Marc sits down with New York Times bestselling author Thomas Moore for an exploration of the practice of emptiness and its impact on well-being and effectiveness. Tune in to discover how spaciousness can help reduce stress and anxiety while supporting your work, ambitions, and aspirations, and receive guidance on embracing emptiness as a tool for achieving daily goals as well as long-term dreams.

 

 

ABOUT MARC’S GUEST

Thomas Moore is the author of the number one New York Times bestseller Care of the Soul. He has written twenty-four other books about bringing soul to personal life and culture, deepening spirituality, humanizing medicine, finding meaningful work, imagining sexuality with soul and doing religion in a fresh way. In his youth he was a Catholic monk and studied music composition. He has a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Syracuse University and was a university professor for a number of years. He is also a psychotherapist influenced mainly by C. G. Jung and James Hillman. In his work he brings together spirituality, mythology, depth psychology and the arts, emphasizing the importance of images and imagination. He often travels and lectures, hoping to help create a more soulful society. His family members are also deeply involved in spiritual approaches to the arts: His wife, Hari Kirin, is an accomplished painter and teaches a course she has created on Yoga and Art; his daughter Ajeet is a musician and recording artist and spiritual teacher; his stepson Abraham is an architect focusing on design related to the social aspects of building. Thomas also writes fiction, arranges music and plays golf in New Hampshire, where he has lived for twenty years.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Mark: Welcome to Zen Bones. Ancient wisdom for modern times. This is Mark Lesser.

Why Zen Bones? Our world is in crisis and ever-shifting. Now, more than ever, more wisdom, clarity, and courage are essential, especially in the world of work, business, and leadership.

Thomas Moore is the author of Care of the Soul, a New York Times bestseller for almost a year. He then has written 30 books on soul, spirituality, and death psychology.

He’s traveled the world teaching and speaking. He’s also a psychotherapist and an avid musician.

In today’s episode, we talk about the practice of emptiness and how this concept can support our well-being as well as our effectiveness in the world.

We talk about the practice of spaciousness as an antidote to stress and anxiety, and the ways that emptiness can support our work and ambition to achieve every day and important goals and aspirations.

I hope you enjoy today’s episode. Well, I’m very pleased to be here with Thomas Moore. Thomas, good morning. It’s great to see you.

[00:01:26] Thomas: Well, hello. Really nice to see you too, Mark.

[00:01:29] Mark: It’s funny that we were just saying that though we’ve never– I don’t think that we’ve met in person. If we have, it was very briefly.

I feel so connected with you through your bestselling book from many years ago, Care of the Soul, which was a wonderful book, and I know life-changing book for you and for many others.

[00:01:50] Thomas: Yes. It completely changed my life. It opened up so many doors, places to go and teach and speak. I don’t know. So much.

Also, a way to start making a living. When I published Care of the Soul just before that, I think I remember once having $4 in my pocket, and that was it.

I never really was interested in making any money. I had a daughter at the same year that Care of the Soul came out. I needed to be able to support a family. In so many ways, that book was a miracle of a gift to me.

[00:02:33] Mark: Yes. Amazing. It’s a little bit like winning the lottery too.

[00:02:40] Thomas: Yes.

[00:02:41] Mark: Then and now as well. There’s so many books, but there is something, I think about the title of that book.

It was a beautifully designed book. Michael Katz and I, who I know is a mutual friend, and was the agent, we used to send book covers back and forth.

Somehow I used to get involved in helping people design book covers. Michael, I thought, was with the best of the best at that and that book had a beautiful cover to it.

[00:03:10] Thomas: We have tried. I say “we.” My wife, who is an artist, she and I have tried over the years with all the books.

It’s about 32 books now. We’ve tried very hard to have covers. Good Covers. I remember one time I wrote a book called The Soul of Sex.

To try to do something with that cover, we got someone to do some hand-drawn calligraphy for the title. Just to have that on the cover.

