Emptiness Quotes

“There are people in the world, who are just wrong, and then there are the masses of population that are right, or at the very least they lie in the veil of between. I on the other hand, do not belong to any group. I don’t exist. It’s not that I don’t have substance; I have a body like everyone else. I can feel the fire when it burns against my skin, the rain when it caresses my face and the breeze as it fingers my hair. I have all the senses that other people do. I am just empty, inside.”
― J.D. Stroube, Caged in Darkness

“At first I felt dizzy - not with the kind of dizziness that makes the body reel but the kind that's like a dead emptiness in the brain, an instinctive awareness of the void.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Education of the Stoic: The Only Manuscript of the Baron of Teive

“What people don't understand about depression is how much it hurts. It's like your brain is convinced that it's dying and produces an acid that eats away at you from the inside, until all that's less is a scary hollowness. Your mind fills with dark thoughts; you become convinced that your friends secretly hate you, you're worthless, and then there's no hope. I never got so low as to consider ending it all, but I understand how that can happen to some people. Depression simply hurts too much.”
― Tyler Hamilton

“Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous, and indifferent.”
― Virginia Woolf

“His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origin of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul.”
― J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace

“my dear, I have nothing to say.
my heart burns
like the evening sky.”
― Sanober Khan

“When I was little, I was out riding my brand-new blue bicycle when I decided to see how far I could keep going without looking back even once.
I could feel with my back how my neighborhood was receding, further and further away... but I kept pedaling with all my might, my mind almost going blank. All I could hear was the sound of my own heart, thumping wildly in my ears. Even now, I remember it sometimes. What exactly was I trying to do that day? What was it that I wanted to prove?

It's no good. My mind just keeps fogging over. I have this irritating sound stuck in my head. What is it? This sound... Ohh... I know what it is.
This is... the sound of emptiness.”
― Chica Umino, Honey and Clover, Vol. 7

“Isn't love the emanation of desire or just a statement of emptiness in expectation? As we long for what is missing and finally hold it, could it be that we may not crave it anymore in the end? Still, if we learn to "enjoy" the precious moments of its presence, it can remain a captivating experience and a mesmerizing adventure. If it keeps on overwhelming us with "joy," love can turn into a magic prism and make it possible to discover a rainbow of twinkles and enchanting sceneries. As our imagination constantly discerns new qualities, the sparkle of love does not expire in the boredom of forgetfulness. (“Twilight of desire“)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“He suddenly felt nothing, or rather Nothing, a pre-tornadic stillness of zero sensation, as if he were the very space he occupied.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“I decided I would fill the emptiness in me with God and with paint.”
― Kimberly Novosel

“He knows what he'll find if he digs deeper. there's no rush to unpack my insides. he understands there is nothing special about emptiness, nothing interesting about depression.”
― Jasmine Warga, My Heart and Other Black Holes

“Form is emptiness, emptiness is form" states the Heart Sutra, one of the best known ancient Buddhist texts. The essence of all things is emptiness.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“You are not limited to this body, to this mind, or to this reality—you are a limitless ocean of Consciousness, imbued with infinite potential. You are existence itself.”
― Joseph P. Kauffman, The Answer Is YOU: A Guide to Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Freedom

“I look at you and my heart pounds, when for years, I don't think it beat at all. You fill the cracks and crevices, take away the emptiness. And when you're not by my side, the loss is unimaginable.”
― Kelly Moran, Exposure

“These are the three stages of enlightenment, the three glimpses of satori.

1. The first stage enlightenment:
A Glimpse of the Whole

The first stage of enlightenment is short glimpse from faraway of the whole. It is a short glimpse of being.
The first stage of enlightenment is when, for the first time, for a single moment the mind is not functioning. The ordinary ego is still present at the first stage of enlightenment, but you experience for a short while that there is something beyond the ego.
There is a gap, a silence and emptiness, where there is not thought between you and existence.
You and existence meet and merge for a moment.
And for the first time the seed, the thirst and longing, for enlightenment, the meeting between you and existence, will grow in your heart.

2. The second stage of enlightenment:
Silence, Relaxation, Togetherness, Inner Being

The second stage of enlightenment is a new order, a harmony, from within, which comes from the inner being. It is the quality of freedom.
The inner chaos has disappeared and a new silence, relaxation and togetherness has arisen.
Your own wisdom from within has arisen.
A subtle ego is still present in the second stage of enlightenment.
The Hindus has three names for the ego:
1. Ahamkar, which is the ordinary ego.
2. Asmita, which is the quality of Am-ness, of no ego. It is a very silent ego, not aggreessive, but it is still a subtle ego.
3. Atma, the third word is Atma, when the Am-ness is also lost. This is what Buddha callas no-self, pure being.
In the second stage of enlightenment you become capable of being in the inner being, in the gap, in the meditative quality within, in the silence and emptiness.
For hours, for days, you can remain in the gap, in utter aloneness, in God.
Still you need effort to remain in the gap, and if you drop the effort, the gap will disappear.
Love, meditation and prayer becomes the way to increase the effort in the search for God.
Then the second stage becomes a more conscious effort. Now you know the way, you now the direction.

