Chapter 16.1: Emptiness and Serenity: The Way to Clarity & Perspective

 

Reaching emptiness is the utmost, 

safeguarding serenity is the steadiness of a surefooted steed.

The myriad things are formed together,

herein I observe them coming, going, and returning.

To reach emptiness to the furthest extent possible is the utmost limit.  It is the opposite of being completely full of ourselves.  The world tries to convince us that the secret to happiness is filling ourselves up.  We erroneously believe that we need to puff ourselves up with hollow accolades and accomplishments and fill our bank accounts with abundant incomes and investments.  There is nothing inherently wrong with the accumulation of wealth nor in accepting the praise and heartfelt gratitude of others.  It is only a problem when we associate our self-worth with our booming bank balances and our superfluous social media “likes” that we run the risk of losing ourselves.  As Bruce Lee (1940-1973) stated: “Emptiness is the starting point. — In order to taste my cup of water you must first empty your cup. My friend, drop all your preconceived and fixed ideas and be neutral. Do you know why this cup is useful? Because it is empty.”  There is great value and infinite potential in emptiness.  Emptying out the external things that clog our soul and obscure our vision reveals what is true about ourselves when we let go of all the “must haves” and “need to be’s” and there is nothing left out there to cover up and distract ourselves from who we really are at our core.  We often fill our lives with these external trappings because deep down inside, we are afraid that if we cleared away the clutter and emptied our lives of all the extraneous things – the likes and labels, the competitive comparisons and the status symbols – that there would be nothing left inside of us.  Far too often, we are afraid of our own emptiness, not understanding that the emptiness makes room for something stronger and better to emerge from deep within us – like a tiger emerging from its cave.

Safeguarding and securing the profound depths our own serenity is to protect and preserve it against all the agitating factors of life that would stir us up and carry us away.  Too many of us sacrifice our happiness and peace because of the actions and opinions of others or the unwanted and unexpected circumstances that find their way into our lives.  In doing so, we give away our power to choose our own beliefs, thoughts, and feelings.  We live in a society that tells us that other people can “make” us feel or act a certain way – thereby robbing us of our agency and power.  We likewise sacrifice our power upon the erroneous altar of “circumstance” settling and believing the disempowering lies that “this is my lot in life” or “this is just who I am.”  The truth is that while we cannot always control the circumstances and situations that come into our lives, we are the only ones who get to decide what we are going to think about them, how we are going to respond to them, and therefore how we are going to feel.  

Our serenity, happiness, and inner peace are worth far more than the heartache of hardship or the volatile vitriol of all the haters out there.  Why should we care what others think or say about us?  Why should we allow them to determine our happiness and peace of mind?  As the old adage goes, when life gives us lemons, we can make lemonade – and if we don’t like lemonade we can trade it to someone who does for something we do like!  Our serenity, our inner peace is precious and it is our duty to ourselves to consistently and steadily safeguard it like a surefooted steed.  In our modern age of automobiles and high-tech transportation, this imagery can be lost on us but in the ancient world, people understood and experienced the steadiness of a surefooted horse as they moved across inconsistent landscapes without paved roads.  As we make our Way through difficult circumstances, we can likewise consistently choose to steadily safeguard our serenity – we can refuse to cast aside our peace due to external forces and stay the course of our lives, embracing our place in the universe – even when external pressures tempt us to get on the roller coaster relative worth and the corkscrew of constant comparison.

Emptiness and serenity are essential practices on the Way.  Doing these two things gives us perspective into the correlative nature of all phenomena – they allow us to see how things are interconnected, their cause and effect.  Emptiness, or clearing away the clutter from our lives, and serenity create a space for self-reflection in our lives that allows us to see the results and outcomes that we are creating along with how we are responding to the external circumstances and situations that come into our lives.  These two practices allow us to see clearly observe how the Law of Attraction and the Law of the Harvest are operating in our lives.  As American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) penned in the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

courage to change the things I can,

and wisdom to know the difference.

Practicing emptiness and serenity enable us to see clearly what we need to change in our lives and accept those things we need to surrender.  We can clear the clutter of our lives and empty out ourselves of all the superfluous and extraneous influences that fill our time and our lives and make room for something better and stronger to emerge like a tiger and we can return to the wellspring of our souls in stillness and serenity, safeguarding it against anything that threatens to rob us of our inner peace and self-worth. ~ DCB 

Etymology Notes: The Chinese character 虛 (xu¹) meaning “empty” is a picto-phonetic character comprised of a stylized tiger head 虍 (hu¹), which provides the sound, over a pair of karst hills 㐀, common to south China, with openings or caves.  The meaning refers to a cave or hollow in a hill.  Though probably not the original intent of the etymology, I like the imagery of the tiger coming out from an empty cave to describe the emergence of a better, stronger version of ourselves as we empty our lives of the diversions and distractions that often seem so important to us because we have wrapped our identity and our worth around them.

Translation Notes: The earliest discovered manuscript of the Dao De Jing was excavated from the Guodian tomb in Hubei province in 1993 and dates to 300 BCE.  Though incomplete, it has a slightly different reading of this passage.  It reads:

致虛极也，守中篤也。萬物旁作，居以觀復。

Arriving at emptiness is the utmost extreme,

 safeguarding the core is the steadiness of a surefooted steed.

The myriad things are formed side by side, 

residing herein I observe them coming, going, and returning. 

The largest thematic difference in the Guodian manuscript is that it is not serenity that must be safeguarded but one’s center or core.  This is an allusion to the end of Chapter 5, which states that maintaining moderation or safeguarding one’s center or core and becoming an empty vessel is better than wearing ourselves out listening to all the social chatter.  It remains unclear whether this earliest known variant reflect an earlier iteration of the passage that was later changed in transmission or if it represents an early departure from an established tradition transmitted in all the other manuscripts and editions.