The mask of emptiness.

Often when we begin to hear about the ultimate truth or emptiness, we imagine it must be something hidden somewhere beyond our ordinary experience. We assume it is deeper, more subtle, perhaps found only in rare states of meditation.

So we begin to search beyond the world of appearances, beyond our thoughts and emotions, as if the true nature must be in more pure realms of experience.

Longchenpa says: “The unborn is attained through what seems to be born.”

In the magical land of Tibet there are ritual dances called cham. The dancers wear these vivid masks of deities and demons. They are brightly colored, intense looking, very ornate. Throughout the performance the dancer’s true face is never seen. The entire dance unfolds through the expression of these masked characters.

In the same way, we move through the world relating to appearances: forms, sounds, sensations, memories, plans, emotions. These become the mask of our experience. We assume this is all we are interacting with and because the mask seems so convincing, we begin to think the true nature must be hidden somewhere else.

Yet the thing is, every appearance we encounter—the thought passing through the mind, the sound of a voice, the feeling of the body sitting here—arises within the very nature we are trying to find. We imagine emptiness as something separate from these experiences, but in reality these appearances are themselves the display of emptiness.

It is like watching the cham dance and thinking the dancer must be somewhere else entirely, while the entire time the dancer has been moving right in front of us.

Emptiness does not mean non-existence. That is a common misunderstanding. The mask clearly appears. The dance is vivid. But its appearance does not exist independently or solidly in the way we imagine. The mask of relative appearances and the true face of emptiness are inseparable.

We realize the unborn in what appears to be born. This means we do not discover the true nature by rejecting the world of appearances. We discover it by seeing clearly the nature of experience itself.

All along, we have been participating in the dance.

The sounds, the thoughts, the forms, the emotions, these are not obstacles to our awakening hiding the ultimate truth from us. They are the very play through which emptiness is expressing itself.

Right now, you are looking at the mask of reality, do you see its empty nature?