Emptiness is the starting point of life. Without the empty spaces, there is no usefulness in anything. In the Timaeus even Plato speaks of a Khora, an empty space in which the Forms are given physical form – a place in which the physical world is created – a womb of creation. It is something between the container and the contained. Like the sand on the beach; life is not an object or a place, but merely the record of the movement of water. A wheel is useful only because of the emptiness of its axel hole. A cup is useful only because of the emptiness of its interior. The same can be said of the human ability to learn, the human mind itself. To truly learn one must do as the ancient Chinese once said, “In order to taste of my cup, you must first empty your cup.”

Next there is change, for just as “you can never step in the same river twice,” life is perpetual movement. There is nothing fixed. Any problems that are encountered in life cannot remain stationary, they must move through life with the living spirit. This must be, for to attempt otherwise, leads one to artificiality and solidifies the ever flowing. The only way to avoid this is to remain mutable, be flexible. Remember, the usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness.

Life itself is limitless; it has no border, no frontier. It is a constant process of relating. Living exists when Life lives through us – unhampered in its flow, for one who is living is not conscious of living and, in this, is the life it lives. Life lives; and in the living flow, no questions are raised. The reason is that life is a living now!!! So in order to live life whole-heartedly, the answer is life simply is.

Realize the fact that you simply “live” and not “live for.” The meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualized and squeezed into a pattern of systems. After all, life is simply what our feelings do to us.

Proverbs 23:7 says, “As he thinks in his heart, so is he,” and James Allen added, “A man is literally what he thinks.” This is to say that everything is a state of mind. We realize that manipulation and control are not the ultimate joy in life – to become real, to learn to take a stand, to develop one’s center, to support our total personality, one must give himself over completely to spontaneity.

After all, freedom of movement is the original essence of life. Life is never stagnation. It is a constant movement, unrhythmic movement, as well as constant change. Things live by moving and gain strength as they go. Life is an ever flowing process and somewhere on the path some unpleasant things will appear – it might leave marks, but then life is flowing, like running water, when it stops it grows stale. Go bravely on, because life is such that sometimes it is nice and sometimes it is not. You can’t just pretend that violence doesn’t exist.

Only sober moderation lasts, and that persists through all time. Only the mid-part of anything is perceived because the pendulum of life must have balance, and the mid-part is the balance. Be pliable. When a man is living, he is soft and pliable; when he is dead, he becomes rigid. Suppleness is life; rigidity is death, whether one speaks of man’s body, his mind, or his spirit.

To live is to express, and to express you have to create. Creation is never merely repetition. To live is to express oneself freely in creation. Since life is an ever-evolving process, one should flow in this process and discover how to actualize and expand oneself. The oneness of life is a simple truth that can be fully realized only when false notions of a separate self – whose destiny can be considered apart from the whole – are forever annihilated.

A simple life is one of plainness, in which profit is discarded, cleverness abandoned, selfishness eliminated, and desires reduced. It is the life of perfection that seems to be empty. It is the life that is as bright as light, but does not dazzle. In short, it is a life of harmony, unity, contentment, tranquility, constancy, enlightenment, peace, and long life.

Life is something for which there is no answer; it must be understood from moment to moment – the answer we find inevitably conforms to the pattern of what we think we know. Remember my friend to enjoy your planning as well as your accomplishment, for life is too short for negative energy.

NOTHING EXISTS EXCEPT THE HERE AND NOW!!!

This evening I see something totally new, and that new-ness is experienced by the mind; but tomorrow that experience becomes mechanical, because I want to repeat the sensation, the pleasure of it – the description is never real. What is real is seeing the truth instantaneously, because truth has no future.

The past is no more, the future is not yet. Now includes the balance of being here, experiencing, involvement, phenomenon, awareness. The “space” created between “what is” and “what should be.” Total awareness of the Now and not the disciplined stillness.

We are always in the process of becoming and nothing is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and you’ll be flexible to change with the ever changing. Open yourself and flow in the total open-ness of the living moment. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.
Listen. Can you hear the wind? And can you hear the birds singing? You have to HEAR IT. Empty your mind. You know how water fills a cup? It becomes that cup. You have to think of nothing. You have to BECOME nothing. But can you neither condemn nor justify and yet be extraordinarily alive as you walk on? You can never invite the wind, but you must leave the window open.

If you are in the Now, you are creative. If you are in the Now, you are inventive. “Living in the Now,” “Maturity,” “Authenticity,” “Taking responsibility for one’s actions,” all these terms and phrases are one and the same thing: Root in The Now!

