True practice of zazen is to sit as if drinking water when you are thirsty. There you have naturalness. It is quite natural for you to take a nap when you are very sleepy. But to take a nap just because you are lazy, as if it were the privilege of a human being to take a nap, is not naturalness. You think, “My friends, all of them, are napping; why shouldn’t I? …” This is not naturalness. Your mind is entangled with some other idea, someone else’s idea, and you are not independent, not yourself, and not natural….True being comes out of nothingness, moment after moment. Nothingness is always there, and from it everything appears.
– Shunryu Suzuki
At the heart of the beautiful teachings of Zen master Shunryu Suzuki is this lesson on emptiness as naturalness and nothingness. Here, it’s a quality of life: to drink when you’re thirsty and take a nap when you’re tired. Do everything, he says, in that spirit. Don’t fill your mind with annoying inner discussions about being a good person or letting other people see how advanced you are.
He says later that even Zen practice that looks good from the outside can be unnatural because of your interfering thoughts and motives. It takes work, he says, to reach that level of naturalness.
A person who is forever scheming inside their head appears neurotic. You notice that their bodily presence and facial expressions are too complicated. There is too much going on. Too many layers of intentionality. You can’t really trust a person who is unnatural, because you don’t know who the real person is or what they have in mind.
Your thoughts and actions have to arise from nothingness, from an empty place that isn’t full of unnecessary plots and motives. You drink water because you’re thirsty, not because you want to show everyone that you’re an exceptional person thanks to your healthy habits. That is neurotic, not natural. It has none of the emptiness that allows an action to be natural.
You may think that you could never arrive at such an advanced degree of naturalness, to be entirely free of neurosis. But you can move in that direction, and at each step you’ll be freer and more joyous. People will relate to you, perhaps, with less of their own neurotic habits. Your interactions won’t be perfect, but they will be cleaner. The flow between you and someone else will be easier.
Emptiness in the social world
When your actions and presence arise out of nothingness, when they’re empty, both you and others know who you are. They’re free to relate to you in their own way without being manipulated into a certain kind of response. Imagine how this kind of naturalness could help a marriage or other intimate relationship. It could be the panacea for marital discord and maybe even world conflicts.
Picture the empty marriage, in the sense we’re taking the word empty. It would be free of paranoid thoughts, such as assuming that the other person is doing bad things to you and trying to make life difficult. Your expectations would be lighter, less demanding and more flexible.
Modern life is dangerously lacking in emptiness and naturalness. Politicians have too little of it, and financial managers are often coming up with schemes for pilfering your precious dollars.
Imagine emptiness in advertising. You could trust it to tell you exactly what is good about a product and not to trick you into paying for something that you don’t need or that doesn’t work. Modern life is dangerously lacking in emptiness and naturalness. Politicians have too little of it, and financial managers are often coming up with schemes for pilfering your precious dollars—the very opposite of emptiness.
In spite of the neurotic field all around us, you can aim for emptiness in daily life. You could talk to a friend with all the naturalness of taking a drink of water when you’re thirsty. You’ll realize what is going on in you and simply show it, without the slightest dissembling or manipulation. Maybe you’ll have images of a flute player or an angel with a graceful viol playing their music silently, reminding you to be quiet, inwardly and outwardly, as you go about your life.
Living with naturalness is a little different from living naturally. Living naturally, you might want to eat organic foods, spend time in nature, try to avoid the complexities of modern life, live off the grid and try not to spoil nature with pollution and excessive development. Living with naturalness in Suzuki’s definition, you don’t let your bothersome selfish motives get in the way, or your fears and anxieties. You deal with them by simply being present to what you’re doing and clearing your mind of manipulating and self-conscious thoughts. It can be done.
One of the best ways I know to learn this naturalness is in ordinary conversations with people. If someone asks you, “How are you doing?” you don’t have thoughts of trying to impress or get sympathy or control the outcome or establish a good image of yourself. You let these common interferences slide away, and you speak simply and directly. You may also want to avoid the usual clichés that say nothing.
“I’m doing well, except that I’m tired from working too much lately and I’m sad about the state of the world.” Notice the simple adjectives, tired and sad, that clearly express your emotions. There is nothing here to complicate them or make them confusing. You’re not manipulating your friend, trying to be seen in the way you would like to be seen. You simply express who you are at the moment.
Where is the emptiness here? In the missing manipulations and unnecessary complexities. Your friend can trust what you say because of what is missing from your words: all the guile and control that is so common in our interactions. Your friend can actually sense your emptiness, and it’s refreshing and trustworthy.
“I’m mad as hell”
I had a friend, James Hillman, who I thought was good, at least with me, at expressing himself naturally. One day I asked him the usual simple question: “How are you doing today, Jim?”
“I’m as mad as hell,” he said. “Why don’t people take care of animals instead of treating them like beasts?” Quite clear.
Frequently, his answer to the question was: “I’m depressed. It takes so much work to get a book out, mine or someone else’s.” He was a publisher as well as a writer. I never heard him say, “I’m fine. How are you?”
But this is just a start. From here you let your breath flow directly and easily. You don’t hold back and make things complicated. Your sentences aren’t felt on many levels. Only one. You say what you feel and what you mean. The rest is empty.
Thomas Moore is the author of The Eloquence of Silence and 24 other books about bringing soul to our personal lives and culture, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Care of the Soul. He has been a Catholic monk and university professor and is also a psychotherapist influenced mainly by C. G. Jung and James Hillman. His work brings together spirituality, mythology, depth psychology and the arts, emphasizing the importance of images and imagination. For more information visit www.thomasmooresoul.com.
Excerpted from the book The Eloquence of Silence: Surprising Wisdom in Tales of Emptiness ©2023 by Thomas Moore. Printed with permission from New World Library—www.newworldlibrary.com.
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