Less is More

Trying to make sense of the concept of “zeroless”, two phrases come to mind: “Less is More,” and “Being Nobody Going Nowhere” (the title of a Buddhist book.)  Distance, separation, and substance, viewed as intrinsic to space, continue to operate in my daily experience.  In our TSK studies we have been given many explanations, such as the need of the self to position itself at the center, to account for these persistent projections.  I wonder if the physiology of our vision also plays a role: a two-dimensional image on the surface of our eyeballs gets translated into a three-dimensional image in our minds.  It feels like this provides an enlargement and a fuller reality into which we can step forth.  Yet the information on which this third dimension is based was all preserved on the plane surface or our eyeballs.   We’ve merely pulled the image out, like one of those pop-up books, in order to create an area for the substance and things in which we are interested.  Isn’t it strange that a move that feels like an expansion ends up imprisoning us in a crowded world of  barriers and limitation?  Years ago, walking down Bright Angel Trail and looking out across the vast bowl of the Grand Canyon, I had a feeling of being suspended in a great openness in which distance and movement had no meaning.    Yet that space felt alive and present and full.  –Michael