We seem to live in a hunker-down era where post-modern threats pose those pesky existential risks we keep hearing about. War, terrorism, economic collapse, AI and the next contagion all capture our attention and media headlines. We seek refuge in consumerism, social media scrolling, substance use and abuse, and betting markets. Our solutions become our latest problems. As we hunker, the space around us constricts, squeezing our troubles into an unbearable immediacy.
Stillness might seem to be an inadequate means to quell these ills, but here we propose to give it a try anyway. So sit still for a moment and open up!
And then hold the openness. Hold the vastness of inner and outer space that goes by many names: emptiness, the unmanifest, sunyata, the void. Perhaps such a big task should start small, in the palms of our hands. Sitting, the palms are held up and open resting just above the knees. Or in the dhyana mudra near the belly button: right hand upon the left (or the other way around) with thumbs lightly touching. Now mind-stretch… in ten directions!
Somehow we hold that vastness for a moment. And in that moment we allow the grandest natural images we know to come before us, within us: the forests, oceans, canyons; rising and setting suns; the starry night. Breathing in and breathing out. Again and again. Sometimes, those natural images seem to give way to something far vaster: an inkling of the interdependence of it all and emptiness. We hold it ever so gently and rest in the space between breaths, and the space between thoughts.
And then a tiny, curious notion: is this holding space, or is this being held by space? There is delight in the confusion, holding or held? We smile. Some may notice the two becoming one, as we hold and are held till even these dissolve …into that most unhunkered and holy emptiness.
