THE EMPTY MANIFESTO

Creed

We believe in faith without belief and that emptiness can accommodate trust and insight. We believe that Everything can be housed in empty space and that ‘Nothingness’ is everywhere. Nothing can never harm you, only Something can annihilate. We believe that all convictions are empty, but also that emptiness can be meaningful. Within the immense amounts of nothing in the universe, there are unimaginable masses of matter. And between the concepts of existence and non-existence, between Everything and Nothingness, there is a breathing space where we look to the boundary of our knowledge. There within The Empty Space, beliefs turn into theater.

Symbol

Our symbol is a black circle with a little white star at the centre of the circle. The circle (the zero) represents emptiness and the empty space that represents openness. The star represents a hole in the symbol allowing for light to shine through and illuminate the fact that symbols too are empty. The increasing awareness about this can create inclusive concentric circles. In reality there are no circles. Symbols are mental illusions. Perfect circles only exist in the world of mathematics and ideas. In reality there is an unmeasurable movement and in the tiniest elements there are gaps and masses of void: also within ourselves, in what we have been and shall become. Emptiness is our common space and it’s open for all.

Temple

An empty space can become a temple space. This empty space is not for getaways from life. Space is in life, life is in space. The empty space becomes a place where we, together or alone but as part of a community, can coincide, join service, and find a foundation and foothold in darkness. At the far end of the empty space, we can sacrifice our imaginations, and ourselves become an empty space for reality to manifest itself. When we see it like it is we may feel trepidation and awe in the face of cosmos and existence. The empty space can be filled with light or almost anything, and then emptied again. Like a breath. Everything is in emptiness, or vice versa.

Practice

Practice happens, like all systems, orders and structures. Practically we meet. In practice we reserve the freedom to be inspired by various wisdom traditions. One kind of practice is the emptiness meditation that can be used to occupy the common space of emptiness. Start by imagining a small white star in the void and place your attention on this small imaginary object. Anchor the experience in the idea of the star and hold the attention there during the spacetime or spacetimes it takes to stabilize the attention. Then remove the inner image of the star or the idea of an observing subject. The emptiness that remains is us.

Commitment

The empty space is a metaphor for a conscious state that is emptied of dualisms and dogmas, but not free from values. Life in the universe includes consciousness that can value life in the universe. Consciousness enables committed compassion. We promote this, seek knowledge and act in the world. But this manifesto contains no information about practitioners’ manifestations of the sacred emptiness within and through themselves in the outer world outside the empty space temple, in stillness and action, in speech, silence and empty talk, in interactive interpassivity, in waiting rooms and spaces in between, because it’s not for nothing that everything