“Be a spot of land where nothing is growing, where something might be planted…” Rumi
John Herron, in his book “Total Chess”, explains that beginning players focus mostly on their own pieces, intermediate players focus also on the opponent’s pieces, while advanced players consider the empty spaces on a deeper level. In chess, the pieces can only move into empty spaces—they can not be stacked on the top of each other like in some other board games. At the beginning of the game, there are 32 occupied spaces and 32 empty spaces on the board. As the game progresses, the number of empty spaces increases as different pieces get traded or taken. The great chess coach and activist Malola Prasath likens the empty spaces to going through different life experiences with the potential of transforming our lives. In the early years of life, we are self-centered and concrete, but as we grow beyond ourselves, our capacity for deeper experiences increases. As we grow older, the importance of possessions and corporeal entities decreases, just as the number of pieces on the board decreases as the game progresses. At the same time the importance of memories, experiences, and visions for the future--concerns for legacy and generativity, increases.
The empty spaces in chess then can be interpreted to symbolize emptiness and openness in life, loneliness and selflessness, a mysterious state of affairs in which something springs forth out of apparent nothingness. Rumi states that every craftsman is looking for emptiness, for a need, on which to practice his craft, to show what he is capable of. This allegory refers to God, and the emptiness, the need, is the human’s constant search for the Absolute.
The Absolute works with nothing.
The workshop, the materials
Are what does not exist.
Try and be a sheet of paper with nothing on it.
Be a spot of ground where nothing is growing,
Where something might be planted,
A seed, possibly, from the Absolute.
Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks
Most cultures and sacred traditions point to the importance of emptiness in one way or another for a spiritual connectedness on a dimension that is beyond the cognitive and that can serve to inform the cognitive. Maybe that is why modern man, who is immersed in the cognitive dimension, is uncomfortable with emptiness. When Frankl talks about the two major forms of leisure (emptiness in time) in his book “The Will to Meaning”, he distinguishes between centripetal leisure and centrifugal leisure:
Today centrifugal leisure is predominant. Flight from the self allows for avoiding a confrontation with the void in the self. Centripetal leisure would allow for solving problems—and to begin with, facing them. People vacillating between professional overactivity and centrifugal leisure have no time to finish their thoughts… We need new types of leisure which allow for contemplation and meditation. To this end, man needs the courage to be lonely. (p. 97-98).
Centripetal leisure is that centeredness, which is still, comfortable alone, and from which emanates strength. Centrifugal leisure is an escape from the existential vacuum, as Frankl called it, not knowing what to do with our free time and going busily from one activity into another to escape from the emptiness we feel. The only difference is our attitude toward the emptiness, how we conceptualize it, what we make of it. We should be careful not to become nihilists through pessimistic interpretations.
Sacred spaces (temples or places of personal or communal spiritual significance, physical or psychological) provide the emptiness in which Divine inspiration can be manifested and relived. Joseph Campbell says: “Sacred space is where you find yourself, again and again.” That is, where you find your enduring, eternal spiritual essence, unspoiled by the storms and tides of this transient life. You need emptiness and time for yourself to be able to do that. In some traditions the emptiness also refers to being empty of yourself, to be so still that your own selfishness is minimized and your perception of reality comes closer to being as objective as humanly possible. Rumi puts it this way: “When the water in a puddle is muddied, you are not able to see your reflection in it, but if left still, the mud would settle and the water would become clear and reflective.” And this is one way that emptiness aids and clarifies our cognitive and emotional dimensions as well.
