Nov062008
Emptiness, Fullness
Filed under buddhist by Kim at 6:39 pm on Nov 06 2008
This is one of those pleasures that you can only get through hard work: the spent pen. Even if you have simply been doodling away abstractly that is still, to my mind, a form of creative work. Since nowadays many of us don’t write all that much, seeing the ink run out can be a rare pleasure as well.
The emptiness of this particular pen means the fullness of many pages of notes for work, filled with the minutiae of meetings and the rememberings of important data bits recorded on many legal pads. (It actually pains me to toss the cardboard backing of a used-up legal pad, such is the combination of my compulsion about keeping things added with my twinge of joy at finishing something up.) The blue and red pens from this pack are also on their last legs, one being my A&P lecture pen and the other being my lab pen.
People frequently use ’emptiness’ to describe how they feel when they are sad or feeling alienated. I prefer, when I think of the word emptiness, to think of potential. Or I could think of it as the state after expelling something, that expelling being a loss of something untoward, or a giving of something helpful.
I should note here that I don’t really want to encourage using disposable pens. Creating more plastic trash to clog up the pacific ocean is not my favorite thing to do. Realistically, however, I am guessing virtually none of you use a pen which is entirely reusable. Not to mention fountain pens and ink are not cheap.
1 rdonoghueon 06 Nov 2008 at 7:10 pm
The word that GTD uses (which it in turn takes from zen & Karate) for this good emptiness is “mind like water”. It is still, and when something comes to strike it, it simply absorbs the blow and returns to the undisturbed state.
-Rob D.
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Kim Reply:
November 7th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
I should probably get around to actually reading that book someday.
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