When we don’t have the recognition that all things are empty of reality, we have the idea instead that such things truly exists. In emptiness, there are no things; we cannot even say of emptiness that it exists or does not exist. As soon as we assume that something exists, all manner of things exist, both material and—as concepts—the immaterial; such as good, bad, happy, sad, time, etc. It is the conceptual things which are particularly troubling to one’s (presumed) peace of mind.

Khempo Tsultrim Rinpoche assures us:

Even time has no meaning… we talk about past events. These events do not exist at all. They are simply names, or concepts, for referring to things that are being imagined, but which do not exist… The relative is merely concepts, and the absolute is emptiness free from concepts… Even the terms relative and absolute are conceptual creations. Ultimately there is no such distinction.

When we realize that all the things which appear, and appear to fulfill functions, are nevertheless empty of reality, we see that “life” has the same quality as a dream, and that we are simply a dreamer within the dream.

In a dream, the ultimate nature of the various things that manifest is emptiness, because none of them are real. They do not have self-nature… In the same way, in waking life, relative phenomena appear and perform functions and yet, although they seem to have independent, lasting existence of their own, they have no such self-nature. Their ultimate nature is emptiness…

If you suffer in a dream, you are happy to let go when it ends, feeling reassured that it was not real anyway. If you suffer in what you call your waking life, you get emotionally involved in it and afford it the status of absolute reality…

The relative reality is like the dream experience and the absolute reality is that the person suffering in the dream is not really real…

The person in the dream, imagined to be something separate from the things perceived in the dream, is completely imaginary; as are all the separate, independent entities that seem to appear in it: these are the imaginary nature.

How perturbed is one likely to be when aware that events in time have no more reality than time itself?

As soon as one becomes aware that it is only a dream, even if the dream does not stop, one is nonetheless free to think, “It does not matter; it is only a dream. It is not really happening to me”… The ‘dream tiger’ does not need the concept of emptiness to negate a reality it never had…

The imaginary nature is empty, in the sense that it does not exist at all. It is the emptiness of something non-existent… things vividly appear but are empty; and though empty, they appear, as dreams appear even though they are empty.

Material “reality” is empty, immaterial—all concepts. “Reality” is equally empty; the good, the bad, the happy or sad. In remembering the emptiness of all things, even conceptual things cease to cause disturbances of thought: thoughts too are seen to be empty, thus they come to stillness.

As Jamgon Kongtrul says, in his Encyclopedia of Knowledge, whatever thoughts arise, there is no need to try to stop them; in that state, they simply liberate themselves. It is like waves on an ocean that simply come to rest by themselves. No effort is required to still them.