Suffering is an illusion

The illusion:

Suffering is an illusion. You feel compassion for the beings who suffer, but there is no reason for you to become emotional yourself. Because suffering does not exist, it can be removed.

Even your emotions do not really exist. You may not be able to actually experience other people’s emotions, but you can certainly experience your own. Your emotions need no introduction, as you already know them. In fact, you can examine them in a thorough way.

When you experience an emotion, find out how it exists. You can research it by your mind because it is fresh and within you, and you experience it. See whether the emotion is in your skin, or in your bones, or in your blood. In which part of your body is it located? When you look, you will not find the emotion anywhere. By the time you decide to have a good look at it, the emotion is already lost. So where did it go? Is it hiding somewhere in one corner of your body? Where is the emotion? When you examine both negative and positive emotions in this way, you will not find them as having any real existence.

When somebody makes you angry, is that anger coming from a place inside him to you? Or is the anger inside you? Examine it. Did he throw the anger at you? Check it! Or is your anger like a light that can be switched on? If so, where is the switch? Analyse and examine every part of your mind relative to the anger that is there. Rummage through all parts of yourself to see if the emotion really exists somewhere in you, or not. What caused your anger? Is the anger caused by somebody, if so, how?

You can examine an emotion with the kind of precision I have just described. Every emotion can become an object of your mental examination. None of the emotions truly exist. Instead, what you will find is just emptiness – the emptiness of anger and the emptiness of every emotion. This is the way to develop the wisdom in your mind by means of your emotions.

An emotion is easy to examine, but so is a non-emotional thought – neither exists. The reality of all thoughts is non-existence, yet superficially, they appear clearly like a mirage. Depression, anxiety, all thoughts and emotions are like waves of the mind. When the wave comes, you feel it. When it has subsided, you don’t experience it.
The wave or thought is from your mind; this is why you can experience it. When it is there, examine it, and you will find nothing. Don’t try to find it in a deliberate or aggressive way, as if you have to find it. That would be too emotional and extreme. You look, and finding nothing, you keep that awareness. This is how you maintain an analytical, and accurate view of mind.

It makes no difference whether the mental happening is positive, or negative. What makes you happy should be examined. What makes you sad or cry, should also be examined. Finding nothing, you might feel at a lost, and that feeling should also be examined. In other words, examine anything and everything. You will find nothing. Keep that view, and you will have a fresh experience of the real nature, or the pure part of your mind. When you do, you
will also see that the minds of others are the same. All suffering are just waves of the mind, having no true existence. They are like reflections, reflections from a crystal, mirages, or dreams – none of them exist solidly in the least.
~Shamar Rinpoche, Mahamudra Curriculum