my cup runs over

The Tao is so empty
those who use it
never become full again
and so deep
as if it were the ancestor of us all
dulling our edges
untying our tangles
softening our light
merging our dust
and so clear
as if it were present
I wonder whose child it is
it seems it was here before Ti (the Lord of Creation).
-- Red Pine, Chapter 4, the Tao Te Ching

We were in my kitchen. I had just made a fresh pot of coffee.

"May I pour you some?" asked Lao Tzu.

"Sure."

He filled my cup and kept pouring. The coffee spilled out onto the table.

"Stop!" I said, jumping up for a cloth to contain the mess.

"The value of a cup is its emptiness," he said. "When it is full, it is worthless."

"No! No!" I said, cleaning up his mess. "Its fullness is its value."

Lao Tzu laughed. "You  prove my point. You are full of yourself so you cannot hear what I am saying. You are edgy and irritable. Your mind is tangled, yet you think of yourself as bright."

He was right though I hated to admit it. I had upset myself with his overpouring. But his antics were pointing to something deeper.

Jesus had been observing this with amusement. He said: "We must be empty in order to be filled. The emptying and filling are continuous. We are a running stream, a continuous flow of the life force, of spirit."

Lao Tzu said, "Unlike the cup, you are a conduit. When you open as the Tao Flow, your cup has no bottom."

"And no sides as well," said Jesus. "Vast openness extends in all directions."

As he said this, all walls fell away.

We sat opening to the vastness of the one existing before all creation. And not even that.