A Mouthful of Emptiness
Eastern Meditations
“What power had I
before I learned to yield?
Shatter me, great wind:
I shall possess the field.”
Richard Wilbur
Pine Forest, Hasegawa Tohaku 1595
Nature’s Way
What I love most about Japanese aesthetics is how they honor nature’s way - imperfect, impermanent, incomplete.
I often wish I could see my own life like that too, without needing to “put it all together” or have all of it “make sense.”
Maybe it’s okay if the pieces don’t quite fit.
Maybe the gaps are part of the design.
Majestic Calm of the Great Bronze Buddha, Kamakura, Japan, Henry & Nancy Rosin Collection 1877 (thank you for the introduction, )
Empty & Awake
When I’m…
looking without a goal (to judge)
talking without a goal (to convince)
living without a goal (to accomplish)
These are the holy moments.
Softness, Nathaniel Russell 2022
Meditation-in-Action
My behavior can match whatever in me I want it to match.
I don’t have to act on the strongest, loudest feeling just because it shows up first. That’s not honesty - it’s self-reduction.
I have a choice: I can hand out my current ego opinion and make that my “truthful” answer - or I can consult my goodwill and respond from love.
Tolerance and compassion are acts of broadening the mind.
Grievances and grudges are acts of narrowing it.
Flor de la Vida, Pedro Friedeberg 2025
Changes
People say I’ve changed, but I’m not so sure.
I think I’m a little more aware now - of my mind, of my body, of nature, of the moment I’m in… I’m a bit more tolerant of who I am, and of who others are... but that doesn’t feel like change.
It feels more like a return - a going back to something I started this life with. A softness that I forgot… an openness that was always there.
I just have more options now. I can respond in ways I couldn’t before.
Awareness hasn’t changed me. It’s just allowed me.
Thanks for the Mystery, Daren Thomas Magee 2019
Openness vs Ambition
Ambition, though often celebrated as forward motion, can have the opposite effect. It can keep us stuck. Why?
Because ambition is just an extension of the past - a yearning for more of something already known, or long imagined. It’s a repetition in disguise. A recycled hunger.
But openness - true openness - is different.
Openness doesn’t rehearse the future. It doesn’t chase a specific shape or cling to a practiced desire. It waits, it listens. It lets what’s next arrive on its own terms, because it has no rigid idea of what’s needed.
Books:
Whole Earth, John Markoff
The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life, Boyd Varty
An Immense World, Ed Yong
Music:
Film:
Products:
My playful nod to the inner work.
A reminder that awareness doesn’t have to be so serious, and that the best kind of maintenance is the kind that clears the way for clarity, compassion, and a little less self-centeredness.
Recommendation: order a size up - the breathing room helps you relax.