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Pilgrims of Emptiness

Bodhidharma sat for nine years facing a wall. People would come to him and ask questions but he would not answer. And people would say to him, "Why do you go on looking at the wall?" And he would say, "I am waiting for the right man to come. When he comes I will turn and look at him."

Then came Hui Koju. It was a very cold morning and snow was falling. He stood there in the falling snow and the snow gathered all around his body and he was freezing.

One day passed and then he said to Bodhidharma that now he would make his offering. He cut off one of his hands with his sword, gave it to Bodhidharma and said, "Now turn towards me otherwise I will cut off my head." Bodhidharma turned immediately and said, "Wait! There is no need to go that far. So you have come. I was waiting for you for nine years. I have a message to deliver to you. Once the message is delivered I will disappear. Hui Koju became the second Zen master in China. The message was delivered.

"The emptiness of the sky makes the sun and moon shine.
The emptiness of the sea allows waves to rise.
The emptiness of the mountain valley makes the voice echo.
The emptiness of the heart makes the Buddha".
∼Bukko Kokusi

"Everything come from nothingness.
If you can come back to nothingness consciously, you have found the source.
That's what I call meditation, returning consciously to the very source not only of your being, but of the very cosmos, there you find an eternal flame.
Things comes, things goes, waves arise and waves disappear, but everything remains rooted in nothingness".
∼Osho

I've been inspired to give the new name to the website by a ninth century meditation school, known as Fuke-Shu, of the Chan (Zen) tradition. The adherents of this school, mostly lay people, replaced the chanting of Sutras as a meditative practice by the playing of a bamboo flute (Shakuhachi), and made pilgrimages through the countries playing the shakuhachi, the sound of which was to awaken the Buddha-dharma to the hearts of people. This echoes very much my path and life style. Such pilgrims were called Kamuso' , "Pilgrims of Emptiness". That's ultimately what we all are...

"...If we go deeper enough into ourselves there is a space which is eternal, immortal, it knows nothing of birth, nothing of death. It is simply a traveler, an eternal traveler, it is an explorer of different forms, different ways of being. It has been in a tree, and blossom into flowers, it has been in a lion and roared like a lion, it has been throughout the universe in different forms. It is a great journey. If you can see the variety of the experiences......We can continue the journey into forms, or we can jump out of the circle of birth and death into the universal, loosing individuality, becoming one with the cosmos..."∼Osho

I hope that the melody of love and meditation may resound in the sky of our empty hearts. ∼ Videha.