A Hindu Take on "The Empty Chair"

CNN | BELIEF
By Stephen Prothero, Special to CNN

An empty chair in Bali.

When I went to Bali a few years ago...I went for the religion. Balinese Hinduism differs from Indian Hinduism in many ways...for me the most arresting religious image I encountered was the empty chair. I saw this chair, typically crafted of stone, everywhere in Bali—And it symbolizes, among other things, the indescribability of the divine. In Bali, to stand in front of the empty chair is to reckon with your limits, and particularly with what you don’t know. Clint Eastwood has now turned “the empty chair” into a meme of a very different sort. What struck me as I saw this performance was how different Eastwood’s use of the empty chair was from how people use it in Bali. [link]