Emptiness

“ What you want, if I may say so, is emptiness, and that emptiness invites. The flying thought flits in and makes itself at home. Some people overflow with thoughts of kindness and beauty that radiate from them, of love and tenderness and desire to help. ”

“ Form is nothing more than emptiness, emptiness is nothing more than Form. Form is exactly emptiness, and emptiness is exactly Form. The other four aggregates of human existence -- feeling, thought, will, and consciousness -- are also nothing more than emptiness. ”

“ And, because of my profession, the people I have seen have been of all sorts and conditions, and the conclusion I have come to is, that most lives are filled with emptiness—with a dead, dull uneventfulness. ”

“ Emptiness is not different from form; form is not different from emptiness. What is form—that is emptiness. What is emptiness—that is form... Perception, name, concept, and knowledge, are also emptiness... There is no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind... ”

“ But the emptiness and the darkness are gone; when I turn back into myself now I'm like a child going at night into a room where there's always a light." ”

“ To some temperaments it might seem as though this reduction of the immense unfathomable universe to a congeries of living souls were a strangling limitation. There are certain human temperaments, and my own is one of them, whose aesthetic sense demands the existence of vast interminable spaces of air, of water, of earth, of fire, or even of blank emptiness. ”

“ It leads to mediumship, to possession, to obsession. You can wisely aim at emptiness, only when you have so disciplined the mind that it can hold for a considerable time to a single point and remain alert when that point is dropped. ”

“ We too might say, "Surging with hungry tongues of flame;" but we do not wish that the tongues of flame in our writings, when they are read by any one in his senses, should be judged hungry for want of the sap of weightiness, or that the reader himself, while he finds in them no food of useful sentiments, should be left to suffer from the hunger of excessive emptiness. ”

“ For instance, emptying succeeds fulness, and on the other hand after emptiness comes in turn a process of filling: sleep relaxes the strain of waking, and, again, awakening braces up what had become slack: and neither of these abides continually, but both give way, each at the other’s coming; nature thus by their interchange so renewing herself as, while partaking of each in turn, to pass from the one to the other without break. ”

“ There is no doubt that the feeling of emptiness that seeks refuge in the fever of passion or intoxication, is a wholly abnormal condition, as unknown to the children of the wilderness, who never feel the craving of unemployed faculties, as to the truly civilized man, who finds means to satisfy that craving. ”

“ As I read to-day's letters, I felt such a poignant desire to hear A—-'s sweet song, I was at once sure that one of the many suppressed longings of creation which cry after fulfilment is for neglected joys within reach; while we are busy pursuing chimerical impossibilities we famish our lives....
The emptiness left by easy joys, untasted, is ever growing in my life. And the day may come when I shall feel that, could I but have the past back, I would strive no more after the unattainable, but drain to the full these little, unsought, everyday joys which life offers. ”

“ Which, not so much by emptiness of the flesh than by circumspection of the mind and by virtue, if they cannot be entirely prevented, at least they are led to that simple quality of an emptying, the grace of God assisting. ”

“ I come and sit here, and it's empty, but not in the sense in which you use the word 'emptiness'. Emptiness and fullness are not two different things; you cannot draw a line of demarcation between the void and the fullness. ”

“ Nothing is born, nothing dies, nothing is pure, nothing is stained, nothing increases and nothing decreases. So, in emptiness, there is no form, no feeling, no thought, no will, no consciousness. There are no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. ”

“ Patient and loving, she thought more of the comfort of those who watched over her than of her own. There was still no pain, no distress, except at times a shortness of breath and a weariness that nothing could relieve. "I am so tired, so tired," she would say; the soul, weary of its burden of the flesh, longed for the "rest that remaineth for the people of God." ”

“ If you probe the human heart, you will find a want, and that want is rest. The cry of the world to day is, “Where can rest be found?” Why are theaters and places of amusement crowded at night? What is the secret of Sunday driving, of the saloons and brothels? Some think they are going to get it in pleasure, others think they are going to get it in wealth, and others in literature. They are seeking and finding no rest. ”

