Third Hallmark — Emptiness Of Identity
WHAT WE HAVE BEEN CLINGING TO
First Floor - Small Vehicle • Module 6
Introduction: The Missing Piece
Estimated time to complete: 1:25 minutes
The Missing Piece
We have spent the last several modules circling around a single word: identity. The First Hallmark showed that all conditioned things are impermanent — nothing stays the same. The Second Hallmark showed that clinging to those changing things produces suffering. The Four Noble Truths mapped out how that suffering works, traced it to its source in ignorant craving, and announced that a path exists. But in all of that, we have not yet looked directly at what the clinging is actually aimed at.
According to the Buddhist tradition, the root of suffering is clinging to identity as though it were a real singular, lasting, and autonomous thing. The Second Noble Truth introduced these three adjectives and showed how our subconscious clinging to them — which we can call “ego” — produces emotional infections and actions that trap us in a cycle of three types of suffering. Now the Third Hallmark asks the most direct question in the entire curriculum: is that identity actually something we can find or experience directly in any given moment?
This module has three videos. The first introduces the Third Hallmark and what the word “empty” actually means — which turns out to be surprisingly good news. The second brings the investigation to our most intimate concern: can we find the fixed identity of ourselves? And the third is a short guided meditation that lets us try.
What to watch for: The distinction between “empty” as a negative, pessimistic idea and “empty” as openness or freedom. The two different interpretations of what “all things are empty of identity” means — and why both matter. The relationship between conventional and ultimate reality: seeing emptiness is not seeing something different from appearance.
Video 1: Third Hallmark — Emptiness
Duration: 10 minutes
Turning the Investigation Inward
The introductory video distinguished two ways to understand the Third Hallmark: emptiness of identity in general, which applies to all phenomena, and emptiness of personal identity, which applies specifically to the sense of “me” we carry through life. The Small Vehicle tradition starts with personal identity because it connects immediately to the source of suffering. We will do the same and leave the broader investigation of identity in general for the Great Vehicle floor, where the four philosophical schools explore the topic systematically.
But what do we actually mean by “clinging to fixed identity”? It is not a single activity but operates on at least three levels. First, clinging means believing — despite any evidence to the contrary — that somewhere in this stream of experience there is something lasting, unified, and autonomous that is “me.” Second, clinging means cherishing and protecting this idea, insisting its characteristics need to be defended and kept safe — despite the obvious contradiction: if identity were truly permanent, it would not need us to act on its behalf. Third, clinging is desperately seeking to establish these imagined qualities as real by proving to ourselves and others that we are who we wish we were. For instance, if we think we are special, we may want others to see it and become anxious when our specialness goes unnoticed. But ironically, no confirmation can ever be enough for our ego because the whole project rests on a fragile assumption that our identity is somehow fixed. Thus, ego’s clinging project entails constant emotional reactivity which manifests as the five emotional infections of attachment, aversion, ignorance, jealousy, and pride.
It also helps to understand that our sense of self operates at two distinct levels. The first is what we might call the innate sense of self — a psychosomatic sensation of being the one who is looking out through our eyes, hearing through our ears, experiencing from inside this body. It is a felt sense of locatedness: a subtle tightness behind the eyes when seeing, a felt presence just inside the ears when hearing, a sense of being “in here” when touching. This sensation feels like raw experience, but the mind instantly and automatically interprets it as “me.” In the Buddhist vocabulary, this is called innate self-clinging (Skt. sahajātmagrāha) — it is not learned or created by outside forces but baked into the way we perceive.
The second is the acquired sense of self — ideas about who we are that we build up over time through culture, education, relationships, and the stories we tell ourselves. This is our ongoing autobiographical project: the effort to establish who we ultimately are and to fit every new experience into a storyline about a fixed identity. But that storyline constantly needs updating, and not knowing who we are while struggling to maintain consistency is emotionally painful. In the Buddhist vocabulary, this is called acquired self-grasping (Skt. parikalpitātmagrāha). Just as in a dream where we never see our own face but assume we have certain characteristics, our acquired sense of self is the unseen star of our inner dramas.
The lecture that follows mainly investigates the logic behind this acquired sense of self — the storyline, the four descriptors, the characteristics we assume define us. The deeper investigation of the innate sense of self unfolds through vipaśyanā meditation in subsequent modules.
What to watch for: The crucial distinction between the innate sense of self (the baby) and the acquired sense of self (the bathwater). The exercise: try to write down four things that are uniquely descriptive of who we are, then ask whether any of them can actually be located. Notice how much of our identity turns out to be narrative rather than something we can directly find. The movie theater analogy.
Video 2: Emptiness of Personal Identity
Duration: 49 minutes
From Concept to Investigation
The lecture walked us through the analysis conceptually — an essential first step, but only a first step. As the video itself noted, we cannot just tell ourselves “identity is empty” and expect anything to change. According to the tradition, this insight has to be seen directly, in our own experience, through sustained investigation. The guided meditation that follows offers a way to begin.
What to watch for: This meditation applies the analysis to direct experience. Rather than thinking about whether identity exists, we scan the body and mind asking a single question: Is this me? The body scan touches the innate sense of self — that felt locatedness behind the eyes, in the ears, throughout the body. The mind investigation touches the acquired sense — the storyline, the characteristics we assume. The practice closes with the instruction to rest in whatever space opens up when identity cannot be found in either place. Notice what that space feels like.
Video 3: Guided Meditation — Mindfulness of Mind: Me-ness
Duration: 11 minutes
✦ A few Insights:
Consider an analogy for what the Buddhist tradition means by investigating identity. Imagine you pay a personal assistant to place flowers on your deceased mother’s grave each week. One week, you stop by and find no flowers there. That single absence proves little — perhaps someone took them, perhaps the timing was off. But if you check every week for several months and never once find flowers, you will not only conclude that the flowers are not to be found. Your trust in that personal assistant will be shaken to the core. You will feel betrayed. You will fire him. You will investigate whether he lied about other things. You may even sue him for your money back. And you might then hire someone more trustworthy — someone who sends photos each week as proof.
Ego, according to this tradition, is that personal assistant. It has been telling us our whole lives that it is working on our behalf to establish and maintain a fixed identity — something lasting, unified, and autonomous. But if no such identity can ever be found, not once, in any moment of honest investigation, this should shake us to the core about whether we want to keep ego on the payroll to handle our personal business. In not finding a fixed self, we uncover a lie that should rock our sense of meaning and reorganize how we live our lives.
The Buddhist tradition maps this realization onto three stages. “Studying” means gathering evidence — listening to the teaching, understanding the logic. “Reflecting” means checking whether any other explanation could account for what we are not finding. “Cultivating” means letting the truth of not-finding sink in through repeated meditation and then acting on it. So this is not a one-time intellectual exercise. The tradition is asking us to investigate a core belief that our lives have been structured around since before we can remember. Remember the Five Paths from the previous module: once we truly realize what has been going on — once we let go of our initial emotional attachment to ego — that corresponds to the Path of Seeing. The full realization of arhatship at the end of the Path of Cultivation makes that initial “aha” into a living reality.
With this module, the Ground section is complete. These three hallmarks of cyclic existence — impermanence, suffering, and emptiness of identity — form the basis for the path. What follows is the practical training — ethical conduct, meditation, and the investigative methods — through which we make the journey from conceptual understanding to direct experience.
? Questions for Reflection
These are not comprehension questions. They are observation prompts — invitations to notice how these ideas land in your own experience.
1. The Four Descriptors
Try the exercise from the lecture: write down four things that are uniquely descriptive of who you are. Then sit with the question — can any of them actually be located? Not “thought about” but found or perceived directly right now? If not, where do these qualities exist? Notice what happens in your mind when you look.
2. Is This Me?
Return to the guided meditation several times over the coming days. Each time, notice: does the question “Is this me?” land differently when directed at the body versus the mind? Is there something that really strongly feels like “me”? What happens when you look directly at that? Do you find the qualities you associate with “me” or do you just abstractly imagine them to be there?
3. The Movie Theater
Notice a moment in daily life when you are caught up in a strong emotional reaction — frustration in traffic, anxiety before a meeting, irritation at something someone said. Without trying to change anything, ask: what is being threatened here? What is the “me” that feels at stake? If someone called you stupid, are you clinging to the idea that you are intelligent? Where do you feel that pain — in the body psychosomatically, or in the mind?
4. Emptiness as Openness
The first video suggested that emptiness could be translated as “openness” or “freedom.” Does that reframe change how the concept sits with you? When you hear “all things are empty of identity,” try hearing it as “all things are open” or “all things are free from fixed essence.” Notice whether the emotional charge shifts.
5. What Remains
The lecture ended with the claim that removing self-centeredness from our emotions does not eliminate them but purifies them — attachment becomes love, anger becomes fierce clarity, stupidity becomes open-mindedness. Does that sound plausible from your own experience? Have you ever had a moment of caring about someone without any self-interest at all — and if so, what did that feel like?