I Have Seen Beyond
It would be better to say that I have perceived beyond, since it wasn’t really visual. I do not have a great visual imagination. I’m a writer, not a painter, because I think in words, not images.
Thinking in words is not great because awakening defies description. It beggars language.
The Heart Sutra ends with “gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha.” In English, this means, “gone, gone, gone beyond….”
One useful way to get at the concept is awareness aware of itself. Awareness is not a thing. It is like gravity in being a quality of the universe that impinges on human life and makes it possible. Without awareness, we could know nothing, think nothing, we would have no concept of ourselves as existing. Usually, one is aware of something.
A quality of the beyond the Buddha reached is emptiness, as the Heart Sutra makes very clear. Awareness by itself is emptiness. Awareness aware of itself suggests awareness of emptiness.
Except that there is no there there, it’s out there. Keep up your consistent meditation practice and your mind will get quiet enough to perceive the beyond that is full of emptiness, or empty of emptiness.
If you stop and think about it, the claim that everything we perceive must have some space to exist in. That goes for the furthest star our telescopes have…
