that it comes out of the blue. You’re walking down
the street, caught in tunnel vision—talking to your-
self—and not noticing anything, and even the croak
of a raven can wake you up out of your daydream,
which is often very thick, very resentful. Something
just pops it; a car backfires, and for a moment you
look up and see the sky and people’s faces and traf-
fic going by and the trees. Whatever is happening
there, suddenly you see this big world outside of
your tunnel vision.
I had an interesting experience of something sur-
prising me like this on retreat. It was a very strong ex-
perience of shunyata, the complete emptiness of
things. I had just finished my evening practice. I had
been practicing all day, after which you might think I
would be in a calm, saintly state of mind. But as I
came out of my room and started to walk down the
hall, I saw that in our serving area someone had left
dirty dishes. I started to get really angry.
Now, in this retreat we put our name on our
dishes. Everyone has a plate and a bowl and a mug
and a knife and a fork and a spoon, and they all have
our name on them. So I was walking down and I
was trying to see whose name was on those dishes. I
was already pretty sure whose name was on them,
because there was only one woman of our group of
eight who would leave such a mess. She was always
just leaving things around for other people to clean
112 Empty Boat