The Grasping Hand & Nothing

Forget the last blog entry am making progress elsewhere...

Take a look at the hand.

With the hand we grasp for things that we want. Maybe a pen, maybe some food, maybe a lover. In each case we feel better off for what we have gained, and if we fail to gain then our hand feels empty and we feel worse. Normally then we view "empty" as a bad thing.

If we are already holding something then we are unable to grasp something new. It is because our empty hand is empty that we are able to grasp for new things. Thus in this sense emptiness is critical for the acquiring of new things and the satisfaction of our desires. Indeed it is precisely because our hand has nothing in it that it can be used to hold things. Thus in the act of having something we are relying upon our hands own emptiness! In this sense emptiness is critical in the act of having and is a good thing.

One thing we cannot grasp however is the hand itself. Try and grasp your hand now! It is impossible. The inability to grasp ourselves reinforces our insecure. If we ever doubt ourselves what can be grasp to reinforce ourselves? Nothing!

In this sense also the hand is intrinsically empty, because it cannot hold itself - there is nothing there to grasp. This is because it is just the possibility of grasping, not a thing which can be grasped. Thus in grasping relationships we fit together like shaking hands, each grasping the others grasping and empty nature. My emptiness fits into your emptiness, and vice verse and there is a bond.

There is a great analogy here between the hand and the self. The "true self" is our grasping nature: our ability to go-for-things, acquire things and own things. It is not however the things themselves. But often we examine that power through the things themselves, we add up the things we own and the things we have done. Or at least we measure our potential to own things through what we have actually done and owned. However our existence itself is actually just the space into which all these things come. And that is obviously there whether it is a filled room or an empty room. If we think the filled room (the ostensibly successful life) is any different from the empty room (the life of monastic non-ownership and attachment) then we are viewing the rooms space in terms of its contents not its emptiness. We are told the human mind is actually an infinite space with room enough for the whole universe and more!