No Furniture
An exploration of a poem, linking the Buddhist concept of 'emptiness' to the elusive quality of the mind
This poem was an exploration of the elusive quality of the mind, drawing from intuition, experience and tacit knowledge (Varney, 1999).
No Furniture
Empty
through what eyes
what vision
do I project
when I look inside
empty
I speak
now hesitating
now clear
from where come the words
when I look inside
empty
like music
unchanging
feelings but not
emotion
like love
truly
what is joy
what is sorrow
I am
an inheritance
a culmination
an interpretation
when I look inside
I see no furniture
A couple of decades have passed since writing this poem, during which I have been exposed to philosophical concepts such as nondual Eastern thought and experienced explorations of the mind in my own and my clients psychotherapy sessions. In this piece of writing I will make a few links to this poem from a current perspective. The brevity of this essay does not permit detailed analysis but will hopefully be of interest and lead to further exploration.
'No Furniture' is a search for a sense of some solidity of self or experience. The poem points to looking inside but not finding any concrete thing. The mind instead appears to be continually shifting and fluid.
The notion of emptiness can be seen as disturbance or related to deficiency. Perhaps closely related to a general understanding of this concept is 'existential vacuum' which in The American Psychological Association Dictionary, is defined as 'the inability to find or create meaning in life, leading to feelings of emptiness, alienation, futility, and aimlessness. Most existentialists have considered meaninglessness to be the quintessential symptom or ailment of the modern age (VandenBos, 2015)'.
Mark Epstein, author of The Zen of Therapy, has worked towards synthesising Buddhist and psychodynamic psychology (Epstein, 1989). In a Tricycle podcast discussion with Epstein, interviewer James Shaheen remarked that the idea of 'no self is thought to be pathological in psychology' and could be seen as an indicator and symptom of developmental deficit (Epstein, 2022b). Shaheen went on to suggest that a sense of no self may also be a window to underlying truth. Epstein spoke of his own experience when growing up and said he always worried that his self was not 'self' enough. He opened the topic to deeper exploration, stating that there is not such thing as emptiness, 'where there’s nothing going on' because there is 'always something going on' (Epstein, 2022a).
The Buddhist concept of emptiness differs from what is commonly understood, but perhaps may cast some light on the elusiveness of a self. The Dalai Lama (2001) describes emptiness as 'unfindability'. He explains that 'when we look for the flower among its parts, we are confronted with the absence of such flower. That absence we are confronted with is the flower’s emptiness. But then, is there no flower? Of course there is. To seek for the core of any phenomenon is ultimately to arrive at a more subtle appreciation of its emptiness, its unfindability'. In other words, ' no phenomenon has inherent existence' (Komito, 1987). The Buddhist Heart Sutra summarises this seeming paradox by stating that 'emptiness is form, form is emptiness'. Somewhat related, Randrup and Bagchi (2006) mention that Jewish mystics of the Kabbalist school see 'emptiness, nothingness also as fullness, but empty of separate concepts and particulars'. The Islamic Sufi poet, Rumi wrote about emptiness: '… in this complicated world-tangle … Nothing. We are emptiness'. '… Stay empty and held between those fingers, where "where" gets drunk with nowhere. Whoever finds love beneath hurt and grief disappears into emptiness with a thousand new disguises (Barks, 1996)'. Thomas Merton (1963), Christian Trappist monk, in his poem, 'Song—If You Seek. . .', wrote, 'I, Nothingness, am thy All'. Perhaps there is also some accordance with the Hindu Advaita Vedanta declaration that there is no thing, all is Brahman (Deutsch and Dalvi, 2004).
The poem draws to a close with the lines, 'I am an inheritance, a culmination, an interpretation', indicating history and impact of context on the person. In psychology, systems theory according to Bowen holds a holistic view that people are inseparable from and interconnected with the multigenerational system they come from (Davies, 2013). Psychoanalysis focuses on early childhood experiences and their impact on the unconscious, expanding, for example to relationships and intergenerational and transgenerational trauma. The Buddhist concept of 'dependent origination' holds that nothing exists independent of other things. People often attempt to compartmentalise what is actually a web of interconnections. No person, thing or event is an island.
