How a Broken Computer Helped Me Experience Emptiness
Overview
Buddhism describes reality through two compatible truths:
- Conventional truth: Things exist, function, and produce consequences.
- Ultimate truth: Those same things are empty of any independent, permanent essence.
These are not two separate realities. They are two ways of understanding the same phenomena.
Things exist, but not in the fixed and independent way they appear to exist.
The Two Truths at a Glance
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Conventional or relative truth | How things appear, function, and affect one another. |
| Ultimate truth | The absence of any independent, permanent essence within those things. |
Conventional Truth
Conventional truth is the practical world of people, objects, actions, and consequences.
Conventionally:
- I am James.
- A table supports a computer.
- Anger can cause harm.
- Intentional actions produce results.
“Conventional” does not mean imaginary or unimportant. It means that something exists through causes, conditions, parts, relationships, and shared names.
Ultimate Truth
Ultimate truth is what is discovered when something is examined for an independent and permanent essence.
James exists conventionally, but no unchanging core called “James” can be found apart from:
- Body and mind
- Memories and experiences
- Relationships
- Habits and conditioning
- Culture and language
- Causes and conditions
Ultimate truth does not mean that James is nonexistent.
It means that James does not exist independently or inherently.
Ultimate truth is the emptiness of inherent existence.
“Ultimate” is generally clearer than “absolute.” Absolute can suggest a separate, permanent reality behind ordinary life. Ultimate truth is the empty nature of conventional phenomena themselves.
How the Two Truths Relate
The two truths describe the same thing.
A table exists conventionally because it functions as a table. Ultimately, no independent “table essence” can be found. It depends upon materials, parts, labor, purpose, language, and designation.
Likewise:
Conventionally, I am James. Ultimately, there is no fixed essence that permanently defines James.
Emptiness is not separate from conventional existence.
Emptiness describes how conventional things exist.
How They Differ
| Conventional truth | Ultimate truth |
|---|---|
| Describes appearance and function | Examines the nature of existence |
| Recognizes people, objects, and consequences | Finds no independent essence within them |
| Supports communication and responsibility | Releases fixation on permanent identities |
| Asks, “What is happening?” | Asks, “How does this exist?” |
Neither truth invalidates the other.
Why This Matters
Emptiness Creates Freedom
In a teaching I received from Tim Olmsted, emptiness was described as unlimited possibility.
This does not mean that every imaginable outcome is possible. Causes, conditions, abilities, and consequences still matter.
It means that a moment is not completely fixed by our first interpretation of it.
The mind often adds conceptual overlays:
- This is what is happening.
- This is what it means.
- This is who I am.
- This is how I must respond.
When these assumptions are seen as conditioned constructions rather than absolute truths, the moment opens.
We can step back and ask:
- What is actually happening?
- What matters here?
- What am I being distracted by?
- What response would be most beneficial?
- Is action needed, or is rest appropriate?
Because the moment is empty of fixed meaning, it remains open to a skillful response.
Emptiness Makes Change Possible
Because the self is not fixed:
- Habits can change.
- Anger can dissolve.
- Identities can loosen.
- Wisdom and compassion can develop.
- Suffering can be reduced.
Emptiness Preserves Responsibility
Emptiness does not make choices meaningless.
Actions still produce consequences. Conventional truth reminds us that our choices matter, while ultimate truth frees us from believing that our first reaction is inevitable.
Emptiness Avoids Two Extremes
- Eternalism: believing that people and phenomena possess permanent essences.
- Nihilism: believing that nothing exists, matters, or produces consequences.
The Middle Way recognizes both openness and responsibility.
Personal Experience: The Broken Hard Drive
The broken hard-drive analogy helped me experience emptiness for the first time.
Imagine asking a computer for file B and receiving file A instead. The file may be real and may have come from somewhere on the drive, but it was not requested.
A computer that continually produced unrelated files would seem broken or unreliable.
The mind can operate in a similar way.
I may be sitting quietly, relaxing, or talking with Sasha when an unexpected thought appears:
Where did that come from?
At other times, the causes are easier to see. After working all day, thoughts may arise about unfinished tasks, tomorrow’s responsibilities, or fears that something was handled incorrectly.
