Welcome to Thursday Coffee Hour. This is an open topic thread so help yourself to the goodies and sit a spell and let us know what is new with you. One of the most frequent authoritative questions is "what are you doing?" and it is usually said in a tone of voice that implies "I know you are doing something you shouldn't be." The most common answer of course is "nothing." Nothing is normally considered to be an absence, a lack of something. Follow me below the fleur de Kos for a different take on nothing.
Chapter 11 of the Tao Te Ching has this to say about nothing.
Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.
When I took art in college my teacher told me I had the best sense of space that he had ever seen. He said I not only knew what to put in a picture but what not to put in. I incorporated space into my art. I think that having a astigmatism in my eye has helped me as an artist. When I look at something I can see the item intruding into space. Space exists and is not emptiness to my eye.
As the Tao Te Ching shows us space is a real thing. You can't have a cup of coffee if there isn't a "hole" in the cup where you can pour the coffee into. A door is nice but it needs to open into space so you can use it otherwise it is just a piece of wood.
Incorporating two homes, mine and my parents, left me with a lot of things I didn't want to get rid of. I display them the best I can so it doesn't look cluttered but each piece has a space around it where it can shine on its own.
People need space. We need that empty air around us that keeps us from merging into something else. It is the reason why we will back away if someone comes too close and invades our personal space without our permission.
My cat Pixie can be negative space sometimes. When she lays down next to me at night she starts on top of me and slides down so that she is partly on and partly off me. She gets anxious sometimes and has to be attached to my space. It is like a kitty hug. A hug is sharing our space with others.
When meditating I have always tried to reach a place of nothing where I shut out the world around me and can drift in calm nothingness. I try to reach nowhere. I can find a great calm there in that space where nothing else is. Nothing isn't a lack of something. Nothing is itself.
Under Starry Skies