This passage comes from the Five Elements, Five Dakinis retreat, where Ken explores different qualities of experience through the language of elements and dakinis. The element here is void, and the corresponding dakini points to a way of meeting experience when familiar reference points fall away.
Ken speaks about void in very ordinary terms. For example, void shows up as space in a day, space between commitments, space where nothing is planned or scheduled. Without that space, he says, nothing new can come in.
In session 6 of the retreat, he described how we tend to react when that space opens. Void may not feel spacious or free at first. It often shows up as dullness, heaviness, or sleepiness—not because we’re tired, but because dulling out is a way of not having to feel groundlessness. When there’s no structure to support us, confusion and bewilderment surface. We don’t know what to do, or who we are. That disorientation feels deeply uncomfortable.
One way we try to escape it is by doing something—anything—that restores a sense of orientation. Living in a culture organised around usefulness and output, productivity becomes a reliable way to steady ourselves. This is why Ken is so blunt in saying that meditation produces nothing. It offers no task, no identity, no payoff, and doesn’t sit easily in a life organised around doing.
Void—emptiness or spaciousness—is what makes everything possible. But to encounter it, we have to be willing to stay when orientation drops away—not filling the space, not dulling out, not reaching for something to stand on. That willingness to rest in not-knowing is the practice. And without it, very little in our lives can genuinely change.
From Five Elements, Five Dakinis 9
Ken: Where is there space in your life?
One of the things that has taken me a long time to learn, but I actually do it now, is I space things out in my day. I space things out in my day so I very, very rarely have two meetings back to back. That makes a tremendous difference. I can have actually quite full days and never feel rushed.
Another thing which I’ve learned to do, which I’ve advised people—particularly if they are in high-pressured jobs where unexpected things happen all the time—is schedule unscheduled time. That way you always have time for something if it comes up unexpectedly.
This is also good for one’s personal life. There’s a person I used to work with who had something on his social calendar every night of the week. That’s how his partner liked to live his life, and my client was just being run into the ground. So I said, "Okay, take out your calendar get a red magic marker please. And I want you to put an x through two nights of every week."
And he went, “I can’t do that!”
I said “Yes you can. You simply take your hand and you go like this.”
And he went, “Mmm, but what if somebody calls?”
“You tell them you’re busy. You are. You’re busy doing nothing that night.” He said it made all the difference.
So scheduling time where there is nothing in our lives is very very important. Meditation time is a time where there’s nothing in our lives. I’ve started to work with a group of people in their 20’s and early 30’s. And, what do you produce when you’re meditating?
Nothing. You produce absolutely nothing when you practice meditation. So in terms of a life and a culture and a society which is bent on being productive, meditation is a complete waste of time. It produces absolutely nothing. For this reason it is impossible to reconcile meditation with a productive life. And if you try to squeeze meditation into your life, it will be squeezed out because it’s not productive. The only way that you have a meditation practice is if you say to yourself, “I want this time to do nothing.” And you make it a priority along with everything else in your life. Nothing else works. But if you approach meditation from the idea of being more productive, wave good bye to your meditation practice.
So we need space in our lives because if our lives are full nothing new can come in. It’s as simple as that.
In relationships you need space. If you’re a guest your host needs space. A good guest knows how to get lost for periods of time, so there isn’t a constant demand on the host.
So study void. Void is what makes everything possible. If there is no emptiness or open space in your life then very, very few things are possible.