Empty Your Cup

Hi,

Hi everyone who's tuning into this.

I'm Jim Gordon and what I want to do here is tell you a story and it's a story that my faculty insist that I tell at the beginning of every training.

That's a story I've been telling for many,

Many years that I read maybe 40,

50 years ago originally.

It's a Zen story and it's a story about the attitude that I hope I can cultivate for myself.

The attitude I encourage in all of us as we live in and meet the world around us and live in and deal with what's coming up inside us.

It's a story about emptying our cup.

So without any further ado,

Let me tell you the story and it's originally,

As they tell me,

It's originally a Japanese Zen story,

But somehow I've gotten into telling it in a way that brings us further back into time,

Back into northern India,

Perhaps a thousand years ago,

Which in fact may well be where it came from in the first place.

So here's the story and it's a story about a professor and this professor was a professor at a university in northern India a thousand years ago,

Maybe 1200 years ago,

A time when Europeans had not even dreamed of having a university,

But there were already universities in northern India.

And this professor was like professors in many places.

He thought very highly of himself and he was a professor of philosophy and he regarded himself and was regarded by many,

Many,

Many others as the wisest man in the world.

So this professor is lecturing every semester to thousands of students who would crowd around him and he would hold forth and tell stories and talk about different aspects of philosophy and cosmology and religion and how all that was so important and he felt very secure in being the wisest man in the world and encouraged his students to think of him that way.

Well as the story goes,

One day the professor began to hear some rumblings from the back of the classroom.

Some students were wondering,

Is professor really the wisest man in the world or is there someone else and they were getting little rumors about somebody named Lin Shu in China who was reported to be the wisest man in the world,

Not only man,

The wisest person in the world.

The professor heard these rumblings and rumors and totally confused them.

Impossible,

He said,

Impossible that this could be so,

That there could be another who was wiser than me.

As time went on the rumblings got louder and louder.

More of the students were talking about this Lin Shu and how he was so wise and now the professor went from disbelief to anger.

No,

This isn't possible.

How could they be saying this?

What's the matter with these students?

And yet the rumors kept mounting.

More and more students were talking about Lin Shu and how he was the wisest person in all the world.

And finally the professor was enraged and he said this is impossible and I am going to prove it's impossible and I am going to go see this Lin Shu and I am going to debate with him and I am going to show him once and for all who is the wisest person in the world and never more will my students be comparing me to anybody else.

So when the summer came and it was possible to go across the hills,

The Himalayas,

Which are the hugest hills in the world,

The professor made his way and it was a long journey and it was a journey that took weeks and weeks to go from the north of India over the Himalayas,

Through the passes,

Over into China and to get to the monastery,

To get to the mountain where Lin Shu had his monastery.

And his monastery was at the top of one of these mountains and if some of you have seen Chinese screens,

The painted screens,

You may have seen some of these mountains.

They're often depicted near the Yangtze River and they come right up to a point and this particular mountain looked that way.

So when Lin Shu got there in his ox cart at the base of the mountain after weeks and weeks of hard journeying,

He then had to make the next final lap,

The final the final miles of his journey going uphill up one of these mountains.

Finally,

Finally he gets to the door of the monastery and by this time he's exhausted,

He's angry,

He's fed up,

He's so ready to debate Lin Shu and he bangs on the monastery door and the little monk answers the door and the monk says,

I am professor so-and-so.

I have heard rumors that Lin Shu thinks he's the wisest person in the world and I am here to show him that he's not.

I'm here to debate with him,

A fair debate so I can show him I'm the wisest in the world.

The monk says,

Welcome professor,

Come in please come in and professor says,

No I appreciate your welcome but I want to see Lin Shu,

I'm here to see him,

I'm here to see him now,

I've traveled for weeks on this journey.

The monk says,

Lin Shu is busy,

Professor you're going to have to wait.

Professor says,

The monk says,

Professor you're most welcome,

Let me make you at home but you're going to have to wait.