“ I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me. The plank bed, the loathsome food, the hard ropes shredded into oakum till one’s finger-tips grow dull with pain, the menial offices with which each day begins and finishes, the harsh orders that routine seems to necessitate, the dreadful dress that makes sorrow grotesque to look at, the silence, the solitude, the shame—each and all of these things I have to transform into a spiritual experience. ”

“ Why are not others, O king, feeling the burden of this palanquin. If I am exhausted with a burden that is being carried on another's shoulder, then why with the weight of this palanquin, people may be worn out with the weight of mountains, trees, houses and even of the earth, When the nature of men is different, either in its essence or its cause, then it may be said that fatigue is to be undergone by me. ”

“ Shall I less enjoy heaven and earth, or thought or action, or man's more material luxuries of food or sleep— the common and the cheap desires of all? Arouse thee, then, O heart within me! many and deep emotions of sorrow or of joy are yet left to break the monotony of existence. ”

“ Not alone are there degrees of cold and hunger of the body,—discomfortable and ill-nourished living,—but there are, as well, things which seem to me even more difficult to endure—unsatisfied hunger of the mind and heart and a most cruel and persistent chill of the spirit. ”

“ And not only that, but—and here is indeed a mighty discovery—that the very source of exhaustion, is, properly understood, the actual fountain of perpetuity, endurance, long life, and power, mental, physical, moral, emotional, and magnetic. ”

“ Many a time in days gone by—far-off days—had he sat as he was doing now, feeling his mind pass into a soft, comforting quiet, absorbed in a sensation of existence, as it were between waking and sleeping, where doors opened to new experience and understanding, where the mind seemed to loose itself from the bonds of human necessity and find a freer air. ”

“ That's an extremely heavy burden, one that takes the color out of the sky and the sweetness out of life, to spend most or a great deal of our time in bed or on a sofa,—no taste for food, a throbbing head, a laboring heart, constant and gnawing agony, nights often filled with sleeplessness and days with weariness. ”

“ We relish our food and rest, only because we can dismiss, as so many empty shadows, the sorrows scattered everywhere, both in the home and in the outer world. If we took them as true, even for a moment, where would be our appetite, our sleep? ”

“ I hope you take care of your health. I have got a habit of restlessness at night, which arises, I believe, from activity of mind; for, when I am alone, that is, not near one to whom I can open my heart, I sink into reveries and trains of thinking, which agitate and fatigue me. ”

“ Oh! how have we fatigued ourselves in the way of perdition! our relaxation was weariness, our pleasures anguish; unhappy we, who have run the course of life, not through delicious gardens, or pleasant forests, but through thorns and briars, and intricate paths! ”

“ There thoughts, sentiments, opinions, feelings, actions too, are nothing but agitation in empty space--to amuse life--a sort of superior debauchery, exciting and fatiguing, meaning nothing, leading nowhere. ”

“ Rest!—how strongly, day by day, does the desire for rest grow upon the human heart! We begin life—how buoyant, how hopeful! difficulties but bring out a healthful exertion, and obstacles stimulate by the resources they call into action. ”

“ If it had pleased Heaven to have called me hence, what a world of care I should have missed! I have lost all relish for pleasure, and life seems a burden almost too heavy to be endured. My head is stupid, and my heart sick and exhausted. ”

“ And when the day is over he needs a place of rest—a tender, understanding place of rest, where he can talk or be silent, sleep or wake, as the fancy takes him, but where he will never be left alone to live again through the happenings of the day, too tired to escape them. ”

“ It would be but to lie down and rest, and sleep, and rise again refreshed by the slumber for the labors and enjoyments of a life which should then be without termination, and yet unattended by fatigue. ”