I’ve not succeeded every time because some publishers just insist on their computer-driven in-house artists. It’s just unfortunate, from my point of view.

[00:03:52] Mark: I’ve been really appreciating reading your newest book, The Eloquence of Silence.

Actually, I don’t think I’ve sent you my newest book, which is called Finding Clarity. Actually, I have a whole section on the heart sutra and emptiness, kind of unpacking it.

I think where I want to start is talking about, I was just telling you a little bit of this story where I was teaching, and I was describing kind of defining what I mean by emptiness.

The question that I got asked with such great sincerity was, what does emptiness have to do with our daily lives?

I would love for you to say something about what you mean by emptiness in whatever way you want to. In what way is it pertinent? I would say essential, but how do you think about this?

[00:04:56] Thomas: This book that we’re talking about of mine now about emptiness has 30 stories.

I just comment on the stories. I feel when I read it over, that there are 30 different ideas about emptiness, 30 different kinds of emptiness.

It’s not as though emptiness is one thing. I think it appears in everything, everything we do. Everything that goes on, emptiness can be a part, so it’s different each time.

For example, it could be something very concrete like having a room in your house that’s not too full of things. That would be a kind of emptiness.

It’s very physical, but I think it’s still within the range of idea of emptiness or whatever you want to call that. I think that another common way for me, one of the most common things, comes from Christianity.

They have an idea of emptiness too called Kenosis. The idea there, the theology of that is that Jesus says all the time in his teachings that not– he says, “not my will, but my Father’s will.”

It’s that emptying of one’s will that I find happens almost every day. Where there’s one thing I want and then something else the world or somebody wants something else and I feel that I have to say that. I have to get into kenosis.

I have to say, “Okay, not my will now, but I don’t need to do what I need to do. I can let that go and do what someone else wants.” I think that’s a very ordinary, everyday kind of emptiness that we all experience.

[00:06:43] Mark: How I answered that question when I was asked was, when we’re truly listening to another person, we have to let go of whatever.

Letting go of our own ideas. We have to empty out of whatever our biases and thoughts are. Now, we may then need to bring them back in to think how does what this person is saying, how does it, how am I screening it or evaluating it?

Can I truly be really open to listening to what this other person is saying? Harder than it sounds this– And maybe we can get into this emptiness as a practice, as something that we, again– Even what you were just saying, it’s easy.

Someone comes up with their own idea or something happens. It’s easy to get frustrated or demand that no, I have.

How do we practice with this? How important and essential it is, this practice of emptiness.

[00:07:55] Thomas: I think if you have this daily practice of emptiness and the ordinary things of daily life, then the really big challenges are a little bit easier.

For example, if you find out that you’ve got an illness, a disease or something that you hadn’t suspected, that really requires some emptiness to accept it in some way.

I don’t know if that’s the best word, “accept,” but to be able to be with that illness in a way that you are not destroyed by it, you have to give over it. You have to give over to it somehow.

[00:08:31] Mark: In Buddhism, there’s many ways in to talk about emptiness. I think of a classic definition is the combination of a selflessness.

Not any sense of a stable, solid self and impermanence. That the way that we think of time is, again, the past, present, and future are practical, but are made up. Don’t really exist.

When you put those two– basically, it’s like time and space or time and self together– you get one definition, one way to think about this practice of emptiness.

[00:09:15] Thomas: Yes. It reminds me of a story. I don’t remember if I put it in the book or not, but when I was teaching at a university about 25 years ago now, one of my fellow professors in the religion department I was in was Fred String. Have you ever heard of him?

[00:09:35] Mark: I’m not familiar with him.

[00:09:36] Thomas: Fred was a professor. He was an intellectual educator at the University of Chicago.

He wrote his dissertation there on emptiness. He wrote a book called Emptiness based on his dissertation.

Fred was a very big guy, very strong. Strong in his voice and everything he did. He was just a strong character.

He and I used to play racquetball once a week. We’d be playing and we’d really get tired and we’d get a short rest.

