The Wisdom of Emptiness
The concept of emptiness keeps recurring in my life lately.
Cyberfriend Trev Diesel recently remarked, on the WisdomReading email list, that Jesus’ command to “love others as yourself” (Jesus was actually quoting a verse from Leviticus) could be interpreted on a much deeper level. Trev wrote, “We've often taken this to mean love others in the same manner that you love yourself, but what would it mean to love others AS ourselves – that in fact, this passage is inviting us to love others because they ARE ourSELF???”
Trev’s take on Jesus’ words reminded me of what I’d heard as I was listening to the audiobook The Universe in a Single Atom by His Holiness The Dalai Lama, which I had downloaded from Audible.com. The Dalai Lama was talking about the Buddhist concept of Emptiness: we are all interconnected (in the words of Nagarjuna, “this arising, that arises”) so we have no separate identity of our own. We are individually empty of Being because we are all connected to Being. So at the very deepest, most real level, we ARE our neighbors.
To use a metaphor from Sufi mysticism:
“Man is a condition of God as a wave is a condition of the sea.”
– Hazrat Inayat Khan
This understanding of emptiness and interconnectedness was central to a class I taught at St. Luke’s during Advent, about the book of Ecclesiastes, one of the Wisdom books of the Hebrew Scriptures. I used a new version of Ecclesiastes, The Way of Solomon, by Rabbi Rami Shapiro. As I remarked here in December, Rabbi Shapiro takes a radical approach to this ancient text. The Hebrew word usually translated “vanity” (as in “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”) can also be translated “emptiness.” Using this as a beginning point, Rabbi Shapiro’s paraphrase of Ecclesiastes becomes a meditation on emptiness, impermanence, and compassion. Ecclesiastes suddenly becomes less depressing (as it does in many mainstream translations) and sounds more like the wisdom of a Buddhist sage.
Now another cyberfriend, Jon Zuck, has posted several entries on emptiness (well worth reading) at his blog, The Wild Things of God: “Emptiness, clarified” (dated Feb. 20th) and this poetic meditation (dated Feb. 14th):
The Mystery
From a seed,
which once didn’t even exist,
comes the redwood
which massively does.
From
n o t h i n g
comes
EVERYTHING.
This is the mystery,
the source of all mysteries,
the source of all.
Does Emptiness scare you?
Good!
but go further.
Fall in love with it.
Poem: © jon zuck // norfolk, virginia // february 14, 2006
Cyberfriend Trev Diesel recently remarked, on the WisdomReading email list, that Jesus’ command to “love others as yourself” (Jesus was actually quoting a verse from Leviticus) could be interpreted on a much deeper level. Trev wrote, “We've often taken this to mean love others in the same manner that you love yourself, but what would it mean to love others AS ourselves – that in fact, this passage is inviting us to love others because they ARE ourSELF???”
Trev’s take on Jesus’ words reminded me of what I’d heard as I was listening to the audiobook The Universe in a Single Atom by His Holiness The Dalai Lama, which I had downloaded from Audible.com. The Dalai Lama was talking about the Buddhist concept of Emptiness: we are all interconnected (in the words of Nagarjuna, “this arising, that arises”) so we have no separate identity of our own. We are individually empty of Being because we are all connected to Being. So at the very deepest, most real level, we ARE our neighbors.
To use a metaphor from Sufi mysticism:
“Man is a condition of God as a wave is a condition of the sea.”
– Hazrat Inayat Khan
This understanding of emptiness and interconnectedness was central to a class I taught at St. Luke’s during Advent, about the book of Ecclesiastes, one of the Wisdom books of the Hebrew Scriptures. I used a new version of Ecclesiastes, The Way of Solomon, by Rabbi Rami Shapiro. As I remarked here in December, Rabbi Shapiro takes a radical approach to this ancient text. The Hebrew word usually translated “vanity” (as in “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”) can also be translated “emptiness.” Using this as a beginning point, Rabbi Shapiro’s paraphrase of Ecclesiastes becomes a meditation on emptiness, impermanence, and compassion. Ecclesiastes suddenly becomes less depressing (as it does in many mainstream translations) and sounds more like the wisdom of a Buddhist sage.
Now another cyberfriend, Jon Zuck, has posted several entries on emptiness (well worth reading) at his blog, The Wild Things of God: “Emptiness, clarified” (dated Feb. 20th) and this poetic meditation (dated Feb. 14th):
The Mystery
From a seed,
which once didn’t even exist,
comes the redwood
which massively does.
From
n o t h i n g
comes
EVERYTHING.
This is the mystery,
the source of all mysteries,
the source of all.
Does Emptiness scare you?
Good!
but go further.
Fall in love with it.
Poem: © jon zuck // norfolk, virginia // february 14, 2006
posted by gratefulbear | 1:05 PM
2 Comments:
Darrell. At the risk of going upstream, I wonder why we don't recognise the concept of "fullness"? Could it be that to be empty is to be full? That to empty oursleves of self it to fill ourselves with all else? Could it be that our thinking has been variously stuck in negativity for millenia? Emptiness indeed?
Before there was, was there nothing or was there everything?
From my early years I remember preachers talking about emptying ourselves so that God can fill us. The old hymn, "more of self and less of Thee", progressing to "none of self and all of Thee" epitomised this teaching.
I wonder now whether this teaching, with a twist, is actually helpful. The twist being that we are and always were, full of Thee.
Just a thought.
The journey not begun is the journey completed. To step out on the journey is to empty ourselves of its end.
D
I think you make some great points, rainbowpitta. To be empty of self is to be full of the Divine. The individual wave exists but a moment but it is full of the sea.
I don't know if we need to empty ourselves, as the old preachers said, in order to "make room" for God. That makes God sound like a limited quantity! I do, however, think it is helpful to empty ourselves of whatever prevents us from recognizing the God who is already within us. The Sufis called that "polishing the mirror of the heart." My cyberfriend Meredith had a great blog entry last month about polishing the mirror of the heart:
http://gracefulpresence.blogspot.com/
2006/01/polishing-mirror.html
(copy and paste the link)
bearhugs ~
Darrell
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