Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising

Mindfulness supports the possibility of investigation, and of our asking, in a way, “What is actually so terrible here?” It sees through the construction of a big terrible thing from tiny discrete moments of experience.

will feel, in this very moment, the relief, freedom, and joy that any realization of voidness brings.

The more we practise inclining the mind to notice space, the easier it becomes to actually open up some space in the perception and experience some relief.

We could say that the way of looking in any moment is constructed from the total mix of assumptions, conceptions, reactions, and inclinations, gross and subtle, conscious and unconscious, that are present at that time. Now crucially, in any moment we are either engaging a way of looking at experience, self, and the world, that is creating, perpetua

our view of the past is dependent on the state of the citta in the present.

What am I perhaps not even noticing?

Believing then that this real self can really gain or lose real things or experiences which have real qualities, grasping and aversion, and thus dukkha, arise inevitably.

At times, therefore, when we feel the contraction of dukkha around some thing, it can be powerfully helpful to ask:

He then explained that, likewise, when the citta is restricted and there is smallness of heart, an imprint from something “trifling” in the past can result in dramatically difficult experiences in the here and now.