This Sunday, we continued our exploration of emptiness. Emptiness enables the wise heart to respond with fearlessness: without always protecting our own position, we can become deep listeners. Our being can be expansive and inclusive. Jeff shared a talk by Kittisaro “There Are No Footprints In The Sky” from a retreat at Spirit Rock in 2021. The talk touched upon a topic familiar from last week (contemplation of form & emptiness), and then went on to explore how, in the non-dual nature of the reality that Emptiness reveals, everything is sacred.
You can listen to the talk here:
https://dharmaseed.org/talks/68275/
The title of the talk, “There Are No Footprints In The Sky”, references part of the Dhammapada which you can read a discussion of here.
During the discussion, a quote by Democritus was shared:
[Democritus says:] By convention sweet is sweet, by convention bitter is bitter, by convention hot is hot, by convention cold is cold, by convention color is color. But in reality there are atoms and the void. That is, the objects of sense are supposed to be real and it is customary to regard them as such, but in truth they are not. Only the atoms and the void are real.
Books mentioned during the discussion:
Burlington Buddhist Sangha 