There are four classic Chinese books that are epic – translated as Journey to the West, Dream of the Red Chamber, Outlaws of the Marsh, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms.  I tell my son stories from Journey to the West, which involves the Monkey King, whom he shares a Chinese zodiac sign with.  And the last book, I used to teach my students with – the struggle to gain dominance over China by three warring factions.

This one is about emptying oneself in order to be filled.

I would have gotten fired or disciplined for this but I really wanted to show the movie Red Cliff in class.  It had so many lessons to impart.  It wasn’t the content but the length – the extended director’s cut was around the of two films.  The movie captures one such battle in Three Kingdoms where the most powerful one – led by the legendary minister Cao Cao, is about to annihilate another one.  I won’t go into details but there’s a key scene that is instructive.

The wild card in all of this is that the woman Cao Cao truly loves is married to the military leader of the opposing kingdom.  He yearns for her to the point he has a look-alike for his company.  But she isn’t her.  The problem with all forgeries – you can fool everyone but not yourself.  You never replace Apollonia, especially not with Kay.  

So just as Cao Cao is about to launch his death blow, she shows up.  She serves him tea. 

Slowly. 

At some point, the cup overflows.  She then tells him, he has overreached with his ambition.  She was the one who got away.  And that he lost sight of what he originally stood for – mow so full that he can no longer learn anything or see clearly.  Philosophically, this is all powerful but the real effect is to buy enough time for the winds to shift (literally), thwarting the invasion.  Timing isn’t everything but it matters a lot. Cao Cao is badly defeated and forced to call it a day.

Bruce Lee once said that one must empty one’s mind.  To be shapeless, formless.  This isn’t some purely Zen thinking.  It is practical.  When facing a problem, we often limit ourselves to preconceived ideals. It’s not the worst approach but it can be constricting, especially when faced with a novel situation.  There’s also a key scene in the chess movie – Searching for Bobby Fischer where a student’s teacher swipes off all the pieces of the board to allow him to see the correct solution to the position.  The presence of the pieces are distractions.

And so it probably is with God.  A common motif in the Bible is the desert.  It is often described as a place of testing and training.  But it also is a place of simplicity.  There are few to no distractions.  And this barrenness and emptiness is crucial.  To what – I’ll leave that to wiser minds but it is something you can’t find in other places or easily.  Maybe it’s perspective, wisdom.  Maybe it’s one self.  Whatever it is, it has something to do with being truly filled.