[From a teaching on The White Khechari by Lama Tashi Topgyal Translated by Lama Yeshe Gyamtso.]
Now in this practice [the White Khechari], as is in many of our practices, there’s the notion when we say the svabhava mantra that the things dissolve into emptiness as though they were substantially existent, and then they disappear, and then re-arise as something else. Of course, while we do say this – everything becomes empty, from emptiness arises whatever, and so forth — we don’t actually mean it that way.
It’s not that the things dissolve. It’s not that they were existent and then dissolve. What we are dissolving is our attitude that they exist. If the things really did exist substantially, we could not dissolve them by reciting a mantra. We dissolve our thought, however, of them existing substantially. For example, if I were to recite the svabhava mantra and so on in order to dissolve the table in front of me into emptiness, it’s not the case that the table now exists and then would dissolve and disappear. The table does not exist right now, while I perceive it. It never has exited, as is taught in the middle way school of reasoning. So, when we recite these mantras, in which it’s taught that things dissolve into emptiness, we are not trying to dissolve perceived physical reality, but to bring to mind the fact that the physical reality we perceive has no true existence from its own side.