“ It is wonderful how elusive rest is. You may search for it all your days and grow gray and haggard, and sit down in the evening of life with the vampires circling about you and be forced to confess, "I have not found rest!" ”

“ At least your inconceivable frivolousness, your hunger and thirst after stop-gaps for every hour you are awake, your wild-goose chase after pleasures that leave the heart empty, seem not to me altogether the healthiest state of the soul. ”

“ Here, while we draw breath, there is no rest. We must go on continually, on from strength to strength, or weakness to weakness; we must always be troubled about this or that, and must ever have this desire or that to regret. ”

“ Comfort I call quiet, and being let alone. Another fortnight at this place would give me brain fever—your life continually in danger either on the sea or by the cliffs—your feelings supposed to be always up at passion pitch—it is all a whirl of secret or declared emotions that don't give you a moment's rest. ”

“ Know, Cremes, it is Esculapius who has thus entertained you, and what you have beheld is a true image of the deceitfulness and misery inseparable from luxury and intemperance. Would you be happy, be temperate: temperance is the parent of health, virtue, wisdom, plenty, and every thing that can make you happy in this or the world to come. It is indeed the true luxury of life, for without it life cannot be enjoyed. ”

“ He was in the comfortable mood, following upon unusual indulgence of the appetite, in which the mind handles in a free and easy way the thoughts it is wont to entertain with unquestionable gravity; when it has, as it were, a slippery hold on the facts of life, and constructs a subjective world of genial accommodations. ”

“ My people, I am tired: I want to rest. I have had a long reign, and done much work—at least, as much as I was able to do. Many might have done it better than I—but none with a better will. Now I leave it to others; I am tired, very tired. ”

“ I am speaking here very frankly; and I will own that for myself, when the day has rolled past and when the sacred hour comes, I sit down to write with an appetite, a keen rapture, such as a hungry man may feel when he sits down to a savoury meal. There is a real physical emotion that accompanies the process; and it is a deep and lively distress that I feel when I am living under conditions that do not allow me to exercise my craft, at being compelled to waste the appropriate hours in other occupations. ”

“ Everywhere that has seemed to be a comforting and almost an attractive name, which has promised full rest from all the agitations of this changeful scene. The prosperous and the wretched alike have owned the fatigue of living, and been conscious of a soothing expectance which became almost a hope, as they thought of lying still at last with folded hands and shut eyes. ”

“ There is within my mind a void Whose vacant weight is harder to be borne Than the keen stingings of more active pangs; When it has traced the mystic chain of being To its last link, it may perchance shake off The misery of restless discontent,— Its fulness then may sink it into rest. ”

“ Only after the work of the day is done will you become conscious of physical weariness, and then it is that you find out what the luxury of rest is; to fully appreciate rest we must first understand what it is to be really tired. ”

“ They knew neither food, nor sleep, nor health; nor could they ever possibly know the sting of real appetite, the goodly ache of fatigue, nor the rush of mad strong blood that bit like wine through all one's body as work was done. ”

“ Without these moments of rest the conditions of life at present and the constitutions for which the new word "nervy" has had to be invented, will give us tempers and temperaments incapable of repose and solitude. ”

“ Whether it is that I am growing old and losing my faculties, or whether the responsibilities of life have paralyzed my mind, or that the loss of that refreshment to the spirit which comes from the reciprocation of an affection for which there is no substitute, has exhausted my strength by depriving me of my spirit's resting-place, I know not. ”

“ I have rendered my mind unable to enjoy the ordinary aliments of nature; and I have wasted, by a premature indulgence, my resources and my powers, till I have left my heart, without a remedy or a hope, to whatever disorders its own intemperance has engendered. ”

“ The very consciousness of our weakness and our weariness gives us faith in a higher power, and courage to resign ourselves to the beautiful system of the All, and we feel invigorated and refreshed when, in waking or in sleeping, we have loosened, even for a short time only, the chains which bind our Eternal Self to our temporal Ego. ”