#106 The Void
“The void may be said to have two aspects:
It simply is what it is.
It is realized; it is aware of itself. And to speak improperly, this awareness is “in us,” or better, we are “in it.””
Bruce Lee would often refer to The Void as Nothingness, Emptiness, The Origin of Things, the Tao, and the Formless Form.
The Void is the empty state from which all action and creation comes. For Bruce, the Void was another name for the dynamic part of the mind.
Form One
The first form where ‘it simply is what it is,’ is to cultivate an acceptance of reality as it is; to engage in simplicity and everyday mind; to simply be with acceptance and without force.
“Reveal reality in its is-ness.”
“Turn into a doll made of wood – it has no ego; it is not grasping or sticky.”
Do not grasp onto the different thoughts and emotions that are hitting us at any given moment, do not let them stop you. Have no ego and just take it in.
“It is to see things as they are and not become attached.”
Be present without judgment; be aware of your surroundings without making any choices about them. Make your choices based on an acceptance of reality instead of a story we make up or because of a set pattern.
Practicing mediation is a way to engage with the void.
“Meditation as a state of complete emptiness and not a process of concentration [is a good initial practice]. Concentration is a form of exclusion.”
When you’re meditating you want to untether your mind so you can just be and let go.
“Give up thinking as though not giving it up.”
When you are meditating, you are thinking, but you are giving up being fully controlling of your thoughts.
“Emptiness is equated with gentleness. An aggressive spirit will be brought low.”
If you want to engage the Void, you have to engage it with gentleness, you cannot force your way into the Void.
“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 called “to make oneself empty” – which means the openness to receive.”
The Void feels like openness and the expansiveness of the universe. The opposite of it is the feeling of grasping and your chest tightening.
The Void is limitless.
“Not conviction but perception is the way.”
It is a state of pliable awareness, choiceless awareness. This helps shift our perception of something because we are open to all that is possible.
“Just watch choicelessly and in the watching lies the wonder.”
“It is perception alone that will resolve all your problems.”
If we can drop a need for things to be right or wrong, and just take life as it comes and respond to it in that way, then we will have less problems. It is never the thing that is good or bad, it is our reaction to it. If we can shift our perception to see something as it is, then we can decide how we wish to respond.
By emptying our minds, we can start at a point where anything is possible.
“The (posture of the) emptiness is sincerity, genuineness and straightforwardness.”
Practice imagining being openhearted and excited; imagine that feeling in your body. This will help clear away the detritus.
“Emptiness is the origin of all things; it is the nothingness, the altogether undetermined, the abstract universal, the Tao. It is simple, formless, desireless, without striving, supremely content.”
“The man who is really serious, with an urge to find out what truth is lives only in what is.”
Form Two
The second form is: “It is realized; it is aware of itself. And to speak improperly, this awareness is “in us,” or better, we are “in it.””
The second form is aware of itself – this is a more developed sense of emptiness, an emptiness where we are “of it” or “we are it.”
The First Form is about our relationship with the Void and the Second Form is being the Void.
“Whoever realizes the void is filled with life and power and the love of all beings.”
“To be consciously unconscious or to be unconsciously conscious is the secret to Nirvana. The act is so direct and immediate that intellection finds no room here to insert itself and cut it to pieces.”
“When insubstantiality and substantiality are not set and defined, one has mastered the formless form.”
When you are in the practice of the Void, you have infinite mobility because you are present and engaged in the process of allowing infinite direction.
This type of practice is a life-long pursuit.
“When we accept and enter the nothingness, the void, then the desert starts to bloom. The empty void becomes alive, is being filled. Nothing equals real.”
“The mind is the name given to this dynamic aspect of emptiness from which all movements come. A mind that has no dwelling doesn’t stop, but continues to flow ceaselessly and ignores limitations and distinctions. Let this mind fill up the whole body and flow freely throughout the totality of your being without the sensation of a second mind or ego standing over it with a club.”
To practice this, gravitate towards the words, practices, music, and movements, which give you the recognized feeling of this expansive space.
Meditation is a good way to get into the feeling of the Void. Once we develop a relationship with the Void and start to embody the Void, then that mediation has to transform into total sensory awareness and not disciplined stillness.
This is a practice of finding your path, knowing yourself, and freeing yourself.
“Don’t think, feel.”
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