Wu #poetry #drawing #tao

Still Life Drawing (the base seems a bit off, I guess)

Take a vessel
Top it up with water
Now pour some wine

What happened?
Did it hold the wine?
Did it fulfill its purpose?

Now imagine our mind
as that vessel
Filled to its limit

With knowledge
With ideas
With meanings

Somewhere in this chaos
We lose the blissful ignorance
The vacancy of the mind!

Obsessed with fulfillment
We forget that it can’t exist
Without the emptiness!

So why not stop for a while?
Pause, take a deep breath
And revel the emptiness inside!

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Wu is a Chinese word that translates to “Emptiness”. Lao Tzu explains the concept of “Wu” best in Verse 11 of The Legend of Tao (english translation by Michael Rossman):

“Spokes join the rim to the hub,
but the wheel’s use depends
on the hole in the center.

We make a bowl from clay,
but emptiness makes it useful.

We cut out doors and windows,
but vacancy makes the room habitable.

So what’s there is advantageous,
but what’s not is what makes it useful.”

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Thanks for reading!

 

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Celestial Vessel (Revisited with Drawing Everyday)

She slips inside in sleepless nights
Smiles on me her celestial lights
The blaze of sun and the glaze of moon
She shows them all and leaves just as soon

She moves amidst those dancing shadows
As if she owns me, around she wallows
Whispering thoughts that’s just my kind
I wonder ofttimes if she reads my mind

When the dawn hits, she’s no more there
Conjured of thoughts, she’s not so real
A spirit, a musing, a fantasy, if you will
Only her touch left behind for me to feel

That’s when I pen her down
And all her whispering
Those genius words!
Those genuine thoughts!
I bleed them all out
For the world to see
And to think I’m a genius!
There can be no greater sin.

I am but a vessel
A simple messenger
Hers
For it is I
who can see her, hear her, feel her
So it is I
who must present her beauty to all
Her beauty
Her words
Her thoughts
It’s not me
Oh, not me!
I am but a messenger
I am but a vessel.

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(I posted this poem waaaaayyyyyyyyyy back, but it went well with the sketch I did today, so… that’s that.)