Eleven

"Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;
It is the centre hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes that make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there." Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching.

It is an interesting thought that the space or lack of matter makes a thing useful. When I re-read Eleven from the Tao Te Ching, it put me in mind of Celtic thought. Oh what a surprise, most things that provoke thought in me lead me at some point to Celtic thinking.

Lao Tsu opens with that visual of a spoked wheel, and the Celtic notion of time is not linear but circular. The wheel is most certainly time, perhaps reality, with the spokes the framework that holds our lives together, but the space in between and the hole at the centre of the hub the unfilled moments that we get to fill up, to define our own existence. The wheel keeps turning and it seems as though as the wheel turns it empties and we get more space to fill, ever able to correct our mistakes.... or repeat them. The space between seconds, the secret, private space that we fill with our deepest thoughts; the air between the raindrops - could we experience that emptiness by stopping time with our minds? The flick, flick, flick of the movie frames slowed down to almost nothing so that we can look at each frame seperately and wonder.

The empty vessel, isn't it this that makes most sound? Maybe, if we see ourselves as the empty vessels, rather than the time that is given to us. The new page to be filled, the new day to contemplate. The stretch of shore before us. That which we can fill with wine or water or a new concoction of herbs, fruits and spices. What is our life? What shall we fill that vessel with?

The windows and doors in a house make it livable, let in light, allow us to experience the world outside from the safety of our comfort zone. We can see out and the world can come in.

The moon waxes and wanes, the earth circles, albeit somewhat eliptically, the sun. And we humans act to make sense of our world, but inside our own heads the only reality we have plays out. Inside our heads we construct notions of other people, places, truth, belief. Do people resemble our perceptions of them? Are their perceptions of self the same as ours of them?

Does the cycle stop when we do ? Is the world simply a multi-dimensional creation of our imagining ?

If you fill a vessel with stones you can then fill the gaps in the stones with sand and then the air in the sand with water. The vessel can hold so much more than we realise.
And so can our minds.

"Breathe through the heats of our desire Thy coolness and Thy balm,
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire, speak through the earthquake, wind and fire,
Oh still, small voice of calm, oh still, small voice of calm." Dunno who wrote that, we used to sing it at school in assembly. It's a reminder to stop the world and just listen, to the small voice of calm, to the calm, to the space, to the emptiness.