Another Look at Emptiness

Anoth­er Look at Empti­ness — a West­ern look at empti­ness, and how dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories of “know­ing” affect us

Many of the themes I write about revolve around the idea of emptiness, but one of the tricky parts about emptiness is that many Westerners equate emptiness with “meaningless.”

Peo­ple think that to be emp­ty is to lack feel­ing, empa­thy, and involve­ment. How­ev­er, most peo­ple who say that are typ­i­cal­ly nar­cis­sists who have trou­ble with not being the cen­tre of atten­tion, so I guess that explains some of it. 😉

Nonetheless, one could be forgiven for thinking being empty is tantamount to being uninvolved in the drama of life. I’d likely agree with that view. As I wrote to a friend:

No, there is noth­ing new in life. Please tell her for me that there IS noth­ing new. That’s the scary real­i­ty of this work. It’s all SSDD (Same Shit, Dif­fer­ent Day.) That’s why peo­ple get so dis­cour­aged. SSDD. And why rela­tion­ships fail. SSDD.
It’s the same dance over and over again, in dif­fer­ent guis­es. Each of us has only one issue — it’s unique to us, and I call it our DRAMA.
DRAMA has many. Like Baskin Rob­bins sells 32 flavours, and it’s all ice cream.

Mak­ing it more com­plex than this is an ego game our minds come up with to keep us from deal­ing with our stuff each time, grace­ful­ly.

A cou­ple of friends shared their recent dreams with me, and I’m amazed at how rich and com­plex (read DRAMATIC) their dreams are. The last one I was told about had three peo­ple in it, all inter­act­ing at cross pur­pos­es. Fights, dis­agree­ments and dances, oh my!

Imagine the DRAMA that 3 people with different agendas can create—and remember, the “three people” are really just the dreamer, who is actually a fourth participant.

Fritz Perls invent­ed Gestalt Ther­a­py, and diag­nosed dreams. His the­o­ry was that each per­son and object in a dream is an aspect of the dream­er — every aspect of the dream is total­ly about and total­ly is — the dreamer. 

For instance, if I am remem­ber­ing an expe­ri­ence from the past with some­one I dat­ed, I am both the “dat-er” and the “dat-ed.”

How could I not be? As I play the role of the oth­er per­son, I am only imag­in­ing their expe­ri­ence.

Wak­ing life is the same. No mat­ter what is hap­pen­ing, all there is, is me and my per­cep­tions.

But boy, is it easy to get hung up on my sto­ries, and on blam­ing others.

Here’s a Rumi poem for you to think about:

Essence is empti­ness. Every­thing else, acci­den­tal. Empti­ness brings peace to lov­ing. Every­thing else, dis­ease. In this world of trick­ery Empti­ness is what your soul wants. Jelalud­din Rumi (trans. Cole­man Barks)

So, what’s going on here? 

Well, the point of life is to be present as life unfolds, while at the same time being gen­tle with ourselves. 

Our mind cre­ates sto­ries, DRAMAS, which are both dis­turb­ing and mean­ing­less. Thus, DRAMA is the oppo­site of empti­ness.

Empti­ness is the will­ing­ness to sim­ply be with what is in front of us, with­out cre­at­ing DRAMA as an avoid­ance mech­a­nism.

Rather than try­ing to ana­lyze the Rumi poem right now, let me try an anal­o­gy. On Christ­mas, a long time back, most of Dar­bel­la’s fam­i­ly were gath­ered in front of her sister’s TV, there to dis­cuss the “Android Box.”

Android Box­es work like an Android phone, but are loaded with soft­ware that makes it pos­si­ble to watch movies and TV shows. I was intrigued. 

A while lat­er the house we were “sit­ting” had one; we liked it enough to order our own. 

• First, the two box­es looked dif­fer­ent, but did the same thing.
  • Let’s call what the unit looks like its “form.”
• In addi­tion to the “form,” there is how each unit works.
  • Let’s call how the unit works its “Func­tion.”

Unit 1 had a sim­ple HOME menu, and that made it easy to shift between software. 

