This week we had the distinct privilege of hosting Dharma Teacher Cara Lai to give her reflections on the topic of Emptiness.
This talk explored emptiness as the heart of the Buddha’s teaching and a direct path to freedom. Rather than something bleak or nihilistic, emptiness is revealed through the three marks of existence—impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and not-self—as the living truth that nothing is fixed, solid, or separate.
When we look closely, the fleeting nature of experience makes life more precious, not less; the things we crave never fully satisfy because they are unstable; and even our deepest suffering is not personal but part of the shared human condition.
Through meditation, illness, love, and even motherhood, emptiness becomes something intimate and liberating: a release from rigid identity and a falling into connection with everything. Far from draining life of meaning, emptiness opens us to awe, tenderness, and fierce presence.
In this way, emptiness is not a void but a fullness beyond clinging—an experience that feels less like nothingness and more like love.
Poem: The Way It Is by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: https://www.ayearofbeinghere.com/2015/06/rosemerry-wahtola-trommer-way-it-is.html
If you wish, you may express your gratitude through the Dana page on Cara’s website: https://www.caralai.org/give.html
