What is it to be empty? We know if I give you a glass, you can clearly comment whether it is full or empty, defining empty as the opposite of being full. If the glass is empty, it has nothing in it but space where you can fill in with a substance. Say, you filled in the glass with a fresh orange juice, something got in between before your first sip, as apparently things always need to get in between when it is time to just enjoy a moment of simplicity, like the fresh taste of the orange juice, and you left it on the table. After couple of hours, you will probably wash the glass and use it for another experience of enjoying the same or another liquid. However if you leave the glass unwashed for days, the orange juice will transform into something you wouldn’t want to get into your system. You surely wouldn’t just pour it out and pour in, say, water on top of it to drink. Such mess needs good cleaning and you know if not, the bacteria celebrating their birth to life won’t be thatfriendly to your system as they are to the orange juice. It is a by product that your unattended, once so fresh and delicious orange juice had produced. And you don’t want this by product.

Well, above looks to me as the simple paragraph that each educational book starts with. Whether it is maths, biology, physics, car mechanics for dummys :). It gives confidence to the reader or the student that it won’t be such a big deal to get a hold of that lesson. I already know all of this! Tell me something new!

However, it gets a bit complicated when there is actually nothing new to be introduced , but the old and furthermore what you understand of the old needs to be digged to investigate and possibly eventually accept that what we understood of it might not be that accurate.

We go further and the next chapter asks “What does it mean when the mind is empty?”. Probably one of the first inner answers will be “When I don’t think of anything. Like the meditation stuff you know. You concentrate on your breath and empty your mind”. If things would be only that easy…Like pouring the liquid out of a glass..

In this case the liquid filling our mind is not one but a mixture of countless liquids, having more lines than a rainbow, ranging from fabrications, biased value judgments, preferences, time, dualistic thoughts, dogmas, beliefs,etc… The tricky part of all this is that even if we are willing to let go one part of this liquid, say one color of the rainbow that I can live without, we are so strongly attached to the others that we can’t even think of them as something separate than the glass. Obviously you can’t empty the glass by leaving the residual liquid at the bottom and concentrating on the empty part. Half full is not empty.

Cleaning the liquid that became a part of the glass after some extended amount of time, has been a particular goal in many what might be called esoteric and spiritual practices. My aim is not writing the complete educational book 🙂 , so I will pick up one of these practices that is related to my purpose of this post. Stay with me 🙂

In Zen practice, this state of mind is called ” Mushin”. To achieve this goal, the one and only tool the practioner can use, is “what is”.

“The mind must always be in the state of flow, for when it stops anywhere that means the flow is interrupted and it is this interruption that is injurious to the well-being of the mind. In the case of the swordsman, it could mean death. When the swordsman faces an opponent, he is not to think of himself, his opponent, or of his enemy’s sword movements. He just stands with his sword which, forgetful of all technique, is ready only to follow the dictates of the subconscious. The swordsman deletes his rational mind from the situation as the wielder of the sword. When he strikes, it is not the man but the sword in the hand of the man’s subconscious that strikes.”

– Zen Master Takuan Sōhō

Above quote makes me think of my favourite master piece of Stephen King, The Dark Tower. I can’t skip the chance of quoting Roland Deschain when I have the chance! The famous words of Roland Deschain being ;

The crucial need of the flow of the mind, the mind being in constant movement with complete awareness is only possible with a total tranquil and empty mind, says Jiddu Krishnamurti.

Our core issue as mankind is unfortunately this natural flow of life and awareness being broken due to “not having empty minds”. Jiddu Krishnamurti emphasizes that it is not possible to have an empty mind – free of beliefs, dogmas, assertations, identifications – with resisting or trying to change what is , but with the awareness and acceptance of “what is”.

Why do I tell all of these? I guess because my mind loves taking the long way to enjoy the sightseeing of the crossing roads from point A to point B 🙂 . Jumping directly from “Mushin” to its symbolic practice on the art of Kintsugi is too practical for me.

Kintsugi is repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver or platinium. The sentimental meaning of this practice is the new meaning the broken object gets. The repaired parts are the historical veins of the object. They stand for creating something beautiful from what was once a broken matter. Instead of the object being eliminated, it is repaired to serve with what might be an imperfection, but on the other hand, as an object that stood by time by accepting the flow and embracing what looks like a “scar” as a part of its life cycle.

I love it especially for the symbolic meaning I tried to explain via the road of my mind map above. However, I was especially happy when I heard this beautiful, uniting project I was involved with during the challenging times, we all have been going through lately, wanted to use the Kintsugi’s symbolism to express “being united”.

The project I am honored to be a part of and referring to is nothing else than Eric Whitacre”s Virtual Choir 6. The beauty and the significance of this project lies in the beautiful message that we surely have to re-think and consider more than ever now. I see it as a project, where the identification of one’s self disappears to produce one unique message by embodying the voices of each separate individual as one . In this structure, all the beliefs, dogmas, opinions and differences are set aside and the sole concentration is on the message of singing as one. As Whitacre explains, the metaphor “Sing Gently” is used to remind to be kind to each other, to show compassion and to concentrate on our commonalities instead of our differences. We need to remember that we have more commonalities than differences as human beings.

In my personal opinion, the duration of the song, 3 mins 21 seconds, is a perfect example of having an “empty mind” even for a couple of minutes, when one is able to be free from all the beliefs and opinions dividing us. During these seconds, race, religion, nationality, opinions, personal traits are nowhere to be seen. What you see is a unity of 17574 people ( 17572 singers , Sam Glicklich on piano and Eric Whitacre as conductor), using their bodies as an instrument if I may say, for the same purpose, during a time period that we are forced to be separated from each other.

What surprised me so much with this project is the interaction of our group members . In the Facebook Choir Group , there were all kinds of communication except everything dividing us. There was over reactive help, even when not asked for. Support for both musical and emotional lives during Covid 19 crisis we are still in. Workshops of professional musicians for singers with no musical background. There even was recently a message of one of the group members of providing help for those who can’t easily spot themselves in the video! I have to have 20 hands to count all the fingers of such examples.

This project is one of the many examples of many moments, when we actually forget all the differences and feel as one.

I will end this post by referring to Krishnamurti again, on how to find unity by “one knowing himself”. It all starts with an empty mind and the will to clean the unattended orange juice in our glass.

Quote

“To put an end to outward war, you must begin to put an end to war in yourself. Some of you will nod your heads and say, “I agree”, and go outside and do exactly the same as you have been doing for last past ten or twenty years. Your agreement is merely verbal and has no significance, for the world’s miseries and wars are not going to be stopped by your casual assent. They will be stopped only when you realize the danger, when you realize your responsibility, when you do not leave it to somebody else. If your realize the suffering, if you see the urgency of immediate action and do not postpone, then you will transform yourself; peace will come only when you yourself are peaceful, when you yourself are at peace with your neighbour.”

Jiddu Krishanamurti