Sweet-hearted one, meditate on knowing and not-knowing, existing and not-existing. Then leave both aside that you may be.
- Apply to any polarity: birth↔death, knowing↔not-knowing, love↔hate, friendship↔enmity, existing↔not-existing. First contemplate one pole fully; then the other; then drop both simultaneously.
- Practical entry via birth and death: meditate from the first cell in the womb through growth, old age, to the body burning on the funeral pyre. Set aside both the one born and the one dying. Look within for what is never born and will never die.
- Another entry-point: eyes open — ‘I know you’; eyes closed — ‘I don’t know you.’ Put aside both knowing and not-knowing. You are empty. You will be no one: neither wise nor ignorant, neither lover nor enemy.
- The essential pitfall: the mind releases one pole only by clinging harder to the other. The great renouncer sets aside wealth but clings to poverty; sets aside scripture but clings to ignorance. They renounce, but they still cling. Clinging is the disease, not which pole is held.
- The mechanism: ‘You are there, but because of the clinging you are hidden. With non-clinging you will be exposed, you will explode.’ Dropping both polarities at once is the action; emptiness is the fruit — there is no third thing to cling to when both opposites are released.