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The Empty Cup

The usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness.

Empty Your Mind

In an article my father wrote in 1971 about his art of jeet kune do, he started off with a Zen parable to prepare the reader to keep an open mind, as what he was about to go on to say was extremely unorthodox for fighting arts of the time. He wrote:

A learned man once went to a Zen master to inquire about Zen. As the master talked, the learned man would frequently interrupt him with remarks like, “Oh yes, we have that too,” and so forth. Finally, the Zen master stopped talking and began to serve tea to the learned man; however, he kept pouring, and the tea cup overflowed. “Enough! No more can go into the cup!” the learned man interrupted. “Indeed, I see,” answered the Zen master. “If you do not first empty your cup, how can you taste my cup of tea?”

The “learned” man can’t truly take in anything that the Zen master is saying because he is simultaneously comparing and judging the information against his own. In other words, he’s not really listening. His mind (his cup) is too full of his own point of view (measuring and evaluating everything the master has to say) to let anything else in. In overflowing the cup, the master shows the man how he must let go of that which he already thinks he knows—he must empty his cup—in order to really listen and take in new information.

The “Be Water” quote begins with the prompt, “Empty your mind.” This first request is perhaps the most important one in our process because it sets us up for everything that comes next. My father believed that this act—of leaving behind the burdens of one’s preconceived opinions and conclusions—had in itself a liberating power. In fact, if this step is the only one you actively work on for a while, you will expand your life considerably.

Finding Neutrality

Emptiness, in these first discussions on the mind, means a state of openness and neutrality. When your mind is crowded with thoughts and information about all the things you’ve learned and how you feel about them, there isn’t room for much else. You’ve given up access to new possibilities and points of view; you’ve limited yourself. In order to learn new information, we must first make room to let that information in.

Emptying your mind does not mean forgetting everything you’ve ever learned or giving up everything you believe. What it means is that you should try to meet each conversation, each interaction, and each experience with a willingness to consider something new without the burden of your judgment in the process. You must give up everything you think you know and believe, for just an instant, in order to fully experience that which you are encountering in the present moment. Make room for the possibility that maybe you don’t already know all of what you believe to be true—that what you believe is, in fact, a work in progress, capable of changing and evolving as you learn and grow.

It is under these conditions that you may discover something that you never thought was possible. Take the medical profession, for example: if we never considered there might be new information or ideas, we would still believe that smoking was good for you and that polio was incurable. So this is a serious idea: that the mind should stand open and unclouded by one’s previously held preferences, beliefs, or judgments in order to be ready to receive. You may or may not end up discovering a new vaccine, but without being open to the possibility of what there is to discover, you’ll never expand your knowledge, and your growth as a person will be stunted and slowed.

In fact, my father suggests that predetermined and unquestioned preferences are the mind’s worst disease. “Stand at the neutral point between negative and positive,” he wrote, “no longer directing one’s mind to anything. Emptiness is that which stands right in the middle of this and that. Never be for or against. The struggle between ‘for’ and ‘against’ is the mind’s worst disease. Do not like or dislike, and all will then be clear.”

Consider how much influence your preferences and beliefs have on you in every moment of every day. As we go through our day, we are expert evidence collectors—so much so that we should all have our own CSI show. Because of our beliefs and our preferences, we walk around collecting the evidence of our experiences to bolster our beliefs. If I walk into a party with a sense of dread, then I am subconsciously looking for evidence of that dread to prove myself right. And it may be true that there are things to dread at the party, but because I’m on high alert for all the dreadfulness, I will conveniently find it and not see anything that might be enjoyable or fun. We are always looking to be proved right. And when we have a need to be right, we will only accept that which substantiates our point of view.

And what happens when we can’t collect that evidence? When our case isn’t lining up so well? Well, if the experience is enjoyable when we’re expecting otherwise (like that party that turned out to be not so bad after all), then we brush it off as a pleasant anomaly or we just feel like we got lucky. But when the experience we thought would be great turns out to be not so pleasant, well, then suddenly the world seems incomprehensible. Let’s say a party you really believed would be amazing ends up being a nightmare experience instead. It’s wounding, and we decide we are never going to another party like that. Interestingly, when something negative happens against our expectation, instead of thinking that there may be something more to consider or some personal responsibility to shoulder, most of us decide that we are victims of something more sinister than we had previously known—a universal plot to ruin our lives.

