Preface

Two Faces of Emptiness

Meditation is presented to anyone interested—advanced practitioners, beginners, and skeptics alike—as a path towards inner peace and freedom. To become calm, we cultivate kindness and concentration. Freedom, however, requires letting go. Our familiar sense of ‘I’ is constantly changing. Together with the natural desire to cling to a fixed self-image this creates an inner cramp. Experiencing this tension is the unbearable “first face of emptiness.” By gradually seeing more clearly that this fixed self is an illusion, we begin to develop the courage to release the stories about who we are—those told by others and by ourselves. In doing so, a different kind of trust suddenly may be there: the serene “second face of emptiness”, calmly observing what unfolds, moment by moment. This offers freedom to let those old stories return—or not at all.

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