I’d always ask him, “Fred, tell me what emptiness means.” He was considered the world’s expert on an intellectual approach to it.

He would say, “Dependent core origination.” I said, “Fine, Fred. Would you please tell me what that means?” He would try to explain it to me.

This happened numerous times as we were playing racquetball. I noticed that when we played that he couldn’t lose.

If he lost a game, he would just be in a terrible mood. I thought, “That doesn’t look like emptiness to me. He’s not dependently co-originating there. [laughs]

[00:10:47] Mark: Well, now we’re getting into some practical. I’m fond of saying things like when people hear about emptiness or even mindfulness or sacred, whether it’s Buddhism or Christianity, somehow people associate that, I think.

A concern that people can have is maybe a lack of ambition or a lack of energy, or a lack of effectiveness. Now I want to talk a little bit about how– in fact, again, I would make a strong argument– how emptiness or selflessness, timelessness actually support our effectiveness.

Or even going back to your example. Your friend, ambitious, competitive. The desire to win. I’m very ambitious. I love to win. I love to play sports.

I think that the role of emptiness is that we can completely want to win. We can completely, without any resistance, but if we win, great. If we don’t win, great.

Also, I think of when it comes to, I often use the example of, to me, Martin Luther King is a beautiful example of someone who ambitiously, with tremendous energy, skillfully was wanting to end racism.

When he was at his best, there wasn’t a shred of anger or blame. To me, I sometimes think of him as an example of someone who was practicing a kind of selflessness or emptiness with great ambition.

[00:12:44] Thomas: Yes, I did a great completely. He is an excellent example and model.

Where he came from, I don’t know, to be able to have those personal qualities of being able to face impossible odds and keep at it too.

Not seem to be undone by failure or what looked like failure, but be able to keep his equanimity through it all.

Patience and be able to model, for other people, nonviolence. Probably nonviolence could be another facet of an empty thing in his work.

Maybe probably a lot of us would be tempted to just act out of our anger and rage and frustration rather than keep that calm that he had.

[00:13:40] Mark: Yes. This is something that I notice in when I see business leaders, CEOs, C-level people who often are under great strain to perform.

In high school, I was captain of my high school wrestling team. I was very competitive. I wanted to win. I didn’t want to lose. I distinctly remember two very quick memories.

One was a match where I was winning. I happened to look at the clock and saw that there wasn’t much time left.

I clamped down, so run out the clock. I won. I got up and I felt terrible. I thought, “It’s not just about winning. It’s about how I’m performing.”

That other thing that brought me, I think, to practice was, I noticed in some way, even though I don’t think I was very aware. When I was in high school, I was pretty asleep.

I did notice there was something unique about the best wrestlers. The good wrestlers seemed really caught by winning and losing.

The best wrestlers, there was something about them. It was like some sense of emptiness, some sense of– Not that they didn’t care, but they were beyond.

Their Self wasn’t so invested in winning and losing, which seemed to give them a superpower. That was partly what brought me to Zen practice was I want that superpower. I’m completely caught by winning and losing. I wonder what that’s about.

[00:15:21] Thomas: This reminds me of that little book, Zen in the art of Archery, where there’s such a model for being able to do something, like any sport.

Maybe you might say that, from that point of view, sports could be a really good place to practice emptiness. It’s all a model for life in any sport.

To be able to handle that, to be able to bring some emptiness into it, can make you a better player, whatever it is you’re doing.

I used to give that book to football players at the university where I taught. I would tell them, I’d say, “I’ll pass you in this course if you read this book and write me a note assuring me that you had read it. Let me know,”

I thought that’s something that would be a doorway for the ordinary athlete who is caught up in literal competition and not really understanding how it could be done in a more empty way.

[00:16:24] Mark: Beautiful. Do you have a favorite story about emptiness from your book or any place? I like the story that you told about your competitive emptiness expert.

[00:16:37] Thomas: Yes. Well, it’s hard. When I think of that now, I think of all those stories.

