One could start with the gross explanations of emptiness taught by the lower schools and gradually progress up to the most subtle, the Prasangika. That’s how the four schools came into being. The lower schools were steps to the higher ones, leading ultimately to the Prasangika. So even though the views of these various schools seem to contradict each other, actually they’re a method for gradually developing through study and meditation the Prasangika view.

How to meditate on emptiness

In case you are interested in practicing meditation on emptiness, I’m going to explain a couple of simple but quite helpful techniques for doing so.

The first technique is one that I often mention during meditation courses—walking meditation on emptiness. This is a kind of mindfulness meditation but it’s much more profound than the usual mindfulness of walking where you simply maintain awareness of "I’m walking" and so forth. If you can practice that kind of mindfulness of walking—"I’m walking"—you can also practice mindfulness of stealing while robbing a bank or picking somebody’s pocket—"I’m stealing." Actually, if you are stealing, it’s probably not such a bad idea to be mindful—otherwise you might get caught!

Mindfulness meditation should be more than just watching what you are doing. What you really need to watch is your motivation. If you don’t watch your mind, you don’t know what’s motivating your actions. What you should be doing is detecting negative motivation, the cause of suffering, and changing it into positive. You should be applying your meditation like a medicine to the eradication of harmful thoughts, the delusions—the disturbing emotions that harm yourself and others. You need to eradicate these and make your mind healthy and your attitude beneficial, just as the Buddha explained in the verse I quoted before:

Do not engage in any harmful actions;

Perform only those that are good….

Abandon non-virtue, the cause of suffering, and practice virtue, the cause of happiness. Transform negative motivation into positive so that your actions will become virtuous. In this way you will not waste your life but make it meaningful. At least you won’t be harming yourself or others.

The way to practice more meaningful mindfulness is this. For example, when you’re sitting or when you’re walking, ask yourself the question, "What am I doing?" Then your mind will answer, "I’m sitting," "I’m walking," "I’m eating," depending on what it is that you’re doing. "I’m cooking," "I’m talking." Whatever you are doing, you can meditate on emptiness.

One way in which you can do this is to reply to the answer "I’m walking" with another question: "Why do I say ‘I’m walking’?" Then you analyze; you look for the reason. What you find is, "The only reason I say this is that my aggregate of body, the base I label "I," is walking." Your body is walking—just because of that, your mind labels and believes "I’m walking."

After you’ve done that, check how your I appears to you at that moment. Is it the same as before or has there been a change? Usually you’ll find that it’s not the same, that there’s been a definite change. Suddenly, the old view of a real I in your body, appearing from that side, the I you have always believed to be there in your body, has vanished, become non-existent. And that’s the truth. It’s not a false view. The old I was the false one.

When you do not meditate, do not analyze, the I that appears to you and in which you believe—the I that seems to be on these aggregates, in this body—is the false one. In philosophical texts, we refer to that I as inherently existent or existing by nature. In Western psychological terms, we call it the "emotional I." The emotional I—the one that you believe is in your body or on your aggregates—is totally non-existent. That is what you have to discover—that it’s empty. You have to discover that it is totally non-existent, totally empty.

If you can realize that—that there’s not even the slightest atom of an I there—and feel as if you yourself have become totally non-existent, you have entered the Middle Way. At that time, when you realize emptiness, you gain full conviction, or definite understanding, that you can attain liberation, you can cease all suffering and its cause.

Remain in the state of your discovery of the absence of the emotional I. Keep your mind in the emptiness of that. When your mind gets distracted, again ask yourself the question, "What am I doing?" Then, when your mind replies, ask again, "Why do I say ‘I’m doing…’? There’s no reason other than…," whatever it is. If the answer is, "I’m meditating," ask yourself, "Why do I say ‘I’m meditating’?" There’s no reason other than the fact that the base, the aggregates of mind, are transforming into virtue (which is what meditation really means). Then check again to see what effect this has had on your I. Has there been a change or not?

Doing this meditation again and again helps you see the false I more and more clearly. The more clearly you see the false I, the emotional I, the I that doesn’t exist, the more clearly you see, the better you recognize, emptiness—the better idea of emptiness you get.