3. The third stage of enlightenment:
Ocean, Wholeness, No-self, Pure being

At the third stage of enlightenment, at the third step of Satori, our individual river flowing silently, suddenly reaches to the Ocean and becomes one with the Ocean.
At the third Satori, the ego is lost, and there is Atma, pure being. You are, but without any boundaries. The river has become the Ocean, the Whole.
It has become a vast emptiness, just like the pure sky.
The third stage of enlightenment happens when you have become capable of finding the inner being, the meditative quality within, the gap, the inner silence and emptiness, so that it becomes a natural quality.
You can find the gap whenever you want.
This is what tantra callas Mahamudra, the great orgasm, what Buddha calls Nirvana, what Lao Tzu calls Tao and what Jesus calls the kingdom of God.
You have found the door to God.
You have come home.”
― Swami Dhyan Giten

“Nothing has an unlikely quality. It is heavy.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

“At last the cold crept up my spine; at last it filled me from foot to head; at last I grew so chill and desolate that all thought and pain and awareness came to a standstill. I wasn't miserable anymore: I wasn't anything at all. I was a nothing-- a random configuration of molecules. If my heart still beat I didn't know it. I was aware of one thing only; next to the gaping fact called Death, all I knew was nothing, all I did meant nothing, all I felt conveyed nothing. This was no passing thought. It was a gnawing, palpable emptiness more real than the cold.”
― David James Duncan, The River Why

“I felt myself being invaded through and through, I crumbled, disintegrated, and only emptiness remained.”
― Stanislaw Lem, Solaris by Stanislaw Lem | Summary & Study Guide

“The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns. Faith also means reaching deeply within, for the sense one was born with, the sense, for example, to go for a walk.”
― Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

“I don't know how to describe the sound of a world crashing. Maybe there is no sound, just a great emptiness, an enveloping sorrow, a creeping nothingness that coils itself around you like a stiff wire.”
― Charles Blow, Fire Shut Up in My Bones

“The car was on the FDR drive now and, turning her head, she glanced out at the bleak brown buildings of the projects that stretched for blocks along the drive. Something inside her sank at the sight of all that sameness, and she suddenly felt defeated.
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. In the past year, she'd started experiencing these moments of desperate emptiness, as if nothing really mattered, nothing was ever going to change, there was nothing new; and she could see her life stretching before her--one endless long day after the next, in which every day was essentially the same. Meanwhile, time was marching on, and all that was happening to her was that she was getting older and smaller, and one day she would be no bigger than a dot, and then she would simply disappear. Poof! Like a small leaf burned up under a magnifying glass in the sun. These feelings were shocking to her, because she'd never experienced world-weariness before. She'd never had time. All her life, she'd been striving and striving to become this thing that was herself--the entity that was Nico O'Neilly. And then, one morning, time had caught up with her and she had woken up and realized that she was there. She had arrived at her destination, and she had everything she'd worked so hard for: a stunning career, a loving (well, sort of) husband, whom she respected, and a beautiful eleven-year-old daughter whom she adored.
She should have been thrilled. But instead, she felt tired. Like all those things belonged to someone else.”
― Candace Bushnell, Lipstick Jungle

“They say you don’t get over someone until you find someone or something better. As humans, we don’t deal well with emptiness. Any empty space must be filled. Immediately. The pain of emptiness is too strong. It compels the victim to fill that place. A single moment with that empty spot causes excruciating pain. That’s why we run from distraction to distraction—and from attachment to attachment.”
― Yasmin Mogahed

“When compared to the fact that he might very well be dead by this time tomorrow, whether he was courageous or not today was pointless, empty. When compared to the fact that he might be dead tomorrow, everything was pointless. It just didn't make any difference. It was pointless to the tree, it was pointless to every man in his outfit, pointless to everybody in the whole world. Who cared? It was not pointless only to him; and when he was dead, when he ceased to exist, it would be pointless to him too. More important: Not only would it be pointless, it would have been pointless all along.

This was an obscure and rather difficult point to grasp. Understanding of it kept slipping in and out on the edges of his mind. It flickered, changing its time sense and tenses. At those moments when he understood it, it left him with a very hollow feeling.”
― James Jones, The Thin Red Line

“There is absolutely no worse death curse than the humdrum daily existence of the living dead.”
― Anthon St. Maarten

“A night of crying has silenced me. This morning it seems the whole world is against me. I've never before felt so barren, so empty. I've never before thought the daylight to be ... my enemy. My enemy.”
― Shaun Hick

“Suicidal pain includes the feeling that one has lost all capacity to effect emotional change. The agony is excruciating and looks as if it will never end. There is the feeling of having been beaten down for a very long time. There are feelings of agitation, emptiness, and incoherence. 'Snap out of it and get on with your life,' sounds like a demand to high jump ten feet.”
― David L. Conroy, Out of the Nightmare: Recovery from Depression and Suicidal Pain

“She was gone, and all that was left was the space where you'd grown around her, like a tree that grows around a fence.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“tahiya hote pavan nahin pani, tahiya srishti kown utpati;
tahiya hote kali nahin phula, tahiya hote garbh nahi mula;
tahiya hote vidya nahin Veda, tahiya hote shabd nahin swada;
tahiya hote pind nahin basu,
nahin dhar dharni na pavan akasu;
tahiya hote guru nahin chela, gamya agamya na panth duhela.

Sakhi: avigati ki gati ka kahown, jake gawn na thawn
gun bihuna pekhana, ka kahi lijai nawn

In that state there is no air or water, and no creation or creator; There is no bud or flower, and no fetus or semen; There is no education or Vedas, and no word or taste; There is no body or settlement, and no earth, air or space; There is no guru or disciple, and no easy or difficult path.

Sakhi: That state is very strange. I cannot explain it. It has no village or resting place. That state is without gunas (qualities). What name can on give it? ”
― Kabir, The Bijak of Kabir

“But what I did sense was an emptiness like a black hole inside of him, and there was no predicting what might emerge from a place like that.”
― Ryū Murakami, In the Miso Soup

“The inner woman is the source of healing. The inner woman is the source of silence. The inner woman is the source of love. The inner woman is the source of belongingness with life. Embracing the inner man and woman is to discover our inner roots and wings.”
― Swami Dhyan Giten, Presence - Working from Within. The Psychology of Being