There are so many. I’ll tell you one I like. It’s the story of one of those Nasruddin stories where he must be in London.

He gets on a double-decker bus and goes up to the upper level. Then he comes down and the conductor says, “Is there something wrong?” He says, “There’s no driver up there.”

I thought that’s really a pretty good story. I think of emptiness, for many reasons. One is, of course, in my commentary, I talk about how people dream so often of being in cars and buses and trains and things.

Vehicles are a very common dream image. In my therapy practice, I work with dreams always every time, so I’m very familiar with all these different themes that come up.

I feel that it’s a deep thing about who’s driving in a car. Someone tells me they’re in a car in a dream. I say, “Well, where are you in the car?”

That’s really significant. Well, they’re driving, or I’m in the back seat, or I’m in the front seat. All of that makes quite a difference when you think about the image of it and you explore it deeply.

Well, in this story, up there, in the upper level, which is usually where people think of control coming, they pray to God up there.

When you look up and say, “What does he want now?” It’s similar that can we stand being in a place where there’s no driver?

[00:18:09] Mark: This is amazing. You just reminded me about a dream I had this morning.

[00:18:15] Thomas: Oh, my gosh.

[00:18:16] Mark: I’m going to get some free therapy here from you.

[laughter]

No, it’s funny that I have been, I think, preparing for this conversation. It’s been meaningful for me to have this conversation with you.

The dream that I woke up with this morning, literally, I was, I think in a therapist’s office or some teacher or mentor.

I was climbing a rope. I was at the very top of the rope at the ceiling and couldn’t go any further. I was searching for answers. I was searching for clarity for something.

The thought I had right before I woke up from this dream was, no one has it. I have to figure this out by myself.

Or at least not that there is this answer I’m searching for is, doesn’t exist outside of me in some way. I’m feeling the similarities of that dream and what the story you just told about being at the top of the bus.

In a way, I felt like my dream was, I was at the top of the bus and there was no driver.

[00:19:25] Thomas: Yes. There’s nobody there.

[00:19:28] Mark: Nobody there. There’s no answer. There’s no answer there.

[00:19:32] Thomas: That’s right. You don’t have the most substantial means of getting up there either.

A rope is not, it’s pretty basic and slender, so that might be a problem too. You might need a little more support then. Try a ladder. See what that’s like.

[00:19:51] Mark: No, it’s funny. In my youth, I was pretty adept at rope. Rope climbing was something I really enjoyed.

[00:19:58] Thomas: Really?

[00:19:58] Mark: I can remember being scared. That was probably middle school, where we had to do our rope climbing to the top of the gym ceiling. It’s like, “Oh, I could do this.”

[00:20:11] Thomas: Well, you see what you’ve just introduced then is your childhood. There, off we go. We find a lot more richness to that image certainly by discussing that.

[00:20:23] Mark: There’s my childhood, and the therapist, and rope. Maybe a ladder would’ve been better or a bus.

[00:20:34] Thomas: A bus might do it. Yes. Try that. Wonderful dream. I’m tempted to spend the next hour just talking about it but–

[00:20:44] Mark: That would be taking advantage, which will-

[00:20:46] Thomas: It would, yes. On my part anyway.

[00:20:52] Mark: I wonder about other ways how this shows up in your life, Thomas, this practice. Again, I think of it–

It’s interesting too, the relationship of silence. That you’ve titled your book about silence, and yet it is about silence, but it’s about emptiness as maybe the container of silence.

I think emptiness can sometimes be silent, but maybe not too. Emptiness can be loud.

[00:21:22] Thomas: Yes, definitely. I’m a musician. I think I understand that.

The mere practical fact is that trying to look for titles, if you use the word empty, it’s so easily misunderstood.

People would think that’s a terrible thing, to have an empty life. You can’t put a footnote on your title. It’s a problem.

The other way to get a title is to see maybe, in a collection of stories, one or two stories that have a theme that stands out and you make that your title. That’s one.

