The Integrity of Emptiness

　　 For all the subtlety of his teachings, the Buddha had a simple test for measuring wisdom. You”re wise, he said, to the extent that you can get yourself to do things you don”t like doing but know will result in happiness, and to refrain from things you like doing but know will result in pain and harm. He derived this standard for wisdom from his insight into the radical importance of intentional action in shaping our experience of happiness and sorrow, pleasure and pain. With action so important and yet so frequently misguided, wisdom has to be tactical, strategic, in fostering actions that are truly beneficial. It has to outwit short‐sighted preferences to yield a happiness that lasts.

　　Because the Buddha viewed all issues of experience, from the gross to the subtle, in terms of intentional actions and their results, his tactical standard for wisdom applies to all levels as well, from the wisdom of simple generosity to the wisdom of emptiness and ultimate Awakening. Wisdom on all levels is wise because it works. It makes a difference in what you do and the happiness that results. And to work, it requires integrity: the willingness to look honestly at the results of your actions, to admit when you“ve caused harm, and to change your ways so that you won”t make the same mistake again.

　　What”s striking about this standard for wisdom is how direct and down to earth it is. This might come as a surprise, for most of us don”t think of Buddhist wisdom as so commonsensical and straightforward. Instead, the phrase “Buddhist wisdom” conjures up teachings more abstract and paradoxical, flying in the face of common sense—emptiness being a prime example. Emptiness, we”re told, means that nothing has any inherent existence. In other words, on an ultimate level, things aren”t what we conventionally think of as “things.” They”re processes that are in no way separate from all the other processes on which they depend. This is a philosophically sophisticated idea that”s fascinating to ponder, but it doesn”t provide much obvious help in getting you up early on a cold morning to meditate nor in convincing you to give up a destructive addiction. For example, if you”re addicted to alcohol, it”s not because you feel that the alcohol has any inherent existence. It”s because, in your calculation, the immediate pleasure derived from the alcohol outweighs the long‐term damage it”s doing to your life. This is a general principle: attachment and addiction are not metaphysical problems. They”re tactical ones. We”re attached to things and actions, not because of what we think they are, but because of what we think they can do for our happiness. If we keep overestimating the pleasure and underestimating the pain they bring, we stay attached to them regardless of what, in an ultimate sense, we understand them to be.

　　Because the problem is tactical, the solution has to be tactical as well. The cure for addiction and attachment lies in retraining your imagination and your intentions through expanding your sense of the power of your actions and the possible happiness you can achieve. This means learning to become more honest and sensitive to your actions and their consequences, at the same time allowing yourself to imagine and master alternative routes to greater happiness with fewer drawbacks. Metaphysical views may sometimes enter into the equation, but at most they”re only secondary. Many times they”re irrelevant. Even if you were to see the alcohol and its pleasure as lacking inherent existence, you”d still go for the pleasure as long as you saw it as outweighing the damage. Sometimes ideas of metaphysical emptiness can actually be harmful. If you start focusing on how the damage of drinking—and the people damaged by your drinking—are…

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