Completeness, the Now, is an absence of the conscious mind to strive to divide that which is indivisible. For once the completeness of things is taken apart, it is no longer complete. All the pieces of a car that has been taken apart may be there, but it is no loner a car in its original nature, which is its function or life.

To understand and live Now, there must be dying to everything of yesterday. Die continually to every newly gained experience – be in a state of choiceless awareness of what is.

There is “what is” only when there is no comparison at all, and to live with what is, is t be peaceful. What is is more important than what should be. Too many people are looking at “what is” from a position of thinking “what should be.”

In atomic physics, no distinction is recognized between matter and energy; nor is it possible to make such a distinction, since they are one essence, or at least two poles of the same unit. It is no longer possible, as it was in the mechanistic scientific era, to absolutely define weight, length, or time, etc, as the work of Einstein, Plank, Whitehead, and Jeans has demonstrated.
In science we have finally come back to the pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraclitus, who said that everything is in flow, flux, process. There are no “things.” Nothingness in Eastern language is “no-thing-ness.” We in the West think of nothingness as a void, an emptiness, a non-existence. In Eastern thought and modern physical science, nothingness – no-thingness – is a form of process, ever moving.

One should not reduce reality to a static thing and then invent methods by which to reach it. The Western approach to reality is mostly through theory, and theory begins by denying reality – to talk about reality, to go around it, to catch anything that attracts our sense – intellect and abstract it away from reality itself. Thus, philosophy begins by saying that the outside world is not a basic fact, that its existence can be doubted and every proposition in which the reality of the outside world is affirmed is not an evident proposition, but one that needs to be divided, dissected, and analyzed. It is to stand consciously aside and try to square a circle.
In science we try to find ultimate matter, but the more we split up matter, the more we find other matter. We find movement, and movement equals energy: movement, impact, energy, but no things. Things came about, more or less, by man’s need for security. You can manipulate a thing, you can play fitting games with it. These concepts, these somethings can be put together into something else. “Something” is a thing, so even an abstract noun becomes a thing.

While walking or resting, sitting or lying, while talking or remaining… quiet, while eating or drinking, do not allow yourself to be lazy, but be most arduous in search of “this.” At this moment stop inwardly – when you do stop inwardly, psychologically, your mind becomes very peaceful, very clear. Then you can really look at “this.”

Reality is Being itself, in becoming itself. Reality in its is-ness, the “is-ness” of a thing. Thus, is-ness is the meaning – having freedom in its primary sense – not limited by attachments, confinements, partialization, complexities. We do not see it in its suchness because of our indoctrination, crooked and twisted. Scratch away all the dirt our being has accumulated and reveal reality in its is-ness, or in its suchness, or in its nakedness, which corresponds to the concept of emptiness.

Everything has to have a cause. The cause must have the same reality as the effect.

What space between "what is" and "what should be"?

What is, simply is.

How do we define "should be"? When a man buys a kimono and is angry because he claims the kimono "should be" blue, when it is in fact red, is he angry because the kimono is not as it "should be" or is he upset because he has recieved a different kimono all together?


How often is it then, that men, in all of our humble knowledge, with all of our vaunted logic, can over look the truth of what a thing is, it is. If it is not as we expected, is it the object, or our own views that are not "as it should be"?


Ms. Darken, the great circle of life as you put it has no future for the same reason it has no past. Life is a journey, a road with no begining, a path with no ending. Life exists solely in the now, it is only by the actions your body takes NOW, that your body maintains life. You should understand better than most, the nature of that thing that you had lost, but now have found.

Eilonwy Solstice wrote:I would disagree with your first statement, “Emptiness is the starting point of life.” My personal belief is potential is the starting point of our life. Whether we are born in wealth or dirt, our life is ours to choose. History is rampant with tales of people born to be “slated” to live one way or another, and yet they go another way. Whether they become wealthy when they should have remained poor, whether they abandoned wealth to live a life of poverty, they lived their potential in another way.

Truth has a bright future, just as it had a bright past; Truth has always been eternal in my mind, a ring going forever. Why do we always speak about the great “Circle of Life?” If it has no future as you say, it is only because it is so closely linked to its past that many people cannot discern it.

Emptiness and potential as you talk of potential are the same here. The usefulness of a cup is found in the emptiness of the interior; the function of a wheel is not found in the surface that meets the road, but in the space that is found in its hub. It is the empty space that allows for functionality and potential.

