We humans are willing to face almost anything but our basic emptiness. We are by nature vacant, with no “who” in residence. Vacant (vacate, translated from Latin as both “empty” and “free”) means to be open or blank, unfilled or idle.

But our language of thought equates “empty” with “shallow, hollow, dark, cold and lonely.” We are indoctrinated to create a psychological space in our mind and, with time, fill it to the brim with ego—a watch-dog set to yap at any encroachment of emptiness.

To empty is to “deprive of content.” To deprive the speculative mind of content is to let all thought come and go at will; a mind that is not occupied is vacant. But the prospect of vacancy gapes as the tomb, to thought….thought does not plan its own demise. Thought is ready to embrace any venture except the exploration of the void. Thought is a form which does not choose to acknowledge the possibility of no-form. It fills the mind like a fog, giving the appearance that emptiness never existed. We find ourselves comparing emptiness with a vacuum, “a space left by the absence of something normally found in it.” Synonyms of vacuous are “inane, stupid.”

All things may be seen to begin and end in emptiness. Save for that with which we fill it, even the day is entirely empty, each day being a blank slate of unprecedented and unpredictable potential. Flowering takes place in emptiness. When the full mind is now an empty mind, a different presence comes about…not an emptiness to be filled, a tidying-up between tenants, a space between two events. The empty mind is not in search of anything. It is not a space in which to connect; it is the connection. In the boundless emptiness of this mind, all things acquire a fresh dimension, free of forms, guidelines, expectations.

[From audio recording #303]