But what if you went into that party with no expectations? No sense of dread and no expectation of having the time of your life? Then the party just is what it is. You can assess for yourself later what parts of it you really enjoyed and what parts you didn’t. You met each moment of the party as it occurred. No stress. Your full attention is on the party without having to constantly check with yourself if you’re having a good enough time. Neutral. Present. Empty.

Of course, when it comes to functions we may or may not want to attend, the stakes aren’t so high. But what about when it comes to more charged and serious topics? What about difficult life choices that need to be made? Or making judgments between people who might be good for us versus bad influences? If we are never for or against anything, how do we make decisions?

Choiceless Awareness

Remember the on-guard position? Our poised and ready posture in the face of any situation? Let’s consider that the mental version of our opening stance on life should be this one of poised neutrality. What we are trying to cultivate is what my father called the ability to see purely. “Pure seeing” means to try, as much as possible, not to project one’s preferences or opinions onto something in the process of experiencing it, so that what you encounter is the “truth” or the reality of things as they are in their objective totality. Instead of weighing everything as good or bad, right or wrong, as it is happening, become a fully sensing organism so that you may see and encounter the experience with your whole being. If you focus too much on the mind and its preconceived ideas and assessments, you are holding part of yourself separate from the totality of the experience. But if you can pause and allow yourself to sense everything, perhaps you will experience something new or a richer version of something you already know.

It is to see things as they are and not become attached to anything. Scratch away all the dirt our being has accumulated and reveal reality in its is-ness, in its nakedness. Drop the burden of your preconceived conclusions and “open” yourself to everything and everyone ahead. Be a calm beholder of what is happening around you. You simply see, and in this seeing, the whole is presented and not the partial.

This is a process my father called “choiceless awareness.” He adopted this term from Krishnamurti, one of his favorite philosophers. The idea is to have awareness of all that is happening around you and within you without judging it, without making a choice or creating a story about it while maintaining full awareness of it. See it purely for what it is. Experience it fully so that you can have a total experience rather than a partial (and therefore limited) one.

Consider the situation when you see someone who annoys you coming over to talk to you. Because that person annoys you, you are prepared to be annoyed before they even open their mouths. But what if you were to drop your judgment and open yourself fully to the experience? Perhaps in having the ability to just stand back and observe this person without judgment, you might pinpoint what it is that annoys you so much, and you might go even further and figure out why that annoys you. And, more important, you might find out something about yourself in the process.

Is there some understanding you need to develop within yourself to feel good or safe or connected in this person’s presence? Can you have compassion for this person and see them as someone who is struggling through life just as you are? Can you see how their own set of circumstances has led them to develop this way of interacting as their cultivated method of coping? A great amount of information might be available if you stop liking and disliking and simply observe.

Another part of the choiceless awareness equation is what my father called “absence of thought.” Absence of thought means not to be carried away by your thoughts in the process of thinking them. In other words, don’t get stuck on a particular thought and spin around it obsessively to the detriment of all the other sensory input that passes through your perception in the moment. So when the annoying person does that annoying thing, don’t get stuck there. “See? There is that annoying thing again. God, why does he do that all the time? Doesn’t he see how annoying that is? How could he not see how annoying that is? What an idiot.” When this happens, you are no longer present. You are trapped in a box of annoyance from which there is no escape, and you are no longer seeing purely, and you are certainly not having a nonjudgmental awareness of the whole situation. And guess what: you’re no longer having a good time, either.

Now, this doesn’t mean you have to spend time in annoying situations with annoying people and learn to like it. It simply means you get the opportunity to have a different experience and change your perspective. Most notably, you get to use the information you receive to know yourself better and understand what your biases are or what triggers certain reactions in you. You get to assess what behaviors need to be changed in yourself and what parts of yourself may need to be healed. In other words, you get to convert that negative energy into energy for yourself rather than give it all away to someone or something else.

