The Flavor of Emptiness

From the very first time I encountered the word in English, "emptiness," I liked the sound of it. Others may find it chillingly abstract, even scary; for me it was a fresh breath of freedom. I chanted the Heart Sutra ("form is emptiness, emptiness is form...") every day for years before I ever studied what it meant. I remember once, at the beginning of my practice, walking up and down in a blizzard, snow piled two feet high and drifting, chanting that wonderful text over and over again. Only much later did I plunge into the vast philosophical edifice of Mahayana Buddhism, from the Diamond Sutra and Nagarjuna on, that adumbrates this saving and elusive teaching.

The logic of emptiness is air-tight: Since we know that we are, we know that things affect one another: Unless they do there is no world appearing, but if they do they must touch one another; if so they must have parts: If not they can't touch (they'd melt into one another), and if so there's an infinite proliferation of parts, smaller and smaller, clouds of them. So, if you look closely enough at anything it disappears into a cloud, and the cloud disappears into a cloud, and so on: All is void. The only thing real is connection: void touching void.

I have delighted in this simple but profound teaching, but it is the taste of emptiness in the body, spirit, and emotions that has meant the most to me. Knowing that what happens is just what happens. My body, my thoughts, my emotions, my desires, and hopes--this is the stuff that makes up my life. But it can't ever be desperate because I know it as a cloud. That cloud is all I am: It is my freedom to soar, my connection to all. I can float in it, and watch it form and reform in the endless sky.

This doesn't mean I am disconnected from life: Quite the contrary, I know there is no way to be connected, no person or place that is beyond my concern.

When I practice meditation I rest in emptiness: My breath goes in and out, a breath I share with all who have lived and will live, the great rhythm that began this world of physical reality, and that will never cease, even when the earth is gone. It's nice, in the predawn hours, to sit sharing that widely, knowing that this zero point underlies all my walking and talking and eating and thinking all the day through: Is it.

They say that wisdom (the faculty that cognizes emptiness) and compassion are like the wings of a great bird. Holding both in balance against the wafting winds allows you to float, enjoying the day. Really though the two wings are one wing. Where you can appreciate the flavor of emptiness on the tongue you know immediately (without meditation) that love is the only way, and that everything is love and nothing but love. What a pleasant thing to hold in mind! All problems, all joys, all living and all dying--it's love.

--Zoketsu Norman Fischer
San Francisco Zen Center