The Story of the Empty Boat

A young man approached his teacher, as he was having a great deal of frustration in life. He was frustrated and angry as a reaction to the many comments people were making to him about many different things. He shared these stories with his teacher. He was animated, visibly upset. His teacher looked at him and sat silently for seemingly long time and finally said to him, let’s go for a boat ride

The young man grabbed a hold of the oars and began rowing the boat. The silence only being fractured by the gentle dipping of the oars in the water. He rowed until they arrived at  the center of the lake, at which point the teacher asked him to  release his hands from the oars and let the boat drift. He did, and they drifted. 

Life is like rowing a boat. Sometimes rowing is easy. Sometimes it is difficult. As we row upstream we find we put in a lot of energy. It seems fruitless. Lost energy, for no purpose. We do not control the current, yet we put a lot of energy to work against it. Our lives can be the same. Like people’s words, there are things that are out of our control. Yet, we put a lot of energy into that which we could release and go with the peaceful flow of the current. At that moment, they looked up and they saw another boat coming towards them. The young man quickly and forcefully grabbed the oars as if to steer the boat to avoid the collision. The teacher touched his hands gently and said, observe and release the oars. He hesitantly released the oars. A collision followed as the other boat struck them. 

He was angry, and vengeance, he glared into the other boat, only to see it was empty. There was no one in the boat. It had apparently broken free of its mooring and was drifting aimlessly. Seeing nothing to be angry about, his anger dissipated very quickly. 

This is the lesson of the empty boat. Suffering takes the form of frustrations and anger, in response to those things which we can’t control, much like an empty boat, drifting freely. We can put a tremendous amount of energy into thinking and overthinking situations. And in the end, we are unable to control it. We cannot row out of the way. Allowing them to come to pass, release the unnecessary, we will be at peace. We will be able to have more balanced lives with less reactions. With less harm to others, and ourselves!

(See video below)