Another way to look at it, though, the way I look at it is that silence doesn’t have to be about sound. I lived as a Catholic monk for a number of years.

I felt, when I look back on that experience, that the silence we had was more visual than sound. We had spaces that were not cluttered and a place for everything.

The architecture tend to be to support silence so that, in itself, the architecture and furnishings seem to be silent.

That’s another way I look at it, is that there’s a silence that’s not quite so literal about sound, but it’s the environment in which you live.

[00:22:35] Mark: One of the first things that you said when I asked you about emptiness was you pointed to the space in the room.

It’s actually one of the practices that I find I work with leaders who are feeling tight, or crowded, or tense. To experiment by noticing the space. Notice the emptiness, literally.

Often we are so trained to just seeing objects. I think this is what you were saying, that we miss that. I’m in a room that’s primarily empty. Literally.

I’m sitting in the middle of a room. There’s a few objects here and there, but primarily there’s space.

Again, one of the practical ways, I think, to take what seems like this difficult intellectual idea of emptiness and make it how we can live it and practice it, is through a spaciousness. Through experimenting with even just noticing the space.

This is one of the things I think that meditation offers. Is to be aware of the maybe far and few between spaces in between one’s thoughts.

To focus on the spaces instead of the thoughts or the spaces in between in breath and out breath. Like wow, how so simple, but pretty powerful if we can bring our attention to these empty spaces.

[00:24:05] Thomas: One of the ways I do that, it’s quite different from what you’re saying, although I understand that very well myself and having done a lot of that very close practice.

What I think of these days is if I’m going to a hospital or a doctor’s office. I just recently went to have some blood tested.

There’s this television set-up at the ceiling with a tape on it or something wouldn’t be taped today. Probably some feed that’s coming through constantly.

I’m sitting there waiting to be treated or to give the blood. I may have 10 minutes that I’m waiting. I think it has a challenge to be there in an empty room.

Even though the television is there, I really don’t even know how to turn it off. I don’t think it’s probably what I would do. It’s not my way to just go up there and turn it off.

I do see it as a challenge to be empty. I sit there and I ignore the sounds of the television and create my own space.

I find those moments like that are really good for practice because they’re a bit of a challenge. You’ve got time on your hands.

How often in your life do you have time you do something like that? That’s what I do. I look for those moments in ordinary life that allow me time to practice.

[00:25:31] Mark: I ran a greeting card company for years. I’m a professional quote collector. One of my favorites in this realm is, “If you learn to enjoy waiting, you don’t have to wait to enjoy.”

In a way, it’s exactly, I think what you were just saying is, whether you’re waiting in the doctor’s office or in traffic, or–

I like to encourage people to show up early for meetings and appointments and enjoy the space. Literally. Enjoy.

As opposed to the usual rushing to get there on time and the stress of that practice. In a way it’s, again, practical ways to integrate this concept and practice of emptiness in our daily lives.

[00:26:20] Thomas: That’s right.

[00:26:21] Mark: Thomas, anything you’d like to offer or say and about anything as a way of wrapping up?

[00:26:28] Thomas: Well, could I tell one more story that-

[00:26:31] Mark: Please, yes.

[00:26:32] Thomas: – and go from there. I think it’s one of the first stories, if not the first one.

I’m confused because I haven’t even seen the book in print yet. I just have it on my computer.

Anyway, there’s a story, another Nasruddin story where he’s just there in a village. He’s a spiritual teacher in a village in many of his stories.

This student of his comes to him and says, “I’m going to have to go away. I have to leave the town. I won’t be back for a long time, if I ever get back. You have been so important to me as a teacher.”

He says, “I’ve noticed that you have this ring on your finger that I keep looking at when I come to see you. I thought that if you would give me that ring, then when I was away, every time I looked at my hand, I would see your ring and I’d be reminded of you. Wouldn’t that be a good thing?”

