Daily Quote, Saturday April 5, 2009

Good morning everyone,

It looks like the rain has stopped here in Halifax. I say s "looks" but it's still quite dark, so it's really more like "sounds" like it's stopped raining!

Have a great day.

Robert

Can the mind be aware of that emptiness without naming it?

I think most of us are aware - perhaps only rarely since most of us are so terribly occupied and active - but I think we are aware, sometimes, that the mind is empty. And, being aware, we are afraid of that emptiness. We have never inquired into that state of emptiness, we have never gone into it deeply, profoundly; we are afraid, and so we wander away from it. We have given it a name, we say it is 'empty,' it is 'terrible,' it is 'painful'; and that very giving it a name has already created a reaction in the mind, a fear, an avoidance, a running away.

Now, can the mind stop running away, and not give it a name, not give it the significance of a word such as empty about which we have memories of pleasure and pain? Can we look at it, can the mind be aware of that emptiness without naming it, without running away from it, without judging it, but just be with it? Because, then, that is the mind. Then there is not an observer looking at it; there is no censor who condemns it; there is only that state of emptiness with which we are all really quite familiar but which we are all avoiding, trying to fill it with activity, with worship, with prayer, with knowledge, with every form of illusion and excitement.

But when all the excitement, illusion, fear, running away stops, and you are no longer giving it a name and thereby condemning it, is the observer different then from the thing which is observed? Surely, by giving it a name, by condemning it, the mind has created a censor, an observer, outside of itself. But when the mind does not give it a term, a name, condemn it, judge it, then there is no observer, only a state of that thing we have called emptiness.

Collected Works, Vol. IX - 23