The past is just a memory and the future has not yet happened. One is set in the observer's mind as he saw it and often altered by his thoughts at the time; the other has not yet been determined in any way other than by the limitations placed on it by the individual.

Ron Caliburn wrote:If the past doesn't exist and the future doesn't exist then now doesn't exist as now is the time between the past and the future.

Now is the eternal time. It is neverending/neverbeginning. Now is the only time. It is the mind that maintains past just as it is the mind that fantasizes of future. The “moment” has no yesterday or tomorrow. It is not the result of thought and therefore has no time. The “now” too is empty just as is life.

Think of the past in terms of those memories, events, and accomplishments that were pleasant, rewarding, and satisfying. The present? Well, think of it in terms of challenges and opportunities, and the rewards available for the application of your talents and energies. As for the future, that is a time and a place where every worthy ambition you possess is within your grasp.
Knowledge, is always of time, whereas knowing is not of time. Knowledge is from a source, from an accumulation, from a conclusion, while knowing is a movement.

To realize freedom the mind has to learn to look at life, which is vast movement, without the bondage of time, for freedom lies beyond the field of consciousness – care for watching, but don’t stop and interpret “I am free,” then you’re living in a memory of something that has gone.

To spend time is to pass it in a specified manner. To waste time is to expend it thoughtlessly or carelessly. We all have time to either spend or waste, and it is our decision what to do with it. But once passed, it is gone forever. Time means a lot to me because I am also a student and am often lost in the joy of forever developing and simplifying. If you love life don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.

Eilonwy Solstice wrote:Ah, I understand what you mean. Would this “emptiness” reside solely in a cup unfilled? As a vampire, it would have held no use to Celeste full or empty, as the milkshake proved to her. And yet, I would think someone famished with thirst would find a glass full of water infinitely (or at least greatly) more preferable than an empty glass. In that respect, the connotation “empty” excludes many possibilities that “potential” does not.

Time . . . I’ve always wondered about that, if it is a necessary illusion humanity and other mortal creatures place upon themselves. Immortality can be a burden, and I appreciate your reasoning in wanting to abandon it, Chen Lung.

The emptiness of the cup amounts to its usefulness. Filling the empty space is simply the using of it; but in the act of using it, you restore the emptiness and allow it to be used once more. Your famished individual would find that the empty cup can be filled after it has slaked their thirst, so that they might not find themselves thirsting again. In this respect, the emptiness of the cup remains the cup's potential.

Shang Li wrote:What space between "what is" and "what should be"?

What is, simply is.

How do we define "should be"? When a man buys a kimono and is angry because he claims the kimono "should be" blue, when it is in fact red, is he angry because the kimono is not as it "should be" or is he upset because he has recieved a different kimono all together?


How often is it then, that men, in all of our humble knowledge, with all of our vaunted logic, can over look the truth of what a thing is, it is. If it is not as we expected, is it the object, or our own views that are not "as it should be"?


Ms. Darken, the great circle of life as you put it has no future for the same reason it has no past. Life is a journey, a road with no begining, a path with no ending. Life exists solely in the now, it is only by the actions your body takes NOW, that your body maintains life. You should understand better than most, the nature of that thing that you had lost, but now have found.

As far as the "should be" goes, objects and events in the universe fall into "what is" it is the wants and expectations of the individual that creates the "should be." The trick is to lose one's expectations and see "what is."

The dualistic philosophy reigned supreme in Europe, dominating the development of Science, but with the advent of atomic physics, findings based on demonstrable experiment were seen to negate the dualistic theory, and the trend of thought since then has been back toward the monistic conception of the Taoists.

If thought exists, I who think and the world about which I think also exist; the one exists but for the other, having no possible separation between the two. Therefore, the world and I are both in active correlation; I am that which sees the world, I am that which the world sees and the world is that which is seen by me. I exist for the world, and the world exists for me. If there were no things to be seen, thought about, and imagined, I would not see, think, or imagine. That is to say, I would not exist. One sure and primary and fundamental fact is the joint existence of a subject and of its world. The one does not exist without the other. I acquire no understanding of myself except as I take account of objects, of the surroundings. I do not think unless I think of things – and there I find myself. If I think on these things as other than "what is," I am unable to learn anything of myself.