This goes on for three days and professor is getting more and more angry,

Just more and more,

Thinking to himself,

How could he keep me waiting,

I am professor so-and-so,

I've come all this way to see.

He's apoplectic,

Ready to explode.

Finally after three days and three is the number that usually happens in these stories,

After three days the monk says,

Lin Shu will be very pleased to meet with you professor.

The professor says,

It is about time and he,

The monk opens the door to where Lin Shu is sitting,

Professor strides in and he says,

Lin Shu I am professor so-and-so,

I am here to debate you,

I have heard these rumors about you but I am the wisest person in the world.

Lin Shu says,

Oh professor you are most welcome,

I am so happy to see you,

Please sit down and let me make you a cup of tea.

Now professor knows that in China making a cup of tea is not the way people ordinarily make a cup of tea,

It is a ceremony that goes on at great length and it's quite an extravagant ceremony with preparing the fire and getting the wood just right and lighting the fire and boiling the water and making sure just the right teas are there and then all the stirrup.

So the professor says,

No you don't understand,

I need to debate with you now,

I've come all,

Please professor,

Just relax,

Let me make you a cup of tea and then I'll be very happy to debate with you.

So Lin Shu goes about making the cup of tea and he prepares the fire very carefully,

Very elegantly,

Sets the kindling out and the wood for the fire and has wonderful fresh spring water that he's boiling in this pot and boiling very slowly and very beautifully and then there's another pot,

A teapot with this wonderful collection of aromatic herbs with which he's making the tea and takes the water off and puts the water in the pot and lets the water and the leaves mesh and the leaves are steeping in the water and little by little the tea is coming into the water and the water is taking on a new color and a new fragrance and the professor is getting more and more impatient and angrier and angrier.

Finally Lin Shu is ready and he begins to pour the tea from the teapot into a cup slowly and gracefully and the tea rises in the cup little by little,

Professor's getting angrier and angrier,

More and more impatient because Lin Shu is doing this so slowly and elegantly.

The tea is rising in the cup,

It rises to the lip of the cup and begins to drip over the lip of the cup onto the side of the cup,

The outside of the cup onto the table.

Lin Shu continues to pour slowly,

Elegantly pouring the tea.

The tea is now puddling on the table and beginning to drip from the table onto the floor and the professor can contain himself no longer.

He says,

You idiot,

Don't you see that cup is full and you're still pouring,

Can't you see it's full?

And Lin Shu looks at him and says,

And this is how it is with your mind,

Professor.

It is so full that nothing new can come in.

And the story goes that at that moment something penetrated,

Something hit the professor where he lived and he bowed his head and he said,

You are right.

And as the story goes,

He became Lin Shu's student.

And I tell that story at the beginning of all of our Center for Mind-Body Medicine trainings in mind-body medicine and my faculty insists I tell that story because the work that we're teaching,

The techniques of self-awareness and self-care and the ways we're teaching people to use these techniques require us to empty our cup,

To be open to new possibilities,

To let go of outworn perceptions and ways of thinking and being,

To get over ourselves,

To get over the idea that we know so much,

Considering ourselves so wise,

So knowledgeable,

Because there is in all of us that professor,

That being who thinks I am so wise,

I know what I'm doing,

My ability to think,

I know what I'm doing,

My opinion is correct about this,

That or the other thing.

So this story is an invitation,

An invitation to all of you and an ongoing invitation to me to keep emptying my cup,

To be open to what may be new in my world,

To what I may see and feel and experience every day.

And likewise,

It's an invitation to all of you as you take part in the course in loneliness and freedom from loneliness that I'm teaching to empty your cup continually,

To be open to the possibilities,

To be open to learning new approaches,

New techniques,

New ways of being.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you for being willing to consider emptying your cup.

And I look forward to being with you as we all together continue to empty our cups and to be open to learning what we need to help and heal ourselves,

To overcome loneliness,

To find freedom from the fear of loneliness,

From the experience of loneliness,

And to be more fully and happily ourselves.