#155 Zero: The Cat Who Teaches Me Emptiness
Join me for Mantra Meditation Training - Next week!
When my cat Zero came into my life, he already had one paw missing.
Most people don’t even notice until I point it out. Then the question comes: What happened to him?
I don’t know. It happened before he came to me.
I took him home when he was just eight weeks old, so small he fit in the palm of my hand. The shelter staff weren’t sure he would survive. They feared no one would want him as he grew up, since he was missing a paw. But when I held him, I knew I was meant to take him.
The shelter called him Zeru, but I misheard it as Zero - and the name stuck. Zero, for me, carries meaning. In Buddhism, sunyata (emptiness) is the recognition that things are empty of an identity. Everything is fluid, impermanent, and interdependent. Zero is a beginning, a return to nothingness, a reminder of spaciousness and possibility.
Zero doesn’t carry a story about his missing paw. He doesn’t have a story about his accident or why it limits him from his full potential. He simply jumps, runs, climbs, and plays - like any other cat. The only story about his paw is the one I have created for him.
And that is where the practice of meditation comes in.
Samādhi, Stories, and True Nature
Patañjali describes in the Yoga Sūtras (1.17) that samādhi can arise through different qualities:
Vitarka – gross, intellectual knowing.
Vicāra – subtle, contemplative reflection.
Ānanda – blissful experience.
Asmitā – pure sense of “I-am-ness.”
I realized in my own meditation practice this year that much of my experience has been intellectual (vitarka), conceptual. I’ve spent a lot of time in the last few years studying yoga philosophy and discussing it. But true meditation asks us to drop deeper, into contemplation, bliss, and eventually beyond even identity itself.
The Buddha’s teaching also echoes this: suffering arises when we misidentify with the self, when we cling to the story of “me and mine.” Liberation comes from loosening that identification and returning to sunyaya - emptiness that is not bleak, but spacious and free.
Zero is my teacher here. He embodies ātman - the pure soul - without story, without attachment. Just being.
Our meditation practice is designed to guide us to the same place: beyond the stories of who we think we are, into our true nature.
Why Mantra Meditation
This fall, I’ve been training to teach mantra meditation - a practice that has been life-changing for me.
Repeating a mantra interrupts the thinking mind, pulling us out of our endless storytelling. It creates a rhythm that gently draws us back to stillness, moment after moment. Through mantra, we can experience freedom from identification with the self and taste the quiet bliss described in the Yoga Sūtras.
This morning, I actually got to teach this practice to my teacher Rolf. After I guided him in mantra meditation, he led me in mindfulness. Both are powerful, but in different ways. Mantra gives us a tool to transcend thought; mindfulness shows us how to witness it. Together, they help us return home to ourselves.
Join Me for Mantra Meditation Training
I’m so excited to share this practice with you for the very first time. I’ll be leading two different cohorts of this.
Group A: (North America Mornings, Europe Midday, Asia/Australia Evening) Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday – September 30, October 1, October 2
6:00–7:30 pm AWST | 6:00–7:30 am EST sign up here
Group B: (North America Evenings, Asia/Australia Morning)
Saturday, Sunday, Monday Morning at 7am Bali Time
Friday, Saturday, Sunday night at 7pm EST
sign up here
In this series, you’ll learn:
The foundations of mantra meditation.
How mantra works to settle the mind.
How to integrate practice into daily life.
Afterward, you’ll be invited into a 30-day mantra meditation challenge, where I’ll host live group practices to help you stay consistent and supported.
This is more than a class - it’s an initiation into a lifetime tool for peace, clarity, and freedom.