It’s something I have thought about and discussed with friends often, the Buddhist concept of emptiness. 

What are its virtues?  Why is it to be desired?

In our western culture, emptiness hardly seems something to want.  The opposite, in fact.  We avoid emptiness at all costs.  We want every moment of the day and night to be filled, brimming, overflowing.

We fill our time.  Fill our minds.  Keep productive.  Keep busy.

These days keeping our minds filled is easier than ever.  We have all these electronic gadgets to do it for us.  Some of them can even hold books, a whole library of books, and read them to us.  Wonderful books.  Books we never would have time for otherwise.

Being read to takes me back to the most satisfying of all memories.  A pre-memory, actually, because I have no direct recall of such a thing.  I know only that it must have happened.  Of being very small, cuddled in my mother’s lap, the words of a story wrapping us both. 

My public radio station used to feature a reading every Saturday morning, and every Saturday morning I planned some silent, mechanical task for that time.  Listening, I was always infused with a deep sense of wellbeing.

So when audiobooks became available, I was delighted.  Once there were available on my phone so I could hear them in my car, I filled every jaunt with books. 

Then another leap occurred.  New hearing aids with Bluetooth. A book could speak directly into my ears without impinging on the air around me.  I began keeping my phone at hand, listening to books while I did my morning exercises, while I chopped onions . . . while I walked.  Listening, I could stretch more slowly, more thoughtfully.  The onions got themselves chopped almost without my noticing. 

My daily walks were more vigorous, longer. 

And while I stretched, chopped, walked, book after book flowed through me.

I do mean flowed through me.  Often I would be working on one book—my own, reading a manuscript for a friend, reading a book on my iPad or on paper, and listening to another.  Each held my full attention while it was in front of me, but the moment I put it down it slipped away.

But that wasn’t so bad.  I figured whatever I really needed stayed.

Or at least I hoped it did.

But then the novel I was working on came to a halt and refused to budge.  I had been reasonably happy with it.  I had some early chapters down, and nothing is more satisfying than having words in front of me to polish. I kept circling back to refine my language, to clarify my ideas.

But movement forward?  Any movement forward?  I hadn’t a single idea. I seemed to be standing with my nose pressed against a concrete wall.

No place to go. 

No way to get there. 

If there actually was a there to get to. 

Maybe, I said to myself, less in consolation than accusation, I’ve simply grown too old for this work that has sustained me for so long.  Maybe I’m no longer capable of new ideas!

And that, I can tell you, was a sad thought.

Then one day I started off on my usual walk, a nice long one through dense woods, around a lake, and back through the woods again.  I pulled out my phone and discovered that I had finished my last book. I had to be home at my computer to purchase another. 

Disappointed, I put the phone away and walked on into silence.

Into emptiness.

And . . . can you guess what happened?  I’ll bet you can since I’m writing about it, but I didn’t expect it.

That day, on that silent walk, in that emptiness, an idea for my novel came floating into my mind.  And then I realized.  How could I have forgotten?  That was always the way I got new ideas.  Through my entire career.  Walking.  With an empty mind!

In Buddhist language, emptiness is another word for openness.

Deepak Chopra says “Emptiness is a field of pure potential.”

I’m going to have to remember that.

In a world of too many books and too little time, I will, I’m sure, return to listening.  It’s too good a resource to forego.

But for right now, while my novel discovers its substance, I’m embracing emptiness.

And curiously, emptiness seems to be embracing me.

Openness.

Pure potential.

I like that.