One way that leads you to begin realising emptiness is when you look at subtle impermanence. Why do things have subtle impermanence? Because they are dependent on causes and conditions. That means that things do not exist under their power. They cannot support themselves because they are completely dependent on the causes and conditions that they arise from. Something that is completely dependent on something else cannot have its own inherent essence.

An inherent essence is just sitting there: “I’m ME. Inherently. Sitting here. That’s it. Not dependent on anything else.” That is the way we feel. But the moment we start looking into whether we really exist as an independent entity in any way, we begin to see that in any way we look, we are completely dependent on other things. We are dependent on our bodies and our minds. We are dependent on our parents. We are dependent on society. We are dependent on this whole makeup. Everything around us conditions who we are, and we exist in a relationship to it.

We are not one single little ball in this whole sea of dependent things, this one thing that is in the center, that is independent and should be able to control the rest of the mess.

You start to see, “Well actually, no, I’m not this little blob here…” And forget controlling anything! You get some feeling of how things change, that they do not have an inherent essence.

Lama Yeshe used to look at us and say, “Emptiness is not somewhere some place far away in another universe. It’s right here, dear.” It is your very nature; you just do not see it.

“365 Gems of Wisdom” e-book is out now!