Essay by Luke Foster
“Become totally empty
Quiet the restlessness of the mind
Only then will you witness everything unfolding from emptiness.”
-Lao Tzu
I have been racking my brain while beach walking in the morning the last few days trying to think of something to write about rather than letting it come to me naturally. However, I could think of nothing. So, I thought just now why not write about nothingness.
Over the past twelve years I have accumulated a lot of stuff and now that mum is gone, and I live by myself in a studio apartment I keep boxes and boxes of stuff in a storage shed as it all wont fit in my apartment. However even though I have all this stuff it doesn’t really make me happy, and I feel heavier the more and more I collect. Yet I am in two minds about this as I also feel its good to not throw out the art I have made over decades and its helpful for my art to have a reference library of art books and music CDs and records to listen to while I draw and nice clothes to wear. It’s also good to have a laptop to write my essays on and a few bicycles so me and my friends can take bike rides.
However, I feel the most empty and unencumbered when I travel abroad once a year for a month only with a backpack with a few clothes and my laptop and drawing materials and some paper.
The Buddha’s Doctrine is that all is Reality, unreality, both Reality and unreality, and neither Reality nor unreality. ‘All is empty’ should not be asserted, nor should ‘all is not empty,’ ‘all is both [empty and non-empty],’ nor ‘all is neither [empty nor non-empty].
While at home in Australia feel the emptiest and a general feeling of nothingness when I beach walk in the morning most days for two hours even though I have music blearing on my iPhone while I walk. But just feeling the sand beneath my feet and seeing and hearing the ocean waves crashing on the shore leaves me feeling empty and Zen.
“Become totally empty
Quiet the restlessness of the mind
Only then will you witness everything unfolding from emptiness.”
-Lao Tzu
While writing this essay I realise there is a duality in my thoughts that sometimes causes me great suffering and confusion. Yet at other times I feel connected to other people and connected to nature and at those times feel Zen.
