A theatrical stage, a movie screen, a dancer's floor, and a painter's canvas are also empty spaces where the imagination can make contact with the infinite. Insofar as it is empty, all art is religious. A canvas is an oculus if the painter treats it as such. The art of painting on an empty canvas is a meditation in the strict sense. It opens the artist to contact with all that is beyond.
This kind of ignorance and emptiness doesn't lead to negative despair or nihilism; it leads to emotional security and a deep comic sense of life. There is something ironic and absurd about living a serious life even though we don't know the origin, the end, or the meaning of it all. Spiritual teachers often laugh at this kind of ignorance, not a laugh of scorn but of appreciation for the willingness of human beings to go on even though they don't know what it's all about.
— Thomas Moore, The Soul's Religion