The Japanese have been called the world's greatest borrowers. It is a notion which accords well with the Buddhist teaching of emptiness, which can simply be defined as openness, a willingness to absorb from strange systems, to drink from alien wells. The Japanese word torukumu, "to take over," similarly expresses this ideal: a capacity for spiritual ingestion. Emptiness implies an invitation to be filled, a welcome to what is offered by a myriad of potential hosts.
— Hal W. French, Zen and the Art of Anything