Pain And Emptiness

Response to someone who wants to avoid pain by being empty.

The earth is one, but every speck of earth has its own characteristics that make sense for that very space. Your body is one, yet you have eyes, ears, nose, tongue. They all have their sense-objects, and this all generates consciousness of them. Part of our Zen training is to see this unifying connection you describe. The other part is to develop wisdom about how it all works. Not making distinctions involves seeing things as they are. Seeing things as they are allows us to treat everything as itself. This includes how your own life unfolds and what you encounter in the unfolding. If things didn't affect you, you'd never eat or sleep, and you wouldn't have the sensibility of how to put one foot in front of the other. You want to avoid pain by being empty. This only creates the pain of wanting to be empty but not being able to. Please don't try to force yourself to look like your idea of emptiness. Otherwise, how will you learn?