itslikethis-ajahn-chah

Eating Out of the Shit-potTo see things as empty means seeing that there’s nothing there. You see thatthis spittoon is there, you see a cup and a plate, and the cup and the plate arethere. It’s not that they’re not there, but they’re there in emptiness. They’reempty. If you ask this spittoon what it is, it won’t answer you—because it’s notanything. You can call it a spittoon if you want, but it’s just your supposition.Or you could call it a pot—it’s still just a supposition that you’ve made. Itsactuality is there’s nothing to it. But we grab onto it and hold onto it firmly.I’ll give you an example. Suppose there are two groups of people: onegroup intelligent, the other group stupid. They go to buy things in the market.The stupid group doesn’t know anything, so they buy a shit-pot and use it to fixrice—because they don’t know anything at all. The intelligent people see thatand they get disgusted—“How can they use a shit-pot as a rice-pot? It’sdisgusting.”Why do they find it disgusting? The shit-pot is still new; it’s never beenused, so it’s like an ordinary pot. It’s still clean. So why are they disgusted byit? Because they hold onto the idea that it’s a shit-pot, that’s all. Actually, it’sjust an ordinary pot. They suffer and get disgusted because they cling to theirideas about it.So with these two groups of people, which one is really intelligent? Whichone is really stupid? The pot is just an object, an ordinary pot that we supposeto be a shit-pot, so people get disgusted by it. If you put curry in it, they getdisgusted. Put rice in it and they get disgusted—because of their wrong views,stuck on suppositions.