An Architect I love once said that the most important thing an architect designs is not the building, but the space the building contains. Like a boat, it’s the space that matters. This was a new and radical concept to me: The emptiness is more important than all the talent and effort poured into creating the form around it. And yet, the skill with which the form is created imbues the space with a certain quality.
I hadn’t thought of this for years when it recently dropped in again and I saw a corollary in Practice: Practice provides the structure, the building if you will, that creates a space for transformation. And as I continued to practice within the structure of this Practice, I suddenly found myself—as we often do—in a new place along the path where I saw in a completely different way one of the core pillars of our Practice: It’s not what, it’s how.
What a glorious experience! It’s one of the many things I love best about Practice. I think I “understand” something, “know” what it is referring to, and then suddenly from the new place I stand it seems completely new and fresh. I see things I have never seen before. And yet, if I tried to explain it, it would fall far short of the insight. As if in trying to translate emptiness into form it loses some (or all) of its luster.
In the Meditation Hall at the Monastery, there was a beige carpet. In attempting to capture this experience of seeing the “same old thing” in a completely different way, we would exclaim with great excitement as if no one knew, “The carpet is beige!” It’s kind of like that. Anything I could say about “It’s not what, it’s how” could be responded to like the carpet color. “Well, of course. Yes. That’s obvious.” But it’s not obvious! It’s the PLACE from which we are seeing that brings alive whatever we are seeing. The SPACE we occupy provides us with a new perspective that changes EVERYTHING.
Isn’t it great that we get to have that experience again and yet again as we walk this path together?
I just love Practice.
Gasshō,
Ann