“The void is the form, the form is the void”is a famous idea in the Buddhist Heart Sutra, on the reality of things.

Thich Nhat Hanh said it another way: “This Body itself is Emptiness and Emptiness itself is this Body.”

The idea being that there is no there, there. Everything is empty. Everything is chaos. Everything is “flow.” From the tiniest subatomic particle to the entire universe itself.

This was all brought to mind when we saw a wee illustration by our buddy, Carl Richards, over at Behavior Gap:

Carl says, “We all know that no matter how worried, scared, or excited we’re feeling, 2+2 always equals 4. But when it comes to money, 2+2 equals feelings. Because, it turns out, money is not in the math department. It’s in the psychology department.”

That’s a great observation. This is true for gold, the US dollar, and even the silliest forms of crypto. If you think Currency-X is undervalued or overvalued, then it is.

Or, as the Buddhists like to say, “Everything is mind.”

On a cultural level, you could say this is pretty nihilistic. Everything is empty, therefore nothing really matters, so there’s no point doing anything worthwhile and or difficult, because everything is dust in the end.

We disagree. We think that, because “everything is mind” that means there is no goal, no product, no destination to attach oneself to.

All there "is" is the process itself. The doing. “The journey, not the destination." 

The culture.

That’s where the real value is.