A Quote by Laozi
Become totally empty
Quiet the restlessness of the mind
Only then will you witness everything unfolding from emptiness
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In the Lotus Sutra, it is said everything is emptiness - this world is empty, hell is empty, heaven is empty, God is empty, everything is emptiness. Emptiness is the nature of all things, nothingness, so be attuned to nothingness and you will achieve.
The highest truth is to delete, not to add. To get rid of the things you believe in now. So empty yourself out totally and completely. All of your ideas, your feelings, all have to be emptied out of you. When you become totally and completely empty there is nothing you have to do to fill it up again. Emptiness is realization. Emptiness is Brahman. Emptiness is the Self. Emptiness is your real nature.
As long as the mind is seeking to fill itself, it will always be empty. When the mind is no longer concerned with filling its own emptiness, then only does that emptiness cease to be.
'Emptiness' means empty of a separate self. It is full of everything, full of life. The word emptiness should not scare us. It is a wonderful word. To be empty does not mean non-existent. Emptiness is the ground of everything. Thanks to emptiness, everything is possible.
You are so addicted and you have become so habituated that you cannot allow the cup to be empty even for a single moment. The moment you see emptiness anywhere you start filling it. You are so scared of emptiness, you are so afraid.: emptiness appears like death. You will fill it with anything, but you will fill it.
Because of watching your breath and thoughts you have come to know now that you are neither thoughts nor your breath, you are the watcher, the witness. This is awareness. This is what I call meditation. Once you have known this awareness you are unidentified with your body, with your mind. Now you experience a vastness inside you, in one sense utterly empty and in another sense overflowingly full. Because of its emptiness you will remain calm and quiet. And because of its overflowing fullness you will be creative.
It takes a little time to create a gap between the witness and the mind. Once the gap is there, you are in for a great surprise, that you are not the mind, that you are the witness, a watcher. And this process of watching is the very alchemy of real religion. Because as you become more and more deeply rooted in witnessing, thoughts start disappearing. You are, but the mind is utterly empty.
Get yourself empty in the Eastern sense. Not in the Western sense. In the Western sense when we feel empty we feel lonely, miserable, but in the Eastern sense - "I'm so empty, because I'm filled with everything, and I'm connected to everything." It's very energizing. You want that kind of emptiness, whatever you have to do to get yourself quiet.
Buddhas can take you to the boundary line of meditation and samadhi. That is the only difference between meditation and samadhi. If your mind has become utterly quiet and silent, but only the master is there, then it is meditation. If your mind has become so quiet that even the master has disappeared, it is samadhi. The last barrier is going to be the master. He will take you out of the world, but one day you will have to leave him too. And the real master will always keep you alert that you have to leave him one day, at the final stage.
My whole effort is to help you to disappear. My whole effort is to help you to be so empty: anatta - non-being. Because if you are, you will remain in trouble. If you are, you will remain limited. If you are, there will be a definition to your being - and you will never be overflowing. Only emptiness can be overflowing, only emptiness can be at ease. Only emptiness can be life abundant. To be, the way passes through non-being. If you really want to be, you will have to drop all concepts of your being. You will have to disappear, by and by. You will have to melt into nothingness.
In the beginning this is bound to happen. You have been sitting on the lid that covers your repressions, and you have been riding on that lid a long time, trying continuously to hold down everything beneath it. To become a witness means that you have finally jumped off the lid; now you will only stand aside and will not do anything. Now you will no longer repress, now you will just witness. So everything suppressed will arise, all the repressions will catch fire; you will find flames leaping where there were only ashes.
To awaken to the absolute view is profound and transformative, but to awaken from all fixed points of view is the birth of true non-duality. If emptiness cannot dance, it is not true emptiness. If moonlight does not flood the empty night sky and reflect in every drop of water, on every blade of grass, then you are only looking at your own empty dream.
Usually when I draw, I try to be in a contemplative mood. I try to keep my mind as empty, vacant and tranquil as possible. The outer mind is like the surface of the sea. On the surface, the sea is full of waves and surges; it is all restlessness. But when we dive deep below, the same sea is all peace, calmness and quiet, and there we find the source of creativity.
It is only through meditation that purity comes. Meditation means jumping out of the mind. There is no need to purify the mind, it can be put aside. One can become disidentified with the mind. To know "I am not the mind," is real purity because then you are only consciousness, awareness, a witnessing. To live twenty-four hours a day as a witness is the way of the sannyasin.
Make your will one! Don't listen with your ears, listen with your mind. No, don't listen with your mind, but listen with your spirit. Listening stops with the ears, the mind stops with recognition, but spirit is empty- and waits on all things. The Way gathers in emptiness alone. Emptiness is the fasting of the mind.
How will you become free? With a quiet mind Come into that empty house, your heart, And feel the joy of the way Beyond the world. Look within - The rising and the falling.
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