First Empty Your Cup

 

I’ve often found many of the classic stories from the Zen Buddhist tradition to be very insightful, helping to trigger useful changes in perspective, sometime for myself, sometimes for a client.

 

This one has been on my mind recently:

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”

“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?

— Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings by Paul Reps, Nyogen Senzaki

 

 

In my work as a counsellor and trainer over the last while, I have been becoming more and more painfully aware of how much we (our whole society, including counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, teachers, lecturers, trainers, politicians, parents, writers, journalists, movie-makers, celebrities, social media influencers, and pretty much everybody…) will have to unlearn about autism and other forms of neurodivergence in order to make room for all that we desperately need to learn.

Some of us have at least made a start, but we still have a long way to go, and need to be wary of complacency. Most people, on the other hand, have yet to even acknowledge that this is a serious and urgent problem. They are in the position of the professor in the story, in that they think they already know everything they need to know about what it means to be autistic. The reality, of course, is that we are going through major “paradigm shifts” in relation to our understanding of neurodivergence, and perhaps most of all in relation to autism. Not least is the shift towards seeing autism as a form of neurodivergence rather than solely through the lenses of disability and disorder. Along with that, many supposedly established pillars of autism theory and practice (such as the idea that autistic people are necessarily deficient in empathy) have been crumbling before our eyes (if we are willing to look). At the same time, many important aspects of the autistic experience, such as the reality of sensory overwhelm, the nature of meltdown, and the value of stimming, have gained deserved prominence in our thinking.

Exciting times, but only if we can empty our cup first.

 

Or, as another Zen master put it:

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.

— Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki