Quotes About Emptiness

Pero cómo renunciar a lo que hemos deseado tanto aunque se quede sólo un día y desaparezca, haciendo el vacío más vacío, y las noches oscuras más oscuras y las noches lluviosas más húmedas. Quitarnos esto sería como quitarnos la comida de la boca.

Nothing, nothing of it left to hate--not an empty brass gun shell, or a twisted hemp, or a tree, or even a hill of it to hate.

Cuando en la oscuridad olvidamos lo cerca que estamos del vacío –decía mi abuelo–, algún día se presentará y se apoderará de nosotros, porque habremos olvidado lo terrible y lo real que puede ser.

Fata, în focul armei, în c?ldur?, sub È™oc, se îndoi ca o eÈ™arf? moale, se topi ca o figurin? de cleÈ™tar. În urma ei, gheaÈ›a, fulgii de z?pad?, fumul se risipir? în vânt. Locul de la cârm? r?mase gol.

How do you get so empty? he wondered. Who takes it out of you? And that awful flower the other day, the dandelion! It had summed up everything, hadn't it? What a shame! You're not in love with anyone! And why not?

And this disease was called The Loneliness, because when you saw your home town dwindle to the size of your fist and then lemon-size and then pin-size and vanish in the fire-wake, you felt you had never been born, there was no town, you were nowhere, with space all around, nothing familiar, only other strange men.

She made empty rooms roar with accusation and shake down a fine dust of guilt that was sucked in their nostrils as they plunged about.

the people who ate shadows for breakfast and steam for lunch and vapors for dinner

We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing.

But how are we to give up the very thing we've wanted, no matter if it stays only a day and is gone, making the emptiness emptier, the dark nights darker, the rainy nights wetter? You might as well force the food from our mouths as take this one from us.

it was suddenly so very wrong that he had begun to cry, not at death but at the thought of not crying at death, a silly empty man near a silly empty woman, while the hungry snake made her still more empty.

How do you get so empty? Who takes it out of you?

I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude - and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.

I saw him open his mouth wide. . . as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him.

Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can't say. I think the knowledge came to him at last--only at the very last. But the wilderness found him out early, and had taken vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude--and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core

I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.

The panes streamed with rain, and the short street he looked down into lay wet and empty, as if swept clear suddenly by a great flood. It was a very trying day, choked in raw fog to begin with, and now drowned in cold rain. The flickering, blurred flames of gas-lamps seemed to be dissolving in a watery atmosphere. And the lofty pretensions of a mankind oppressed by the miserable indignities of the weather appeared as a colossal and hopeless vanity deserving of scorn, wonder, and compassion.

T]he tremendous fact of our isolation, of the loneliness impenetrable and transparent, elusive and everlasting; of the indestructible loneliness that surrounds, envelops, clothes every human soul from the cradle to the grave, and, perhaps, beyond.

Of course there are men here and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner hour with a cigar; easy, pleasant, empty, perhaps enlivened by some fable of strife to be forgotten before the end is told—before the end is told—even if there happens to be any end to it.

And to a place I come where nothing shines.

Another aspect of wrong view that we will discuss in much greater detail in later chapters is the deeply conditioned sense of "I," of self. On the relative level, of course, we move and speak and act as individuals, as selves. Yet on a deeper level, and with close attention, we can see through this appearance and experience the place of nonseparation from others and from the world. This is the realization of selflessness.

together and disappear when the conditions change. None of them

The expression of emptiness is love, because emptiness means "emptiness of self." When there is no self, there is no other. That duality is created by the idea of self, of I, of ego. When there's no self, there is a unity, a communion. And without the thought of "I'm loving someone," love becomes the natural expression of that oneness.

In meditation, we free ourselves from attachment to that conceptualization and experience the fundamental unity of the elements which comprise our being.