As my father said:

I must give up my desire to force, direct, strangle the world outside of me and within me in order to be completely open, responsible, aware, alive. This is often called “to make oneself empty,” which does not mean something negative, but means the openness to receive.

From this place, we can make the decisions we need to while understanding ourselves and what might truly be in line with our soul. We will also have more compassion and acceptance of what is. From this place, we have so much more possibility.

No Right, No Wrong

We are judgy f*cks. Let’s just admit it. Maybe you are currently trying not to be so judgmental in your life, and if so, good. But you still catch yourself doing it sometimes, don’t you? Me too. But the more I practice not judging, the better I get at maintaining this nonjudgmental attitude, and the more freely and peaceably I can navigate the world.

What does it mean to be judgmental? It means to assign a value of right or wrong, good or bad, like or dislike to something or someone. How does this hold us back? Well, first let’s distinguish between judgment and discernment.

A “judgment,” in the most traditional sense, means a conclusion or decision, as by a court or a judge. The oldest form of judgment comes from the Bible and typically refers to a storm or a plague sent by God to punish people. Heavy, right? But “discernment” is less of a conclusion and more of a process: it’s the ability to make valuable perceptions about something. One spiritual definition even calls discernment “perception in the absence of judgment with a view to obtaining spiritual direction and understanding.” (source unknown)

When we need to make decisions in life, there are, of course, considerations to take into account—but the approach we take makes all the difference. When we’re judging, we’re taking a rigid position; whereas when we’re discerning, we’re perceiving with the goal of understanding. A judgment holds us back because it limits our consideration of other options. It also pits us against one another, because if something or someone is right, then that means someone is also wrong. But a discernment is a choice made for oneself based on all the available data without blame.

The difference between judgment and discernment may be hard to see right away, but practice asking yourself: “Am I judging right now? Or am I allowing information in with the goal of understanding what is really going on and how I really feel?” As you become more aware, you’ll be able to feel the difference between the two. A judgment may feel like a hard line running through you or like a shield that keeps things away from you. A discernment may feel more like water washing over you while you pan for gold—there’s a porousness, a fluidity as you sift through the information.

One of my favorite books is The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, a quick and beautiful read with great practical impact. The Four Agreements deals specifically with dropping your assumptions and not taking things personally. What do you need to do in order to achieve those two things? As Ruiz suggests in the title of his book, you must make certain agreements with yourself about how to encounter the world. And as my father suggests, you need to stop making everything and everyone right or wrong:

Do not condemn; do not justify. To truly understand there must be a state of choiceless awareness in which there is no sense of comparison or condemnation, no waiting for a further development of the thing we are talking about in order to agree or disagree. Awareness only works if it is allowed free play without interference. Above all, don’t start from a conclusion.

When you are “waiting for a further development in order to agree or disagree,” you are waiting to judge based on a personal assumption or belief you already have and that you are looking to defend. You are looking for the evidence of the judgment you hold. Remember the man and the Zen master? Your cup is too full. Your awareness is being squeezed into the limited framework of your comparison or your condemnation. You are no longer in flowing discernment; rather, you are waiting for the moment to pounce with your judgment. Does that feel good—waiting to pounce? Or does it feel stressful? Like you’re the goalie waiting tensely to block a penalty kick at all times?

In his book A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle says, “The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral, which always is as it is.”

Similarly, my father submits that it is our reaction to difficult situations that matters most, and not the situation itself.

Believe me that in every big thing or achievement there are always obstacles, big or small, and the reaction one shows to such obstacles is what counts, not the obstacle itself. I have learned that being challenged means one thing and that is what is your reaction to it?

Let’s go back to a fight as our best example. You come into the fight cocky and sure that you will win. That confidence even fuels some pretty sweet moves on your part for a minute. Then you get hit in the face. Maybe you get upset. Maybe your confidence gets a little rocked. Either way, you feel something. And instead of just allowing that feeling to pass through you and staying present with the situation, you let that feeling take you over. Now you’re mad or worried. So you react accordingly. Maybe you overreach with your swing in your anger or you get tentative in your strikes out of fear. If your opponent is on their game, they can see they’ve gotten to you and now they have their way in. They slip in a kick to the thigh because you were distracted and no longer present. Uh-oh. This isn’t going as you envisioned it. You start to make mistakes because you are ungrounded and spinning into anxiety. Reality is no longer matching your preconceived plan. Your opponent lands one more heavy hand, and now it’s lights-out.