Unit 2 had (get this!) a “sim­pli­fied menu,” which meant it took sev­er­al steps to get to th∈software.

There­fore, if time is impor­tant to me, then the func­tion of Unit 1 is more effi­cient than that of Unit 2. In gen­er­al, though, their func­tion is “sim­i­lar.”

• Last­ly, there is con­tent.

Each unit can only access what is asked of it. I have to click on some­thing to retrieve and watch it. So, what I’m watch­ing at any point is entire­ly dif­fer­ent from what my friend (or any­one else) is watching. 

We there­fore can say that the two Android Box­es have almost the “same” form and func­tion, but have dif­fer­ent content.

Got it?

Here’s where peo­ple con­fuse them­selves. They think that there is one more aspect to the “things of life” — “mean­ing.” Mean­ing, how­ev­er, is total­ly per­son­al, and has noth­ing to do with the form, func­tion, or contents.

Meaning is never a function of anything. Meaning is imposed, is situational, and is fleeting.

I always have the abil­i­ty to choose what to look at — to decide if I want to change what I view. This deci­sion does not require that I cre­ate a DRAMA about what I’ve cho­sen to look at. I am “emp­ty” of judge­ment about the right­ness or wrong­ness of what I’m watching.

Emptiness, as I use the word, and as Rumi used the word, might be described as making adjustments to one’s approach to life, without imposing meaning, judgement, or DRAMA.

You like­ly get this as it applies to a show on the Android Box. 

I might love a show and you might hate it; that is not a char­ac­ter­is­tic of the show. Rather, it is a per­son­al judgement. 

The oppo­site of being emp­ty is DRAMA and judge­ment. Many are caught here. They judge that their “con­tents” are faulty, lousy, bad, what­ev­er — or they judge that the con­tents of oth­ers are faulty. They want the right, fixed, prop­er, good “con­tents.”

We suggest dropping the judgements, and simply doing something different. That may sound like the same thing, but it’s not.

Rumi says, “Empti­ness brings peace to lov­ing. Every­thing else, disease.” 

The last word is telling -— dis-ease. Lack­ing ease. And the empti­ness to which he refers is being emp­ty of judge­ment regard­ing the thing one loves. 

We believe that one func­tion of being human is cre­at­ing a life based upon who one is and how one sees things, in the moment.

While anoth­er per­son­’s approach may not res­onate for me, and I may there­fore not chose to copy it, all I can say is, “That’s not right for me.” 

Most rela­tion­ship dis­putes, on the oth­er hand, are based upon the judge­ment that one’s part­ner is not sim­ply dif­fer­ent, but wrong. Peo­ple get up on their soap-box­es and preach at their part­ner, list­ing all their flaws and sins. And the part­ner does the same. The part­ners are full of judgement.

Empti­ness is this: I am curi­ous about your pro­gram­ming, and I con­tin­u­al­ly ask you how your pro­gram­ming is work­ing for you. I encour­age you to explore how you see real­i­ty and how your view is work­ing for you, and invite you to let go of views and actions that are not beneficial…to you! 

And I invite you to do the same for me.

I am dis-eased if I think that my way is the right way. I am empty if I live with integrity, and accept who I am and who you are, without judgement.

Not one per­son, liv­ing or dead, has ever been con­tent (at ease) when liv­ing in judge­ment. And this includes both judg­ing one­self and judg­ing others. 

We are not sug­gest­ing com­pli­ance here, nor apa­thy, nor stu­pid­i­ty. What we are sug­gest­ing is the integri­ty to accept com­plete respon­si­bil­i­ty for what I can con­trol—the way I act in the world.

Empti­ness is the key. I con­tin­u­al­ly emp­ty my self of the accu­mu­lat­ed sludge of anger, resent­ment, judge­ment, and regret. I emp­ty myself of the need to fix oth­ers. I look at myself and my way of explain­ing, see­ing and liv­ing. If I am not con­tent with myself, I shift my behav­iours and inter­pre­ta­tions and look again.

To be whole, one must be empty.

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