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Now I’m going to elaborate a little on the subject of emptiness. The way in which everything exists is by being merely labeled by the mind. But that does not mean that everything the mind labels actually exists. Even though everything exists by being merely labeled by the mind, which doesn’t mean that if your mind labels something it automatically brings it into existence. For example, say I cut up a huge pile of newspapers into little pieces and my mind labels each one "a billion dollars"—that doesn’t make each piece of paper worth a billion dollars. Even though my mind has merely labeled those pieces of paper "a billion dollars," that doesn’t mean each one has become a billion dollars. If it were possible for that to happen, we wouldn’t have to vote in presidential elections. We wouldn’t have to put all that effort into raising funds, campaigning, spending all that money, holding inquiries, to elect the resident. All you’d have to do would be to label yourself, "I’m the American president," and you’d become president. If things coming into existence were only up to the mind labeling them, if that’s all it took, then that’s what would happen. Whenever you wanted to be president, all you’d have to do would be to have your mind label yourself president and you’d be president. A magician could hypnotize you into believing that he’d given you a bag full of money, and you might carry it home, believing you were rich, but later, when you opened it up, there’d be nothing there but cut up pieces of newspaper. That’s one way of showing that it doesn’t exist—for your own mind to discover that it’s not true. Later, when you’re not under the influence of hypnosis, you realize that it was an illusion, that the money you saw didn’t exist. Everything was there for your mind—the appearance of money and your mind labeling it money—but it wasn’t money. Another way of showing that it does not exist is for other people not to see the money. Because of the illusion created by hypnosis, money appears to your mind, but other people, whose minds are not under the illusion, don’t see it. Therefore, it takes more than appearance and labeling by mind for something to exist. Dreams are another example of something where your own mind can discover that appearance and labeling by mind are insufficient to bring something into existence. For instance, one night you might have a dream in which you became king, got married in a huge wedding ceremony, lived in a luxurious jeweled palace and had many children. While you are dreaming, the appearance of all this and your mind merely labeling it are both there, but when you wake up you again realize it wasn’t true. You’re not king, there’s no palace, no wealth, no princes and princesses—nothing. You don’t have any of that.