It is of no use to talk merely of objects of consciousness, whether they are thought sensations or wax candles. An object must have a subject, and subject-object is a pair of complementaries (not opposites), like all others, which are two halves of one whole, and are a function of each of the other. When we hold to the core, the opposite sides are the same if the are seen from the center of the moving circle. I do not experience; I am experience. I am not the subject of an experience; I am that experience. I am awareness. Nothing else can be “I.”

The phenomenon of “moon-in-the-water” is likened to human experience. The water is the subject, and the moon the object. When there is no water, there can be no moon-in-the-water, and likewise when there is no moon. But when the moon rises, the water does not wait to receive its image, and when even the tiniest drop of water is poured out, the moon does not intend to cast its reflection; for the moon does not intend to cast its reflection, and the water does not receive its image on purpose. The event is caused as much by the water as by the moon, and as the water manifests the brightness of the moon, the moon manifests the clarity of the water.

Taoism, against the background of which acupuncture had its origin and developed, is essentially monistic. The Chinese conceived the entire universe as activated by two principles, the Yang and the Yin the positive and the negative, and they considered that nothing that exists, either animate or so-called inanimate, does so except by virtue of the ceaseless interplay of these two forces. Matter and energy, Yang and Yin, heaven and earth, are conceived of as essentially one or as two coexistent poles of one indivisible whole.

Concentration is the “Root” of all higher abilities in man. Be aware of doing your best to understand the Root in life and realize the direct and indirect are, in fact, a complementary whole. It is to see things as they are and not to become attached to anything – to be unconscious means to be innocent of the working of relative (empirical) mind – when there is no abiding of thought anywhere on anything – this is being unbound. This not abiding anywhere is the root of our life.

It is futile to argue as to which single leaf, which design of branch, or which attractive flower you like; when you understand the Root, you understand all its blossoming.

What we are after is the Root and not the branches. The Root is the real knowledge; the branches are surface knowledge. Real knowledge breeds “body feel” and personal expression; surface knowledge breeds mechanical conditioning and imposing limitation and squelches creativity.
Be, at once, absorbingly open and rootily relaying your captivating total presense with appropriate inward time.

The Root is the fulcrum on which will rest the expression of your soul; the Root is the “starting point” of all natural manifestation. If the Root is right so will be all its manifestation. It cannot be, when the Root is neglected, that what should spring from it will be well-ordered.

Why do you, as an individual, depend upon thousands of years of propaganda? Ideals, principles, the "what should be" leads to hypocrisy. Drop and dissolve your inner blockage. A conditioned mind is never a free mind. Wipe away and break down all your experience and be "born anew."

Conditioning limits a person within a framework of a particular system. All fixed patterns are incapable of adaptability or flexibility. The truth lies outside of all fixed patterns. Are you a flowing being, capable of changing with external circumstances, or are you a resisting being, whose conditioning is set and resistant?

In order to display your native abilities to the utmost, remove all psychic obstructions. The more and more you are aware, the more and more you shed what you have learned so that your mind is always fresh, uncontaminated by conditioning.

We live in cliches, in patterned behavior. We play the same role over and over again. To raise our potential is to live and review every second refreshed. Because reality changes every moment, even as I say it, one must be uninfluenced and die to one's conditioning in order to be aware of the fresh and new.

Because we do not wish to be disturbed, to be made uncertain, we establish patterns of conduct, of thought, a pattern of relationship to others, etc. Then we become slaves to our patterns and take the patterns to be real. We should break such circles not by seeking knowledge, but by discovering the cause of our ignorance.

When real feeling occurs, like anger, fear, etc., can one express himself or is he merely listening to his own screams and yells and mechanically performing his routine? The idea is to have no resriction as a limit to your actions and to have no form as method.

The knowledge and skill you have achieved is to eventually be "forgotten" so you can float in emptiness without obstruction and with ease. Only then can your mind remain in the state of emptiness (fluidity), with no conscious effort. Give up thinking as though not giving up. Observe as though not observing. Let yourself go with the world, be with it, keep company with it, this is the way to get rid of it.

Can never be too much verschränkung....

Eilonwy Solstice wrote:I would disagree, Cheng. If one doesn’t control her thoughts, she will find them being controlled by another.

I didn't say not to control your thoughts. I said to shed learning and discover the Truth within you. Break your habits and escape your conditioning. Once you have discovered the source of your ignorance, you will be able to resist any domination (physical, mental, or emotional). It is the ultimate in control to release your inhibitions and restraints.

Let having no limitations be your only restriction, use no pattern of behavior be your only way of action.