This doctrine of the void is really the basis of the whole Mahayana movement in Buddhism.
 It's marvelous. The void, of course, is in Buddhist imagery symbolized by a mirror,
 because a mirror has no color, and yet reflects all colors.
 When this man I talked to you of, Huineng, said that you shouldn't just try to cultivate a blank
 mind, what he said was this. The void, shunyata, is like space. Now, space contains everything.
 The mountains, the oceans, the stars, the good people and the bad people,
 the plants, the animals, everything. Now, the mind in us, the true mind, is like that.
 You will find that when Buddhists use the word "mind" - they have several words for
 "mind" but I'm not going into the technicality at the moment - they mean space.
 See, space is your mind. It's very difficult for us to see that, because we think we're in space
 and look out at it. There are various kinds of space. There's visual space, distance.
 There is audible space, silence. There is temporal space, as we say, between times.
 There is musical space, so-called distance between intervals, or the intervals between tones,
 rather. It's quite a different kind of space than temporal or visual space. There's tangible space.
 But all these spaces, you see, are the mind.
 They are the dimensions of consciousness.
 And so, this great space, which every one of us apprehends from a slightly different point of view,
 in which the universe moves, this is the mind.
 So, it's represented by a mirror,
 because although the mirror has no colour, it is for that reason able to receive all the different
 colours. Meister Eckhart said, "In order to see colour, my eye has to be free from colour."
 So, in the same way, in order not only to see, but also to hear, to think, to feel,
 you have to have an empty head.
 And the reason why you are not aware of your brain cells, unless you're only aware of your
 brain cells if you get a tumour or something in the brain, when it gets sick. But in the
 ordinary way, you're totally unconscious of your brain cells. They're void.
 And for that reason, you see everything else.
 So, that's the central principle of the Mahayana.
 And it works in such a way, you see, that it releases people from the notion that Buddhism
 is clinging to the void.
 This was very important when Buddhism went into China.
 The Chinese really dug this, because Chinese are a very practical people.
 And when they found these Hindu Buddhist monks
 trying to empty their minds and to sit perfectly still, and not to engage in any family activities,
 they were celibates, Chinese thought they were crazy. Why do that?
 And so the Chinese reformed Buddhism.
 And they allowed Buddhist priests to marry.
 And in fact, what they especially enjoyed was a sutra that came from India, in which a layman,
 who was a wealthy merchant called Vimalakirti, out-argued all the other disciples of Buddha.
 And of course, you know, if in these, these are these dialectic arguments that are very,
 very intense things. If you win the argument, everybody else has to be your disciple.
 So Vimalakirti, the layman, won the debate. Even with Manjushri,
 who is the bodhisattva of supreme wisdom.
 They all had, you see, a contest to define the void. And all of them gave their definitions.
 Finally Manjushri gave his. And Vimalakirti was asked then for his definition, and he said nothing.
 And so he won the whole argument.
 The thunderous silence.
 [Music]
 This concludes Out of Your Mind, essential listening from the Alan Watts Audio Archives.
 Music by Stephen McNamara. For more information on the audio archives of Alan Watts,
 please visit www.alanwatts.com. For additional copies of this audio learning series,
 or for a complete catalog of audio, video, and music for the inner life,
 please visit Sounds True on the World Wide Web, www.soundstrue.com, or call Sounds True,
 800-333-9185, or write the Sounds True catalog, P.O. Box 8010, Boulder, Colorado, 80306.
 Thank you for listening.
 [Music]


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