In both cases, the thought arises through causes and conditions:
- Recent activity
- Memory
- Habit
- Fear
- Physical condition
- Environment
- Previous experience
The thought was not necessarily chosen.
Like the heart beating or the lungs breathing, much of the mind’s activity happens automatically. We can influence it, but we do not control every moment of it.
The five skandhas—form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness—continually process experience. We then connect these changing moments into a story:
This is my thought.
This is what matters to me.
This is how I think.
This is who I am.
Seeing the process more clearly can loosen that identification.
My thoughts occur within experience, but they are not a fixed self.
This does not mean that thoughts are meaningless or that I am free from causes, conditions, responsibility, or consequences.
It means that I do not have to obey every thought simply because it appears.
That recognition opens the moment.
I may still feel anger, fear, or the urge to withdraw, but I am not completely bound to the first reaction produced by the mind. I can pause, see more clearly, and choose a wiser response.
The analogy may not perfectly describe the mind or every Buddhist concept. Its importance is experiential: it gave me my first flash of emptiness.
For a moment, I felt as though I could step back from the broken hard drive and observe the skandhas spinning and producing thoughts. There was a sense of space between awareness and the mental activity I had previously taken to be “me.”
I could sit quietly within that openness without suppressing thought or treating it as something negative. The thoughts were not a problem to solve. They were simply arising and passing through causes and conditions.
The experience felt non-aggressive and accepting:
The mind was moving, and that was simply what it was doing.
Whether or not the analogy is philosophically complete, it allowed me to experience meditation as resting in open awareness rather than fighting with the mind.
For me, that was a real and valuable step toward understanding emptiness.
Common Misunderstandings
Emptiness Means Nothing Exists
Emptiness means that things lack independent existence, not that they are nonexistent.
Conventional Truth Is False
Conventional truths can be valid and causally effective. Fire burns, food nourishes, and actions produce consequences.
Ultimate Truth Is Another Reality
Ultimate truth is not a hidden world behind this one. It is the empty nature of conventional phenomena.
There Is No Self, So There Is No Responsibility
There is no permanent self, but there remains continuity between intention, action, and consequence.
Awareness Is the True Permanent Self
Buddhist analysis does not replace the ordinary self with an eternal awareness. Awareness is also dependent, changing, and empty.
Other Related Buddhist Concepts
Dependent Arising
Things arise through causes and conditions. Because they depend upon causes and conditions, they are empty of independent existence.
Egolessness
Egolessness applies emptiness to the person. The self exists conventionally but cannot be found as a permanent, independent entity.
The Five Skandhas
The five skandhas describe the changing processes through which experience is formed:
- Form
- Feeling
- Perception
- Mental formations
- Consciousness
We gather these changing processes together and identify them as a single, continuous self.
Impermanence
Everything conditioned changes. Something with a fixed and independent essence could not change.
Karma
Intentional actions produce consequences within conventional reality. Emptiness does not remove ethical responsibility.
Wisdom and Compassion
Wisdom recognizes that there is no fixed self to defend. Compassion recognizes that suffering still occurs and requires a skillful response.
The Middle Way
The two truths avoid both permanent existence and complete nonexistence.
Practice and Reflection
When a strong thought, emotion, or identity arises, examine it through both truths.
Conventionally
- What is happening?
- What caused it?
- What effects might it produce?
- What response would reduce suffering?
Ultimately
- Is this experience permanent?
- Does it exist independently?
- Can a fixed essence be found within it?
- Must it be identified as “me” or “mine”?
The purpose is not to deny experience.
It is to experience it without making it permanent, independent, or absolute.
Core Formula
Conventionally, things exist and function.
Ultimately, they are empty of independent, fixed essence.
Or more simply:
Things exist, but not in the solid way they appear to exist.
References
- Nāgārjuna. Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way, Chapter 24.
- Garfield, Jay L. The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way.
- Newland, Guy. Introduction to Emptiness.
- Teaching the Relative and Ultimate Truths. 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha.
- The Theory of Two Truths in India. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- Madhyamaka. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- Emptiness and Egolessness. The Non-Buddhist Buddhist.
- Olmsted, Tim. Oral teaching describing emptiness as “unlimited possibility.”
Page Created 06/10/2026