Beautiful Snowflakes

From the first time I encountered the word in English, I liked the sound of it: emptiness. Some would find it chillingly abstract, even scary. But I took to it immediately. I chanted the Heart Sutra ("form is emptiness, emptiness form ...") alone and with sangha every day for years before I ever bothered to find out what the great teachers of the past meant by emptiness. It didn't matter to me what they meant. I knew what emptiness was.