WanderingMonk

My Sifu called me one day and began our usual conversation with something extraordinary.  He told me, “Erin, we all have something in us; a bottomless pit that we try endlessly to fill. This is called the Great Emptiness.”  At first I did not know what he was getting at.  At the time I was young and did not understand what was meant by a great emptiness.  I thought he was singling me out: that he saw something in me that needed to be fixed.  Now that I am older and understand better my Sifu and the world, I see that I was right.  He did see some flaw in me needing to be fixed.  However, this flaw exists in all of us.  He continued the conversation and used drug users as an example.

“Somone who uses drugs is trying to fill the emptiness inside them.  Their first fix satisfies their craving and gives them a glimpse of completion, but this is false.  The next time they seek out the high it will never be like the first.  They will try their whole lives to feel the way they did when they first started using, but it’s a dragon they will never catch”

“It is not only drug users,” he said.  ”People all over the world seek to fill this emptiness whether it is with music, sports, people, or things.”

“But music is a good thing Sifu.”  I said.  ”It doesn’t turn people into addicts or affect the way they behave with people, like drugs do.”  Clealry I wasn’t grasping the lesson.  He sighed and said to me,

“It does not matter what the person chases after, only that they are chasing.  The chase will never end, the emptiness will never be filled.  Now, how to we fix this problem?”

“Fill it with something meaningful?”  I responded.  I think if he could have, he would have given me a bop on the head.  Instead he sighed his usually sigh and said very plainly,

“No.  I just told you it would never be filled.  As a buddhist, you must accept this fact and continue moving on with your life.  A Buddhist Monk accepts this fact and learns not to be deceived by things such as ‘filling it’.  There is no such thing.”

It took me years to understand this conversation.  At first, I thought I had done something wrong: that I had been acting a certain way to make him show me that the things I chased after were wrong.  Now I realize the true value of this simple conversation.  there is a feeling one has as a human being.  It is the feeling that something is missing.  Perhaps it is a longing to connect with the divine or find our place in the world.  Whatever it may be, it sits in the hearts of every person on this planet.  It is the feeling of being incomplete.  Any action done to fill this incomplete-ness is done in vain, because it can never be satisfied.  It is a thirst that can never be quenched.  I used to think my life had some deep secretive meaning and that one day I would find whatever it is that makes me feel incomplete or empty.  Such a realization has never happened.  Nothing I have ever done, noting I have ever found, and not one person I have ever met has satiated that hunger for completion.  Instead, I have learned that this feeling will forever persist.  Since this realization, every action, every thing, every person has been thought of only in terms of what it is… not how it can make me better.  Everything now exists in its own right and is not for something else.  I play music because it is beautiful, not because it completes me.  My husband is by my side simply because I enjoy him, not because he makes me better.  The emptiness has never left.  It continues to sit in the right hand corner of my mind and although it calls out for fulfillment, I know better and let it be what it is.

I opened one of copies of the Tao the Ching.  Here’s what it read:

Number 32

Eternal Tao has no name                                                                                                     

Although simple and subtle,

no one in the world can master it.

If those who rule could grasp it,

everything in the world would honor them,

heaven and earth would join

to rain sweet dew on the people

without command being given.

Rule is begun by naming,

but naming can proliferate.

Know when to stop.

Know when reason sets limits

to avoid peril.

Imagine Tao’s presence in the world:

it flows like streams and rivulets

into great rivers and the sea

What I learned from this today:

The Tao has no name.  There is not one way to control it or even grasp it, as one would would a possession or idea.  Naming things is born from the want to rule and control and in doing so we separate ourselves from the true nature of things, which is nameless.  Imagine what it would be like if science and religion could become one.  Oh but wait you say, that can’t happen.  Science only explains how things are.  Why things are is religion’s territory.  But don’t you think it’s true they talk about the same things?  How is the Big Bang different from God creating the universe?  Or the universe creating itself?  Both claim that from nothing came something, and that once all of this was a singularity.  I, personally, don’t like science nor religion and this is because they are narrow minded.  They claim things to be rules, and later modify these rules.  They think one thing is one way, run with it, and eventually they find they were wrong and run with that new idea…  The cycle endlessly repeats itself.  Science and religions have their own separate languages but whether it’s apple or manzana, you’re still talking about a red fruit that is juicy and delicious :).  No matter what we call the Universe, or God, or Tao the actual thing we are describing doesn’t care.  It is not effected by our naming it, and us naming it gives us no real clues as to what it is.  We cannot find the true nature of it by dissecting and organizing it into an universal system.  It’s doing it’s thing regardless of whether we know it or not.  You will never be able to fully understand the mechanics of it.  So stop trying to understand why, or how it works.  It just flipping works.  Instead pay attention to the way it works.  Stop limiting yourself with ideas of what it is or isn’t and just let it be.  Let yourself be.  

Stop and listen for the breath of the Tao.