Empty Hands

How often do you walk around with something in your hands?

At work this morning I took some files to be put away. After I dropped them off, I realized I didn't have anything to bring back with me. No files. No papers. This is unusual! I usually walk around work with files, or at least have a coffee cup if going down the hall. I started to consider how often I am the means to transport an object from Point A to Point B. An outside observer might think the objects were in control of my movement, and not vice versa.

I read once a story about a man who went to study at a Zen monastery. (Sorry to not remember the attribution - if you can help with this, please do!) The man studied hard and was away many years. When he returned home, he was asked if he brought anything with him from his journey. Yes, he said, empty hands. The implication was that he had let go of everything through his studies - opinions, identity, craving for possessions and praise. He now had empty hands, and could hold whatever was required at the moment because he could put it down and pick up what was necessary. And leave that which was not necessary.

The idea of living a simple, basic life appeals to me. Yet it seems many societies are geared toward producing and exchanging items that add little true value to our lives. For some, this even becomes an illness - hoarding more and more possessions. It is almost as though a mind needs to hold possessions in order to feel secure.

What would it be like to be able to stand alone, without adornment or accessory, and be ok being who you are? Would it require a strong sense of ego, or self? Or no sense of self?

I don't know that I have any answers for this line of inquiry. Perhaps I'll just try to pry open my hands a bit day by day.

Sometimes it seems dogs and flowers and trees have this easier. They are. They are being. They are not doing. I sometimes wish I could be like the roses in the poem by Mary Oliver. She writes, "I wouldn't mind being a rose in a field of roses. Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition.
Reason they have not yet thought of.
Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.
Or any other foolish question." (Poem "Roses, Late Summer" by Mary Oliver)

(Photo taken by me a few summers ago.)