Know what to do when “nothing is real” starts to feel frightening

If emptiness practice leaves the world feeling dreamlike or your self feeling missing, ground yourself, ease off, and talk to someone.

Pourquoi ça marche

Lindahl and colleagues, interviewing practitioners from Theravāda, Zen and Tibetan traditions, documented derealisation — phenomena appearing dreamlike, unreal or as if in a fog — changes in the sense of self up to feeling that one no longer existed, and changes in worldview including confusion about views of self and reality, with responses ranging from curiosity and bliss to fear and terror. Nāgārjuna himself warns that emptiness misperceived does harm. In Madhyamaka terms, an insight that lands as “nothing is real” is the nihilist misreading; in practical terms it is a signal to restabilise in the conventional — body, senses, people, routine — before going further.

Comment faire

1. Notice the signs: the world feeling flat or dreamlike for hours after practice, a sense that you are not really there, dread about meaning.
2. Set analytical practice aside for now and ground in the conventional: feet on the floor, five things you can see, food, a walk, a conversation.
3. Remind yourself of the two truths: the conventional world is real on its own terms, and emptiness never meant that it vanishes.
4. Talk to an experienced teacher in the tradition you practise.
5. If the feeling persists, frightens you, or gets in the way of daily life, see a clinician — ideally one familiar with meditation-related experiences.

Données probantes

Lindahl and colleagues interviewed 60 Western practitioners and 32 meditation teachers and produced a taxonomy of 59 meditation-related experiences across 7 domains, including derealisation, changes in sense of self and changes in worldview. Britton’s review argues that mindfulness-related processes can turn from helpful to harmful past a point, so more practice is not always better. Nāgārjuna’s warning is MMK 24:11, in Garfield’s translation. (observational)

The Lindahl study is qualitative and was designed to describe these experiences, not to estimate how common they are, and it was not specific to emptiness practice. If thoughts of not existing ever turn into thoughts of harming yourself, contact a crisis line or emergency services.

Sources

• Lindahl, J. R., Fisher, N. E., Cooper, D. J., Rosen, R. K., & Britton, W. B. (2017). The varieties of contemplative experience: A mixed-methods study of meditation-related challenges in Western Buddhists. PLOS ONE, 12(5), e0176239.
• Britton, W. B. (2019). Can mindfulness be too much of a good thing? The value of a middle way. Current Opinion in Psychology, 28, 159–165.
• Garfield, J. L. (1994). Dependent arising and the emptiness of emptiness: Why did Nāgārjuna start with causation? Philosophy East and West, 44(2), 219–250 (includes a translation of Mūlamadhyamakakārikā chapters 1, 2 and 24).

Erreur fréquente

Reading a frightening sense of unreality as proof you have finally understood emptiness, and pushing on. On Nāgārjuna’s own account, an emptiness that leaves the conventional world collapsed has been grasped by the wrong end.