{PREVIOUS] Showing-Up for Emptiness: Excellence Between Obsession and Apathy

Given all the work I’ve been doing in the last half year with discovering the emptiness of all things, I find it compelling that the root of the word discernment comes from the Latin cernere—“to sift.” With the prefix dis-, it literally means “to sift apart.”

Discernment is not a term I want to discard, especially given the role it plays in training awareness. As an intellectual method, practicing discernment means mastering the art of paying heed to distinctions. But this does not mean one should keep making distinctions until every experience is atomized into particles. Part of the training is knowing when to stop—not simply knowing that it should be utilized.

Discerning awareness only sifts enough to grasp the best response within a situation. It might allow one to recognize a recurring pattern that connects this moment to others. Or it may reveal the first-timeness—the irreducible singularity—of a happening.

There is also the practice of pointing out poor discernments—those that fail to sift enough chaff from the grain of experience to allow for a careful response, or those that hastily declare it impossible to discern anything at all. That last move, of course, is paradoxical: to say “nothing can be discerned” is to make a discernment. This is the problem at the heart of all absolute skepticism.

These insights reveal how discernment can be practiced through rather than despite an awareness of emptiness. Authentic discernment separates without reifying. It distinguishes without entrenching.

This vision avoids the two extremes that often trap discussions of emptiness and discernment. On one side is nihilism: since all phenomena are empty of inherent existence, distinctions are meaningless and discernment impossible. On the other side is eternalism: treating discernments as capturing fixed, substantial differences between inherently existing entities.

Nāgārjuna’s Middle Way shows how discernment works because phenomena are empty—their lack of inherent essence makes them workable. That is, responsive to skillful attention. Nāgārjuna and other visionaries describe sifting just enough to meet the moment rightly as skillful means. It is a form of response born from understanding emptiness rather than being paralyzed by it.

The key to sifting apart attentively lies in knowing when to stop. This is not arbitrary. It reflects what the Buddhist tradition calls prajñā, or insight. This means the capacity to recognize when further analysis serves discernible purpose. It also means knowing when it becomes mere conceptual proliferation. That’s why the metaphor of grain and chaff is so vital—discernment serves life, not abstract completeness. Life lives. It goes and goes… and goes. And never without having to make itself go.

Moreover, when we discern a moment of first-timeness—a happening unlike any other—it always arrives alongside the recognition of recurring patterns. This reveals emptiness as an enabler of discernment, not its disabler. Because phenomena arise dependently, every moment is both utterly unique and intimately connected. Empty phenomena can be both singular and patterned without contradiction.

Poor discernments—those that under-sift or over-sift—reveal the value of disciplined training. Under-sifting treats complex situations as simple, thereby missing distinctions that authentic response requires. Over-sifting fragments the moment into meaningless shards, losing the very wholeness that makes response possible.

The paradox of absolute skepticism—“a discernment that nothing is discernible”—mirrors what Nāgārjuna demonstrates about emptiness itself. The teaching of emptiness is also empty. It is not a doctrine to possess, but a medicine to use. It works by dissolving the substantial thinking that gives rise to suffering, frustration, and despair.

In the same way, discernment that recognizes its own empty nature becomes more, not less, effective.

This insight connects to my ongoing work on transistance. The practice of sifting apart becomes a way of transisting through complex realities. We avoid clinging to distinctions as real in themselves. We also prevent collapsing into undifferentiated confusion. Discernment becomes the tool that enables authentic showing-up by uncovering what the situation actually requires, rather than what our presuppositions demand.

Wisdom traditions have always known this. The deepest seeing does not come from eliminating all discrimination. Instead, it comes from discriminating so skillfully that the emptiness of all distinctions becomes apparent.

This is discernment that liberates rather than binds—discernment that serves compassionate response rather than conceptual mastery.

TENTATIVE SERIES OUTLINE

• Whispering New Directions
• A Fourfold for the Current Empire
• Decluttering Awareness: Nagarjuna and Emptiness
• Showing-Up for Emptiness: Excellence Between Obsession and Apathy {PREVIOUS]
• Responsive to Skillful Attention [CURRENT]
• Care-Free Wandering (Zhuangzi) [NEXT]
• Traversing not Avoiding Nihilism (Nishitani)