The Tao of Abundance

 

 

"That which is deflated must once have been inflated," says Laot'zu. How different are fullness and emptiness, really?

See how gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow, simply cancel each other out, bringing us back to zero. "Zero is where the fun starts," writes Hafiz. "There's too much counting everywhere else."

When gain is followed by loss and life brings me back to zero, I rest there. Loss seems negative only in contrast, in comparison. But loss can offer the quality of sunya, blessed emptiness. The New Testament calls it kinosis, self-emptying. My emptying becomes the occasion for God's fullness. Emptiness is the space of presence. This space is true wealth.

I see the same lesson on a grander scale in astrophysics. Steven Hawking writes, In the case of the whole universe, one can show that negative gravitational energy exactly cancels the positive energy of matter. So the total energy of the universe is zero.

Zero is the source of creation. And creativity. Quantum physics shows that every particle of matter is an excitation of zero, a wave of the vacuum. So if I want to act like God, I let my actions arise from nothing.

If I act from desire for gain, or from fear of loss, either way my action becomes weaker. Truly creative action has no motive at all. It arises from zero, a state of Presence, free from the fever of desire.

To my limited intellect, such action appears random, whimsical, merely playful. Yet God only creates through play. In every wave of divine play, or lila, dances the whole ocean of zero.

Why then struggle to tally a profit on this balance sheet of gain and loss, pleasure and pain? The bottom line is always zero. Ignorance is my quest for more and more, but enlightenment is a zero-sum game.

Sukha-duhke same kritva, labha-labhau jaya-jayau, says the Bhagavad Gita (2:38). Act in dispassion, letting sweetness and sorrow (sukha-dukha), profit and loss (labha-labhau), victory and defeat (jaya-jayau) be the same to you.

Then, is there no eternal reward? Yes, certainly. But I look for it in the wrong place: Wall Street, fleeting sense pleasure, the fantasy realm called the future. True reward is nearer! Abundance is already here, before I even begin the search, more inward than the eye who looks for it. Grace deposits the heavenly reward in my heart before I even take this breath. For heaven is just the formless space of now, wherever I am.  And every now is the fullness of zero, regardless of the content arising and dissolving in that boundless space.

When I open my clenched fist, I hold the whole universe in my palm, light as a feather. Have I acquired anything, or let it all go?

Brilliant Nissan Ad: 'The Value of Zero'