Well, this fellow in this character, in all these stories– Nasruddin or Nasruddin, don’t know how to say it– He’s somebody who likes his own possessions. He doesn’t like to get things away.

He says, “I have a better idea.” He said, “Why don’t I keep my ring? Then when you’re away, every time you look at your finger and you see that there’s no ring there, you’ll think of me.”

I thought, what a great story. That’s one of the best stories of emptiness I know. It is so typical for us to need something all the time.

This story tells us that nothingness can give us what we need. Nothing that is there can be more important than anything else, even emotionally.

When a person is not there, if you haven’t seen your friend in a long time. So many things.

Instead of demanding that you get something, that you take the very emptiness, the very thing that’s not present, you take that as your gift, as your way of connecting and of still being and getting what you’re asking of life.

I think that’s a great mystery, and a wonderful one. I like to keep that story in my mind all the time.

[00:28:49] Mark: Yes, no, thank you. I love that story. I’ll share with you the image that came up in my mind as I took in that story was–

I don’t know how this is as related as I’m thinking it is. Every time you look in the mirror, it’s an opportunity to see your entire life.

That you can see yourself being born, all of the selves that you were, and you could also see all of yourself getting older.

That story, to me, is playing with time and space. I think, essentially, that’s the great practical and mysterious teaching of emptiness, is to be able to play. Literally, to play in the realm of time and space is a kind of freedom.

[00:29:41] Thomas: Yes, absolutely. We don’t give ourselves that freedom too much. We demand that it be the way it always is, or that the way the world thinks, the way everybody thinks.

Instead of maybe there’s also a bit of a twist there. The twisting it so that you’re not just thinking the usual way. If only I had something here, I’d remember you.

You could say that was, well, if I have nothing here, I’ll still remember you. [chuckles]

[00:30:09] Mark: Yes. I’ve been enjoying reading the stories in your book from Alan Watts to Suzuki Rishi to, James Hillman, to Nagarjuna is the great first-second-century Indian philosopher, beautiful writings emptiness.

[00:30:28] Thomas: Can I tell you another one before you–?

[00:30:31] Mark: Yes, please.

[00:30:32] Thomas: I can’t stop. See, I just love these. There’s another great story of Nagarjuna where he goes out hunting lions.

He comes back from the hunt, and people say, “Well, how many lions did you shoot”? He says none. “Well, how many did you try to get”? He says none.

“Well, how many did you see”? He says none. “Well, that was not a very good day.” He says, “No, it was a great day because when you’re hunting lions, none is plenty.”

There’s something too about that, that I think about failure as emptiness too. I always say this about the life of the soul, that failure and loss give your life soul as much as anything.

[00:31:19] Mark: Yes.

[00:31:21] Thomas: Yes. He understands that. When you’re hunting lions, none as plenty. I think of that line many times in my daily life.

If you go to a doctor and you come back, and they say, “Well, what did he say”? They didn’t say anything. They’d say, “Well, that’s too bad.” I’d say, “No. Nothing is plenty.”

[00:31:42] Mark: Exactly. We could do a whole nother episode on failure and disappointment, and how it feels, at first blush, like something empty.

Yet there’s so much richness in our failures, even though we don’t want them. There they are, and they enrichen us.

[00:32:05] Thomas: Absolutely. Yes. Mark, I don’t mean to keep us going forever here, but I’ve really enjoyed the conversation so much.

[00:32:13] Mark: Me too. I want to just wish you much success and gratefulness right within the emptiness of your life and our lives. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it.

[00:32:24] Thomas: I wish you a great success. A resounding success with one of your books.

[00:32:31] Mark: [laughs] Thank you.

[00:32:32] Thomas: Thank you.

[music]

[00:32:39] Mark: Listen in each week for interviews, teachings, and guided meditations.

You’ll receive supportive tools for creating more meaningful work and mindfulness practices to develop yourself, to influence your organization, and to help change the world. Thank you for listening.

[00:33:04] [END OF AUDIO]