In therapy one looks inside to observe passing thoughts, meanderings of one's mind and get in touch with feelings. Epstein (2022a) links a Buddhist and a psychotherapy approach with the simplicity of, 'relax about all that and just see what’s there. Try to find it as it really exists, not as you think it should'. From a psychoanalytic perspective, Freud suggested to his patients in the initial stages of treatment, that they should act as if they were travellers, looking through the window of a train, describing the changing views (Freud, 1913). This process brings the mind into the room in a sense, giving voice to it. The implication of Freud's request is that the 'viewer' of the mind observes something of a moving or changing landscape rather than anything static or concrete.
A self not found on scrutiny, may give rise to a sense of ambivalence. On the one hand one may identify with a particular sense of self which has attributes but on the other hand, this self appears to be elusive when searched for. Exploring this search, Mark Epstein writes that 'we are all instinctively struggling to be something (independent, solid, coherent, and self-sufficient) we can never be. … The persistence of such feelings, far from being a symptom of parental failures (even if there have been such failures), is actually the seed of wisdom. … Acknowledging the emptiness that frightens us, whatever its source may be, is the key to a deeper, and truer, understanding. The emptiness that we fear is not really empty. When it is successfully turned into an object of awareness, it reveals itself to be vast, luminous, and reassuringly, albeit mysteriously, alive (Epstein, 2022b)'. Perhaps Janis Joplin was touching on this tantalising enigma when she sang that freedom means 'nothing left to lose'. One just has to think of self as a small baby in relation to the current self reading these words to realise self is not static, in the same sense that I now reflect on a poem written decades ago.
References
Barks, C. 1996. The Essential Rumi. San Francisco, CA: Harper.
Dalai Lama. 2001. Editor: Nicholas Vreeland. An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life. New York: Little, Brown and Company.
Davies, M. 2013. The Blackwell companion to social work. 4th edition. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons.
Deutsch, E., Dalvi, R. 2004. The Essential Vedanta: A New Source Book of Advaita Vedanta. Bloomington: World Wisdom
Epstein, Mark. 2022a. The Zen of Therapy. New York: Penguin Press.
Epstein, Mark. 2022b. The Zen of Therapy with Mark Epstein. Podcast: Tricycle Talks. Episode 69. January, 12.
Epstein, M. 1989. Forms of emptiness: Psychodynamic, meditative and clinical perspectives. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 21:1.
Freud, S. 1913. On beginning the treatment. London: Hogarth Press.
Komito, D.R. 1987. Nagarjuna's Seventy Stanzas: A Buddhist Psychology of Emptiness. New York: Snow Lion Publications.
Merton, T. 1963. Emblems of a season of fury. New York: New Directions Books.
Randrup, A and Bagchi, T. 2006. Correspondences Between Jewish Mysticism and Indian Philosophies. Some Significant Relations to Science. Available at: http://cogprints.org/4796/1/indianjewish.html International [2022, February 7].
VandenBos, G. R., & American Psychological Association. 2015. APA dictionary of psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Varney, A. 1999. No furniture. Dirty Washing; collective and individual poems. Johannesburg: Botsotso Publishing.
Anna is a qualified Psychotherapist, based in Muizenberg, Cape Town, South Africa.
With a commitment to mental health, Ms Varney-Wong provides services in English, including Coaching (Life), Counselling (Trauma), Ukraine Aid, Group Therapy, Individual and Couple Therapy, Psychotherapy (Individual), Psychotherapy (Psychoanalytic) and Psychotherapy (Psychodynamic).
Ms Varney-Wong has expertise in Adjusting to Change/Life Transitions, Bereavement and Loss, Mental Health, Personal Growth, Relationship Problems and Trauma.
Click here to schedule a session with Ms Varney-Wong.
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