The second technique for meditating on emptiness is one that takes you back to your childhood, to the time before you had learned the alphabet. Imagine yourself before you knew your ABCs. You’re sitting in the classroom and your teacher draws a letter on the blackboard for the first time. You, the child, have no idea what it is, what those lines represent. Although the teacher draws an A, you have no appearance of A. Even though you see the lines on the blackboard, A does not appear to you. You see the lines but you don’t see them as A. That’s because your mind hasn’t labeled those lines as A and believed in that. Remember, labeling is not enough—in order for there to be appearance, you have to believe in it as well. At this point in your life, your mind has not yet labeled that configuration and believed, "This is an A."

Then your teacher tells you, "This is an A," and your mind—believing what your teacher has said, in relation to that base, those lines on the blackboard—creates the label A, merely imputes it on the base, and believes in it. Only then do you have the appearance of the letter A. After that, then you see that this is an A.

The point to understand here is that first there’s that arrangement of lines, which is the base. What is it that makes your mind decide upon the particular label A? You don’t label any old configuration A—it has to be this particular pattern. That’s why your mind chooses to label it A—it sees the appropriate pattern. That is the base; the base to be labeled A.

So you can see that the base, that particular pattern, and the label are different. This is the point I’m trying to make. The pattern is the base and the A is the label. These are two different phenomena, not one. They appear as one—without analysis, to your mind they appear as one. It looks as if the A is on top of the base, that pattern. It looks like that. If you do not analyze, it appears as if the A were right there, on that pattern, as if the A were there on that base.

So, the pattern is the base and the A is the label. Now you need to concentrate on the conclusion. Before your mind creates the label A, you see the base, that particular pattern, first. That’s what causes you to apply the label A. From this it’s clear that the base is not the A. If it were, you should see the A at the very first moment you saw the base, but that isn’t what happens. It doesn’t happen no matter what phenomenon you see. First you see the base; then you apply the label. Your mind creates the label after seeing the base.

Taking a pillar, for example—the specific base that holds things up, that performs that particular function—seeing that base first causes your mind to choose the label "pillar." Then you see the pillar. You don’t see it from the very beginning. If you saw the base but your mind didn’t label it, you wouldn’t see the pillar.

Similarly, you see the A later. That means that the pattern and the A are not one. The pattern is not A—it is the base to be labeled A. This is the point to understand. The difference between the two. This is one line of reasoning.

A second line of reasoning goes as follows. Look for the A. On that pattern, where is the A? Look at the upstroke (/). You don’t find the A there. Look at the downstroke (\). It’s not there either. Nor is the A on the crossbar (-). Even when the three lines are assembled into the configuration A, that’s not the A because that’s the base to be labeled. Only after seeing it do you label it A. So the three lines together are not the A either.

So when you see that three-line pattern on a blackboard, there’s no A on the pattern, but there’s an A on the blackboard, and the only reason you can say that is that the pattern is on the blackboard.

Similarly, when you look out your window and see a car go by, analyze what happens. First of all, before anything appears, you don’t label "car" because you haven’t seen anything. There’s no reason for you to label, "There goes a car." When a car does go by, you don’t label it "car" the very moment you see it because for your mind to choose that particular label, "car," you have to see something first, as we’ve been saying. What causes your mind to create the label? There has to be a prior reason. You have to see something before you create the label. What you see is the base—the phenomenon that has the appropriate shape and performs the function of going here and there, transporting people and so forth—you have to see that first. The label "car" comes after that. First you see the base; then you see the car. You see the car after you have applied the label. Therefore, it is a hallucination. Whatever you see go by—a person, a cat, a dog, a motorcycle—it works the same way.

Under normal circumstances, when we do not analyze what we see, when a car goes by it looks as if either the base itself is the car or there’s a car on that base, and that that’s what’s going by. This is a complete hallucination. There’s no car there, just as there’s no A on that configuration of three lines. The car exists but it’s not there.

It’s the same thing with the A. When we look at the A and do not analyze, do not meditate, it looks as if the A is there, on that pattern. That too is a complete hallucination. That is the object to be refuted—the A that is there not merely imputed by the mind. An A that if you look for it can be found. That’s the object of refutation; that’s what we have to realize is empty. And that emptiness is the ultimate nature of the A.

The reason that seeing an A on the base is a false view is that if you try to find precisely where on each of the three lines it is (/\-), you can’t find it. And when you look for it on the three lines assembled (A), you can’t find it there either. Each piece is not A. Nor is the assembled pattern, because that is the base to be labeled A.

By analyzing in this way, you can recognize your everyday hallucinations, your false view, and understand what you have to realize as empty. What emptiness means. Analysis makes it clear. Practicing mindfulness of this, meditating on this, helps you to control your emotional mind. It becomes almost impossible for emotional thoughts, such as attachment and anger, to arise. That means you stop motivating karma, the cause of samsara, the cause of the lower realms. Thus it becomes incredible protection, a great source of happiness and peace, and the cause of liberation and enlightenment for yourself and all other sentient beings. By developing this wisdom and practicing bodhicitta, you yourself can attain enlightenment and lead all other sentient beings to enlightenment as well.

Therefore, if you really want to practice Dharma, meditate, and see some development in your life. If you want to clarify and deepen your understanding of emptiness and bring yourself closer to realizing it, these techniques might help, even though they don’t utilize philosophical concepts, the four-point analysis and so forth. By practicing these techniques, you can see more clearly how the mind is not I, which is what many people think. Many things become clear.

This profound teaching on WISDOM REALIZING EMPTINESS given by Lama Zopa Rinpoche was extracted from VIRTUE & REALITY. It was transcribed and edited by Dr Nick Ribush and published by Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archives.