“The forth question was, ‘What is your void?’ At first, I couldn’t understand the grand master’s question. I mulled it over for a while, and then I realized that my void meant a gap inside myself, or something that bothered me, or even an unresolved problem. Then I decided to open my heart, but I thought that none of them would understand me.
“I answered, ‘I can’t distinguish dream from reality. Like Chuang-Tzu, last night I dreamed I was a butterfly. Now I don’t know whether I was a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. I see reality and dream as an indistinct whole. Everything seems confused or unclear to my eyes. I see houses, streets, people, and events as if they were surrounded by a dense fog. This is my void. I want to see people as they are, not through my confused mind or an illusion that distorts my relationships with them. I want to have a clear mind so that I can have self-confidence when I decide to do something. Before making a decision, I often hesitate too long, and then I don’t do what I want to do. Sometimes I am like Buridan’s donkey, which stood between a haystack on the right and a pail of water on the left. The donkey couldn’t decide whether to drink water or to eat hay first. At the end it died of starvation and thirst.’”

This is an excerpt from The Vibrations of Words: second edition by Ettore Grillo
Ettore Grillo author of these books:
– A Hidden Sicilian History
– The Vibrations of Words
-Travels of the Mind
http://www.amazon.com/author/ettoregrillo