Empty Hands - When Dogen, a great Zen Master of old, returned to Japan after many years of studying Zen in China, the people asked what he brought with him. He said, "I've come with nothing but empty hands."
What are these empty hands? Where can we find them? What value are they of us today?
Usually our own hands are full, filled with tasks, problems and possessions that seem impossible to put down. We live our lives so full of ourselves, full of decisions, plans and dreams. Then the winds of change come, blow us around and scatter our dreams on the shore. Most go wild trying to pick up the pieces. Usually lives start to spin. Few know how to truly deal with change, or why it is happening to them.
When Change Comes
When change comes, our usual reaction is to grab and hold on to what we've had, or been. However, the harder we hold, the more we crush what we have in the palm of our hands. The pain of change is no other than this – resistance to what is happening right now. There are many ways we then seek to gain control - depression, denial, activity, new plans. This is the will asserting itself, demanding that life meet its particular demands, pronouncing "I am in charge."
When Dogen practiced in China, he found a different way of handling things. When change, loss and disturbance came he planted himself in the center of the storm, sat unmovingly with an open heart and empty hands. As he sat, imperturbably, he discovered the answer to the great question – What do we have that we can lose? Once this question was answered, no more problem holding on. Dogen's hands emptied. He was not clinging to anything. He was able to be who he was.
Holding Onto Everything
We come into life empty-handed and then try to grab and hold onto everything. We want everything and we want it immediately. We want to receive, to hold and possess – forever. Why do we attach and cling so tenaciously? This kind of response seems so automatic, natural and fundamental that we do not question it at all. Yet, in truth, what really belongs to us? What will stay with us forever?
Attachment is usual, but not natural. Certainly, it is not necessary. It arises out of a deep confusion about who we truly are, where we are, and what is going on. It arises out of a misunderstanding about the nature of our relationships. We feel the tighter we hold on, the less frightened we will be. The opposite is true. The gripping itself creates the fear. This sense of crushing and being crushed is at the very core of the pain we experience. It is our resistance to the flow of life.
Many in our society lives are centered around accumulation. We become very proud of what we have accumulated; money, degrees, skills, friends, information, property, lovers. We think it is who we are. Soon we are so full we can hardly move, and yet we still search for more, cramming every corner of our homes and lives full.
It is not so easy to stop accumulating and simply clean out the drawers. We have not yet learned the value of empty space. We may not have yet learned to make friends with our hunger and not let it be a devouring force.
How We Know Who We Are
Most of us feel we are our job, achievement, name, relationship. This is how we know ourselves. We identify with a group or person, we are this and not that. But, like the object we identify with, we too begin to feel static and stuck. Unhappy patterns repeat themselves and we may have lost the flexibility to change. Somehow we have not identified with the basis of all life, which is constantly moving, changing. healing, filled with new insights, possibilities and love.
In order to expand our sense of selves and of the world we are living in, it is necessary to stop demanding more, to empty out, sit quietly,feel and taste the moment, discover and who we truly are.
As we do this fears diminish, grasping lets go and our sense of being planted on a stable foundation develops naturally. Our hands are then empty. Empty hands are pliable, flexible, useful. They can touch and comfort, they can give and receive, they can do what is needed when the moment appears. Empty hands are just simply there, like the poppy blowing in the wind.
How great is this gift of empty hands. How natural. Why not find and use yours today?
Find out more about Living by Zen in Dr. Shoshanna's e-book, Living By Zen: Timeless Truths for Everyday Life.
In this book you will discover the 2,000 Year Old Zen Secrets To Being Calm, Balanced and Positive, No Matter What Is Going On.
Probably the biggest need all of us have is to feel calm, balanced and positive no matter what is going on in our lives. This is exactly what you will feel when you begin to work with the unique program inside this e-book.
Living By Zen explores the things that steal your peace of mind, different ways you handle stress and why they do not work.
Here are a few examples: Do you do these?
a.Constantly build strategies that do not work.
b.Try to change and manage everyone in sight.
c.Seek relationships for comfort and peace.
d.Get addicted to what makes you feel good.
e.Live in hopes, dreams and fantasies of the future.
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