You came into the fight with a foregone conclusion—I’m going to win; I’m better than them. Then you got hit and it rocked you and you stopped being present with the fight. Your mind got hung up, trapped, and couldn’t stay with it. Then your fear kicked in and all that training, all your tools, became useless because you were no longer there to use them. You got attached to what “should have happened,” and when that didn’t transpire, you were lost.

But no need to condemn yourself when that occurs. People get lost; it happens. And the goal is to try not to be lost any longer than it takes to be found again. After all, there is no right or wrong; there’s only what is happening and your response. So stop trying to come up with a magic one-size-fits-all solution. There is no flawless, preconceived road map for life. Within all our grand notions and ideas, there is only ever the right here and the right now.

What Is

We touched on presence in chapter one, and we likely will again and again throughout this book because it’s an important concept. Whole books have been written about just this one topic. Whole movements, such as mindfulness, are about being present. And our empty cup, our neutral but mobile stance, begins with presence as well.

If you are new to the idea of mindfulness or being present, let me try to set a simple framework for our purposes in this moment. The idea of being present is the idea of being fully aware and in touch with what’s happening right now. Not letting your mind, for example, jump into the past to compare what you are doing right now to a similar thing you did last year. And not jumping ahead into the future and thinking about what you’re going to do this afternoon or next week or thinking about how what you’re experiencing now will benefit you later. The practice of mindfulness is focusing one’s awareness on the present moment and experiencing it fully.

Because we are human, and particularly if we are not practiced at staying present, thoughts are going to pop up to distract us from the present moment. And those thoughts may lead to feelings or vice versa. And those feelings may generate more thoughts about the feelings. This is normal. In fact, it may never have occurred to you that any other way of being was possible. So rather than try to beat down our thoughts and feelings, which gives them more power, we want to merely notice them, allow them, and let them pass through as we stay with the present moment.

The notion of emptying your cup is the idea of letting go of the past and the future in favor of the present. When we gently accept and acknowledge feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations while participating in what is happening, we are in touch with what my father called “what is.” We are participating in what is unfolding right now with our full attention. And we want to continually empty the cup as it is filled because the present moment is always changing. So if we stay with the present moment, our cup will automatically fill and empty as we move across our experience—each new moment replaced with each new moment.

Now, if this seems like a tall order, it is, at first. And it’s nearly impossible to be fully present at every moment for most of us, so don’t panic. Not even very capable Buddhists or yogis are present 24/7. This is a practice, and it requires practice. The point of the practice is to be able to bring yourself back to it whenever possible and especially in times of great distress, so that presence becomes the majority of your experience and not the anomaly.

My father was not always successful at maintaining his awareness and his cool, but he understood the benefits. In fact, he was a fiery, fast-paced, driven man who could have a temper. When things didn’t work out or when he hadn’t approached a situation with the utmost of awareness, what would he do? He would get upset! Which is the normal human response. Then, after he felt all the feels, he would get really quiet for a while. This purposeful quieting is what I like to think of as his “emptying the cup” moment. He would quiet his mind to get back to a neutral state in order to see the whole picture before moving forward again, like the little pooling swirls and eddies in a stream that form and spin around before the water flows forth once more.

Mental Kung Fu

So, how do we get to neutral? My father was an exercise fanatic, as we can clearly see from his physique, and an important part of his exercise routine was exercising not just his body but his mind. Though we tend to think of our amorphous mental calculations and ponderings as somehow separate from our physical bodies, scientific research continues to provide compelling evidence of the mind-body connection and the link between our thoughts and emotions to our physical health. There’s been a lot of research especially around the gut-brain connection, and even an entire field of research called psychoneuroimmunology, which examines the link between stress and the immune system—but let’s take a more general approach we can all relate to.

