On: Europe's far right leaders gather in Milan rally against immigration

Another gathering. Another fortress of certainty being built against the tide they fear. They stand shoulder to shoulder, these leaders, naming the enemy: the immigrant, the regulation, the outsider. They believe that by building a wall of words and laws high enough, they can stop the river.

But the river does not stop. It only rises. The more you dam it, the greater the pressure becomes, until the dam itself is swept away. They think strength is in the stone wall. They do not see that the river’s strength is in its yielding, in its relentless, patient flow. It wears down the hardest stone without a single blow.

Their strategy is all naming. “Immigration.” “Security.” Each name is a brick in their wall. But to name a thing is to believe you can control it, and in that belief lies the failure. The river has no name; it simply flows. The more they define the problem, the more they are trapped by their own definitions. They are trying to grasp water in a clenched fist; the tighter they squeeze, the less they hold.

I see their rally and I see a great noise that creates its own silence. They shout to be heard, but true influence is like the mist: it arrives quietly, without announcement, and nourishes everything it touches. They seek to govern by force, by exclusion. But the valley gains its power from its lowliness; it is empty, and thus all things flow into it. To be full of oneself, as these leaders are, is to be already empty of the world.

The solution they cannot see is to cease building the dam. To become the valley, not the mountain. But they are deaf to the usefulness of emptiness. They will learn, as the river teaches, but the lesson will be hard.