Is Life Becoming More Hollow?

Is life these days becoming more hollow?

That's what's been rattling around in my head,

Because our practice is all about this question of hollowness.

Many of us are looking for a way to live life as fully as possible,

Wanting to change how we feel about life,

And more than anything,

Wanting to feel as alive as we can.

Whether we think of it as hollowness or deadness or zoning out,

Many people experience life as less vivid than they'd like.

In my own life,

I find myself paying attention to things that seem like they mean something,

But really don't mean anything at all.

My watch tracks my steps.

It tracks my calories.

It tells me if I've slept well or badly.

It gives me so much data about myself.

There are days when I don't burn the number of calories that it wants me to,

Or I don't take the number of steps that I'm supposed to,

And I can literally feel my mood change.

I feel bad if I don't meet my watch's goals for me.

Then I can catch myself and say,

But wait,

Never mind what my watch says,

How do I feel?

Regardless of what my watch tells me,

What's my actual experience?

Do I feel like I've been as physically active as I'd like to be today?

Do I feel like I've slept enough last night or am I drowsy today?

The same thing happens with social media.

We know that having friends on Facebook or Instagram is not the same as having friends in the real world.

So we joke about it.

People say,

Oh,

I have thousands of friends,

Followers,

Connections,

But many people get false reassurance from having a lot of online connections,

Even as they lead lonely and isolated lives.

What does it mean when something we post online gets views?

Is the world paying attention to me?

How much false comfort do we take from the likes that we get?

AI is raising these questions in new ways.

AI can write our essays much faster,

And in many cases,

Better than we can.

What if this AI bot is a better writer than I am?

Is it worth writing anything at all anymore by myself?

This question is particularly urgent for young people who can ask AI to do their schoolwork for them.

On the one hand,

It's a wonderful gift.

On the other hand,

We know that writing is one way to learn to think,

To put ideas together.

Will young people learn those thinking skills that we hone with each essay we agonized over in high school?

Somehow,

All this adds up to feeling hollow.

Life feels less real.

But this isn't new.

It may seem that the digital revolution is responsible for this sense of hollowness,

But the problem is as old as time.

All of this can give life a feeling of artificiality,

Of not being real.

Perhaps you notice this in your own life.

You find yourself worrying about measuring up to some standard of wealth or fame or fitness.

But when you stop and think about it,

You say,

Wait a minute,

There's really nothing to that.

Again,

This is not new.

For centuries,

Zen teachers have warned us about our tendency to hollow out the essence of life.

One way that Zen teaches this is using koans,

These short stories or fragments of text that point to important truths about existence.

When I first studied these koans,

They made no sense to me until they did.

And now,

As I look at life in our modern era,

They make even more sense.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

There's a short koan where a Zen monk asks his teacher,

What is Buddha?

And the teacher replies,

Three pounds of flax.

I remember hearing this little story and scratching my head,

Having no idea what this was about.

What could three pounds of flax possibly have to do with the enlightenment that the Buddha stands for?

The enlightenment that we're all hoping to find when we meditate.

The story just seemed like one of those inscrutable Zen things.

In another koan,

A student asks,

Master,

What is Buddha?

Meaning,

What's the essence of enlightenment?

And the teacher answered,

A dried shit stick,

Which is the ancient Chinese way of saying used toilet paper.

Really?

This is the answer to the koan?

The wisdom we're all looking for is found in used toilet paper?

We scratch our heads.

What is this?

What are they talking about here?

They're talking about paying attention to reality,

To what we often refer to as just this,

Just this moment,

Just this traffic noise outside my window,

Just this feel of the chair underneath me.

Over and over again,

Zen teachers keep telling us to come back to noticing just this.

Asking us to step outside of our endless thought loops and our endless mental chatter,

To look beyond all the thoughts we have about the world,

To look beyond the number of steps my watch tells me I've taken today,

To just this,

The feel of the air on my skin,

The new wrinkle on my partner's forehead,

The feel of my breath going in and out.

Because what the ancient teachers keep pointing to is the habit of our minds to mistake the map for the terrain,

To mistake the symbolic version of the world that our minds create for the essence of life.

The difference between the map and the terrain is most vivid when we're driving along a beautiful country road.

I could be driving through a forest,

Through mountains and valleys,

And my GPS gives me a map.

The map on my screen looks nothing like these magnificent formations,

The trees,

The clouds,

The deep green leaves.

And yet,

What the teaching reminds us of is that we are constantly giving most of our attention to the maps that we make,

Instead of seeing,

Tasting,

Smelling,

Experiencing the magnificence of real life.

But we can stop in any moment and choose to turn toward the real world,

Toward just what's here,

Right now.

We can make sure we're experiencing being alive and not just thinking about being alive.

In Zen language,

We can find out whether the water is warm or cold,

And we can only do that by tasting the water.

No amount of thinking can tell you that.

You have to experience it.

Zen emphasizes experience.

Thoughts are not the enemy.

In fact,

Thoughts are wonderful tools.

But we can easily fall into the trap of being lost in thought,

Being on autopilot,

At the expense of experiencing the richness of life.

Our minds are built to see thought as the whole of reality,

To construct these thought maps of the world,

And to lose touch with the terrain,

To lose touch with what it actually feels like,

To sit in the grass,

To listen to the sound of a stream,

To really listen to the traffic outside of the window.

The way to feel more alive is to notice when we're lost in thought and out of touch with what's right here,

Right now,

To notice the ways that we let thinking rob us of the richness of experience.

Stopping to smell the flowers,

To notice the sky,

To feel the breeze,

Provides an antidote to our tendency to create a life of hollowness through the thinking mind.

By being present and just letting my words flow over you,

Right now,

You are experiencing just this.