The Woodcutters Gate - A Meditation on Emptiness

Exhaustion and derision were the unlikely trail guides that took the woodcutter home.

They climaxed and flummoxed the night before,  as a round table of ale-quaffing  friends found the ten ox herding pictures fireside and asked the obvious questions.

What were they?  And once that was understood - why bother?

And for once,  the woodcutter didn't answer directly.

There was no need to agree or disagree with them.  To point out the Buddha's understanding of and prescription for suffering.


There was no hierarchy - that his understanding was better or worse than theirs.

There was just a web he caught out of the corner of his eye,  extending from his cabin's door.

Web,  he realized,  as he stepped out the door and began to fall, was too strong a word.  The problem,  in fact,  was that it was a word,  and gave him nothing to stand on.

The 'e' of the web held his weight for a moment,  then dissolved into him.  He looked down as he fell, at the definition of 'web' - which is all that web was;  an abstraction,  a concept defined by other words,  and landed softly on it: 

More words - "A network of fine threads"

He tried to spread eagle and hold onto any of them - the adjectives,  the nouns, the preposition,  but the moment he did,  more dissolution and falling

Into the next definition and dissolution

and the next

and the next,

Until he just let go.

//
Emptiness

Words were ghosts,  which co-arose with other words.  Pointers to pointers to pointers to 


Emptiness

And with that, freedom.
//

Ironically,  he returned to his woodcutting as the Buddha did to the marketplace 2500 years ago,  but in simple,  joyous, vibrant relationship to everything that co-arose with him.

Subject and object?  Two concepts that needed each other for survival.  And if they co-arose,  how could they be said to exist in and of themselves?

Emptiness.

Thoughts, perceptions,  sensations,  his trinity diving board that led to contemplation of I am,  simply words and concepts that arose, inextricably linked with everything else.

Emptiness.


And finally,  emptiness,  eating its own tale,  sparkling like a gem in Indra's net,  in a galaxy without properties,  before words,  concepts,  images,  or Being.