Empty is Full
We always fill things up refusing to look at what is already here.
This vegan couscous bowl is bright, savory, and deeply satisfying. Fluffy couscous tossed with fresh herbs and lemon meets golden garlicky oyster mushrooms. Recipe below.
The Tao is like a well: used but never used up. It is like the eternal void: filled with infinite possibilities.
It is hidden but always present. I do not know who gave birth to it. It is older than God.
— Lao Tzu, tr. Stephen Mitchell (1988)
Hello again, friend. Consider a bowl for a moment. Its whole usefulness — its entire reason for existing — lives in the empty space inside it. Fill it with clay all the way through and you have a lump, beautiful perhaps, but good for nothing. The emptiness is the bowl. The emptiness is the point.
This is the quietly astonishing teaching of Chapter Four. The Tao, Lao Tzu tells us, is like a well. Used and used and used — and somehow, always full. Always ready. Always, impossibly, enough. And yet it holds this fullness by being fundamentally empty. It offers everything precisely because it clings to nothing.
We live in a culture that treats fullness as the goal. Full calendars. Full bank accounts. Full feeds, full rooms, full minds. We pack ourselves until there is nowhere left for anything new to land. And then we wonder why we feel so far from ourselves. Why the spark has gone quiet. Why even the beautiful things feel thin.
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But here, in the ancient teaching, is the remedy: return to the empty. Let there be space. Let there be room in your day for something unplanned, unoptimized, unproductive. Let there be a moment of honest stillness where you simply sit with what is, without filling it.
This is where the Tao lives. In the pause between your words. In the breath before you answer. In the afternoon that holds no particular agenda. In the bowl, clean and waiting, that is about to receive something wonderful.
You carry this capacity always. The inner well. The place that stays fresh and full precisely because it asks for nothing, grasps at nothing, and remains, beneath all the busyness, quietly, beautifully open.
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Today’s invitation is this: find one small empty space in your day and let it stay empty. Just for a little while. A walk with no podcast. A meal eaten slowly, without a screen. A moment between tasks where you simply breathe and let the well refill. Notice what rises when you stop filling it yourself.
That is the practice. That is the Way. We are so glad you are here for week four, friend. The well is always full.
Lemon Herb Couscous Bowl with Garlicky Vegan Butter Oyster Mushrooms
This is Pao’s go-to easy dinner — the one that arrives on the nights when we want something deeply satisfying but refuse to overthink it. Garlicky oyster mushrooms from King Mushroom Farm sizzle in vegan butter until the edges go golden and a little crispy. The couscous soaks up good olive oil and a generous amount of lemon — zest and juice both — and then a big tumble of parsley, arugula, and chopped chard folds in at the end. Bright, a little indulgent, endlessly forgiving. The kind of bowl you eat standing at the counter and then immediately want again the next night.
Other Mushroom Recipes!
🍄 Creamy Cheesy Vegan Tofu Mushroom Soup
Vegan Marry Me Mushrooms (Tuscan Mushroom Stew)
Seared Cabbage Wedges and Mushrooms in Creamy Miso Sauce
Crispy King Trumpet Mushrooms & Green Beans with Lemon-Garlic Hummus
Vegan Pearl Couscous Risotto with Shiitake Mushrooms
🎵 Song of the Day
We wrote this one about the particular kind of peace that arrives when you stop filling every moment and just coming along into the silence. The space between things. The breath before the answer. It turned out to be one of the most honest songs we have ever made. Let it find you in a quiet moment today.
P.S. Where in your life are you filling space that actually wants to stay empty — and what might open up if you let it?
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I appreciate this reminder to allow for the emptiness. I have come to value the silence and the (rare) gift of empty time as the greatest wealth I can have.