The Many Faces Of Emptiness

In many ways I take the following to be synonymous: lack, absence, emptiness, spaciousness, openness, expanse, void, and even invitation. Yeah, emptiness as inviting. Lack as an open door. Step right in here please.

I bet you have heard it said that 'Nature abhors a vacuum,' that openings simply get filled. At the very least openings and absences become passageways; serving a role of alllowing the transit of seemingly diicrete entities from here to there, from him to her, from us to them, and from this to that. Lack allows for exchange, trade, commerce, novelty, and emergence. What would we do without it? If there were not emptiness there would be no movement, no change, no flow, no exchange, no relationship. That is the odd thing about emptiness: initially everyone suspects that emptiness means a total absence of anything and everything, i.e., the BIG NOTHING AND NOWHERE. However, insight over time developes to the point where one realizes, in an immediate fashion and manner, that emptiness allows for everything. Without emptiness there could be no relationship. Apart from emptiness there is no movement. Apart from emptiness there is no flow. For flow cannot flow where there is obstruction. Neither can relationship occur where there is no capacity for inter-change and inter-penetration.

So, oddly enough, it is emptiness that literally makes the world go round. Each and every step we take confirms that it is so. For we could not even take a step if there were something there instead of nothing. It is that nothing that we step into, that we meet in the atmosphere of, as well as where we go when we part company and continue on our way; entering into the open and empty nature of every moment.