Half Empty?

Theme Day is here again for those of us in the City Daily Photo blogging community. This month's theme is Empty. It's odd to find an empty parking structure anywhere in the greater Los Angeles area -- and this one in South Pas just begged for a study in dramatic high contrast. Do you find it forbidding? Depressing? Bleak? Yeah, that's what I thought, too.

But emptiness has gotten a bad rap by a great many Western thinkers who tend to frame the subject in messages of loneliness, despair, alienation and nihilism. Eastern philosophers, however, view it as a positive state. In fact, the Sanskrit noun sunyata has to do with the idea that nothing possesses any real enduring identity -- so insight into this phenomena (or non-phenomena) leads to wisdom and inner peace. The Buddhist version of emptiness resembles a thought-free wakefulness that focuses not on the past or future. Taoists view it as a stillness of pure mind. Ommmmmmm.....

Okay, I'm not sure I grasp it. But then again, my mind is far too cluttered to approach anything resembling Eastern wisdom. In fact, my view of emptiness has far more in common with Sartre -- or perhaps late 70s Woody Allen -- than anything Lao Tse might have written.

But look at how I've gone on. I've filled up half a page on a post that was supposed to be about emptiness. Why not check out some of the other talented City Daily Photobloggers to see their interpretation of today's theme: Click here to view thumbnails for all participants