Dalai Lama on Emptiness

Here’s how the Dalai Lama uses the example of time—decades, years, months, days, down to seconds—to illustrate the profound Buddhist insight into emptiness and the elusive nature of the present moment:

The “No Present” Insight

In a teaching often referred to as the “theory of relativity according to the Dalai Lama,” he explains:

“Present minute means one minute period. Present hour means sixty-minutes period. Present day is 24 hours. Present month is 30 days, isn’t it? Present eon is billions of years… within one millisecond there is also past and future. So half is past, half is future. No present! We cannot find the present. Without present, there is no basis for past and future.” 

This highlights that our conventional understanding of “now” is just a conceptual construct—and if we investigate deeply, we can't pinpoint an enduring, self-existing present.

Investigation: What Appears vs. What Actually Is

To illustrate the gap between how things appear and their ultimate nature, the Dalai Lama points to subtle impermanence:

Everything—our body, feelings, perceptions, the passing of time—is in a continuous state of arising and ceasing, moment by moment. 

Practically, the example is invited:

“Is your body the same from one year to the next? One month, week, day, hour, minute, second? From one split-second to the next?” 

This practice of mindful questioning reveals that nothing is static, even when it appears so. Through this scrutiny, one realizes that the present cannot be located—it is constantly dissolving into the flow of change.

What This Reveals About Emptiness

1. Dependence and Lack of Intrinsic Nature. Just like “present minute” or “present second” are conceptual labels applied to time’s flow, phenomena—including the present moment—are empty of inherent existence. They arise only in dependence on causes and conditions and cannot be found independently. 

2. Appearance vs. Ultimate Reality

Things “appear” to exist solidly and continuously, but this is our mind’s tendency to superimpose continuity onto a rapid sequence of fleeting moments. Investigation helps us discern the conventional (what appears) from the ultimate (what actually is). 

3. Emptiness Is Not Nothingness

Emptiness does not mean nonexistence. Rather, it's the absence of self-sufficient, independent existence. Something exists conventionally, but its true nature is empty. 

Final Thought

Through incisive questioning and mindfulness—“Is my body the same this split-second as before?”—you begin to experience subtle impermanence directly. The so-called present moment slips away before it can be grasped, showing the emptiness of what we thought was solid. This helps dismantle ignorance and liberate the mind from clinging to false solidity.