One simple way to understand the mind-body connection is to notice that when we have negative thoughts, we feel bad; we feel heavy or tired or agitated, our hearts might race, or we might have trouble falling asleep or getting out of bed in the morning, or we just feel blue. In other words, our bodies respond. Likewise, when we are joyful, we have more energy; we feel good! We get more done; we laugh. There’s a clear correlation; and as a result, we must consider the benefit of conditioning our minds with the same understanding that we have around conditioning our bodies.

And in fact, our minds are already conditioned—by what we read, how we were raised, what culture we are part of, who we hang out with, what we study, etc. We just may not be conscious of the conditioning we’ve undergone and we may not understand that we have any part to play in this conditioning. What if we came to understand that we have some control here and can, in fact, direct and recondition our minds toward new possibilities instead of remaining unconscious or ignorant of its workings? What if we could work in collaboration with our minds rather than be at the mercy of our thoughts? What if negative could be converted to positive? What if fear could be transformed into enthusiasm? What if mistakes could become the pathways to our dreams?

My father focused just as much energy on conditioning his mind as he did on training his body. That doesn’t mean, though, that he got into calculus, crossword puzzles, or sudoku. Instead he intentionally directed his thoughts, his intellect, and his imagination toward his dreams, toward the life that he imagined, toward the goals he hoped to achieve, toward positivity, and toward understanding himself better. He concertedly conditioned his consciousness and subconscious, and deliberately stretched his mental muscles so he could change his attitude to be more pliable and expand his perception in the direction of his goals.

He had many tools at his disposal, which we will touch on throughout this book. But this mental conditioning (or reconditioning) begins by preparing your mind to be open to receive—clearing out all the mental clutter and noise, turning off the inner dialog, and stepping firmly into the present with all your judgments suspended and all your sensors turned up.

This mental reconditioning may sound daunting or it may sound easy, but it’s both and neither. As with anything, it requires practice until it becomes habit, and then eventually the habit becomes second nature. So how to start?

First, we must accept the idea that it’s possible to exercise our own mental leadership. We must agree that we can command and cultivate our own minds.

If you are struggling with this notion, then let me remind you that you have learned many things by repetition and reinforcement. This is likely how you learned your multiplication tables; you probably also learned not to interrupt people who are talking by being constantly reminded by your parents not to do so. You have been taught or self-taught many things, such as how to speak another language or how to follow a recipe.

Still, so many of us feel as if we have no control over our thoughts and feelings, and hence, our attitudes. Maybe we’ve never stopped to consider that we may be abdicating this control and responsibility altogether. So take this leap with me and let’s acknowledge that we have personal power over our mental conditioning if we want it. This is the first major step in the journey to discover and maximize your human potential. And that first major step starts with this small one: What are thinking about right now?

The Sticky Mind

Do you notice your thoughts? Are you aware of what you think? Can you easily hear your inner dialogue? Take a moment to stop and listen to yourself think. Notice how the dialogue can morph and change course very easily, especially once you pay attention to it. Notice how some of your thoughts are very practical and solution oriented, such as “I have to pick up my dry cleaning,” while some of them are judgmental of yourself or others, such as “I’m an idiot for forgetting to pay my gas bill.” Some of them are pleasant and kind—“I look great in this outfit”—and some of them are just plain weird: “I wonder what it feels like to freeze to death.” Listening in on the dialogue of your own mind is the first step toward being aware of (and ultimately cultivating) what is in your cup.

As you practice listening to your thoughts, see if you can start to notice where your mind gets stuck. What thoughts do you return to again and again? What ideas begin to sound like a broken record? Do you tell yourself you’re stupid over and over? Do you constantly look at what other people are wearing or how they look and compare yourself to them? Do you see people creating great works of art and long to create art of your own? Do you wish you were doing something else, or were at some different point in your life, but you don’t know what or where?

There have been periods in my life where I’ve been stuck on all sorts of comparisons and negativity. If someone I know was in love and having a beautiful relationship while I was single, my thoughts could run the gambit from envy to self-pity to hopelessness around ever being loved. Rather than just being happy for my friend, remaining open to finding love, and feeling good, my mind would get stuck on why I was not in a relationship, as if I could think my way into a relationship if only I could figure it out (whatever “it” is).

