow

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and becomes a waterfall at a cliff

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Practice is not becoming a stone

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Practice is becoming water

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So next time emptiness makes you panic

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try one thing

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Do not think about what emptiness means

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Stop

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and look at the world before you

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The cup on the table

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the tree outside

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your breath right now

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Are these things real

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Yes

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Can you experience them

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Yes

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Are they also dependent impermanent and without inherent existence

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Yes

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Do you see it

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You need not choose between reality and emptiness

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Both are true

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The cup is both real and empty

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You are here yet no fixed unchanging you exists

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These descriptions do not conflict

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Just as light is both wave and particle

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there is no conflict

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When you truly feel this in direct experience

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you notice something strange

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Fear disappears

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not because you found an answer

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but because the question itself was false

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You thought you had to choose between being and nothingness

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then discovered no choice was needed

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This is the power of their unity

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It does not solve the problem

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It makes the problem disappear

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But I want to leave one larger question

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If fields and particles are one in physics

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if mind and matter are one in Spinoza

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if nature and appearance are one for the Buddha

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why is our daily experience not unified

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Why do we live in a world split into subject and object

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Why does what is originally nondual

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split into inner and outer within consciousness

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self and world observer and observed

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How does this division happen

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Buddhism calls it ignorance

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Physics has no answer yet

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Perhaps this is the deepest secret of the universe

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Not what the One looks like

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but why it must split into two

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What do you think

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If you have ever experienced in life

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a moment when nature and appearance became one again

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I would love to hear about it

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I am Leo Wang

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See you next time