My father called this the “grasping mind” or “sticky mind.” In martial arts, it refers to a moment in an encounter where you get stuck trying to enforce some strategy you may have that’s separate from what is actually happening in the present moment. You become too clever and jammed up with your training or your game plan or your emotions, and you stop responding to the moment as it actually unfolds. In other words, you get in your own way. Sound familiar?

I was watching a UFC fight once, and while they were doing the short pre-fight intro pieces for each fighter before the match, one of the fighters started talking about his fight plan and how he was going to first do this and then do that and then win by doing this. He was being very specific about it, and I thought to myself, That guy is going to lose. And he did. He lost because he got too caught up in what he wanted the fight to be, rather than what the fight actually was. And when the fight started to deviate from his plan, he didn’t have enough flow, presence, maturity, and ability to respond appropriately in the moment and change course to alter the outcome. His mind was stuck in what he’d predetermined and hoped or assumed would happen, and he was unable to see, perceive, and respond to what was actually happening. He wasn’t present. His cup was too full.

Have a mind that has no dwelling place but continues to flow ceaselessly and ignores our limitations and our distinctions. Do not strive to localize the mind anywhere but let it fill up the whole body; let it flow freely throughout the totality of your being. Do not let the mind be grasping or sticky. Don’t look at “what is” from the position of thinking what should be. It is not to be without emotion or feeling but to be one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked.

That bears repeating: “It is not to be without emotion or feeling but to be one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked.” It is not to deny or bury or go around your feelings or your thoughts about those feelings. It is to feel them, acknowledge them, and work with them—to understand what they are trying to tell you about you, about the situation—to let them show you where there is more work to be done without letting them overwhelm, unbalance, or trap you. They have information for you. Take the information, say thank you, and keep going.

Meditation as a Tool

It may come as no surprise that my father meditated, starting as a teenager and continuing throughout the rest of his life in one form or another. Meditation is a great tool for creating that calm space in the mind that is needed to gain perspective and to empty your cup. I know many people who meditate regularly, and I know many people who just can’t take to it. The truth is, everyone meditates in some form—you just may not realize that you already know how. My father did occasionally sit, legs crossed, eyes closed, palms resting comfortably in his lap to meditate, but he engaged in other types of meditation as well. But before we get to that, let’s talk about why meditation might be useful.

For our purposes in this moment, meditation should be understood as a method of loosening the mind and letting it float a bit. It’s a practice of creating space—freeing yourself from all motives and helping you to make contact with your relaxed and serene nature. You can think of it as the feeling you have when you daydream. You’re awake, but your mind is untethered and moving easily from image to idea to thought and through states of nothingness, without getting hung up on any one thing—like it’s floating in a gentle and deep pool of water with inflatable water wings on. It doesn’t need to do anything to stay afloat. It feels loose; it feels free. No “thoughts” as we traditionally think of them are getting any active play. You aren’t thinking about your day or your to-do list or the argument you had with your partner or where you have to be after you’re done meditating. You’re not in evidence-collecting mode. You simply give yourself the space to let go of thinking at all.

Of course, and especially in the beginning, nagging thoughts do grab our attention when trying to meditate. One of the mind’s main functions is analysis, and so it’s normal and natural for the mind to shift quickly back to problem-solving and planning. When that happens, don’t beat yourself up or get frustrated. It’s part of the process, and, in fact, the mere act of noticing that this has occurred is a huge step in the right direction. It means you’re becoming aware! So just notice when this happens, pat yourself on the back, and then pump up your water wings and bring your focus back to neutral.

There are many techniques for establishing this space of calm. Some people follow the breath in and out, directing the mind back to the breath when it starts to wander or judge the experience (which it invariably will). Some people use mantras or visualizations. My father liked to meditate a little differently for the most part. He often liked to untether his mind and let it float while he was moving, surprise, surprise. He used his morning jog as meditative time. He sometimes would also walk around our backyard while simultaneously meditating. It’s not about how you do it—whether your eyes are open or closed, whether you are sitting or moving—it’s about that space of mental calm. It’s about the untethering and making room for new perceptions. And figuring out how that works for you is another step toward understanding yourself and how your cup best empties.

I want us to consider this type of meditation as a potential tool in our tool belt for practicing the art of being like water. My father was very certain that meditation should not be about “striving” to be still and calm. “Striving” is the antithesis of being empty. When he was a young man, my father wrote about the cognitive dissonance we often experience in meditation:

“I must relax.” But then I had just thought something that contradicted my will at the precise moment I thought, “I must relax.” The demand for effort in must was already inconsistent with the effortlessness in relax.

In meditation, we should allow, surrender, loosen, let go. Just make space and embody space.

The practices of mindfulness and meditation are similar in that they bring you back to the now. And they are both excellent techniques for learning to empty our cup. If you practice them daily, even just for five minutes, or while you are engaged in any activity that doesn’t require you to think (jogging, coloring, walking, even washing dishes), you will start to develop a sense of energized relaxation, and there will suddenly be more room in your cup for all sorts of new possibilities. Just like my father on the boat when he was a teenager, you are giving yourself the space to ponder and feel and be.

One quick practice I like to do is just to take the first phrase of my father’s “Be Water” quote and use it as a guided visualization toward quieting my mind and making space. I picture my mind like a sacred bowl filled with all my thoughts and feelings of the day, and as I say or think the words “Empty your mind; be formless, shapeless like water,” I picture all those thoughts emptying out and washing down through my body like a gentle waterfall. I let the worries, the to-do lists, and the stress just filter down through my being and drain into the earth. Then I sit quietly as the bowl of my mind refills with clean, clear, still water or white light or whatever feels good. You can also view your empty bowl as an invitation for it to fill with whatever you need to see or feel in that moment. The important thing is not to force a vision or a feeling. Just allow. And if nothing comes, then fill your bowl with clear water or light and wash it down your body once again. Feel yourself being nourished. Feel yourself as lighter. Breathe and relax and just take these minutes to empty out. This practice makes me think of this quote of my father’s:

Who is there that can make muddy waters clear? But if allowed to remain still, it will become clear of itself. Who is there that can secure a state of absolute repose? But keep calm and let time go on, and the state of repose will gradually arrest.

Emptiness Is a Process

We in the West think of nothingness as a void, a nonexistence. In Eastern philosophy and modern physical science, nothingness—no-thingness—is a form of process, ever moving.

Remember that this foray into emptiness is a process. There’s no way to achieve the end, because a process is ongoing. There is no end. Once you start noticing your own inner dialog and practice emptying your mind of judgment, the process becomes part of you.

There will be times when you will forget about this practice altogether and fall back into old habits, and when that happens, simply start again. No need to admonish oneself for doing something “wrong.” Our whole mission is to let go of that binary way of thinking that makes everything wrong or right. We can see what we’ve done or not done. We can see how we feel about it. It doesn’t have to be wrong; it just is. As my father said:

To live with “what is” is to be peaceful. There is “what is” when there is no comparison at all. Require not just a moment of perception, but a continuous awareness, a continuous state of inquiry in which there is no conclusion. Just watch choicelessly and in the watching lies the wonder. There is an awareness without any demand, an awareness in which there is no anxiety, and in that state of mind, there is perception. And it is perception that will resolve all our problems.

Can perception solve all our problems, as he says? In a lot of ways, yes. Perception may not be able to instantly materialize the money we need for rent tomorrow, but it may allow us to think of our situation differently and see possibilities where before we saw none. It may even help us to meet our challenges with a little more acceptance, calm, and poise than we could have before. And in that shift, there is huge potential for everything from tolerance to peace of mind to actual solutions showing up.

In most situations, if we can figure out how to see something in a new light, with a novel understanding, if we can learn something we didn’t know about ourselves or about the situation, if we can drop our judgments, our expectations, and our rationalizations, and if we can learn to flow with and not resist our current circumstances, our cup can continually be filled with new possibilities, new answers, and new ideas—because there will always be more room. And then we can truly begin to transform our lives.