Grasping Nothing

One thing that is happening as I wander into new lands is that I am developing a deeper understanding of emptiness.

It occurred to me yesterday that the problem with previous attempts to grasp this "concept" is that I did not make a distinction between form and content.

When we grasp any mental object - whatever that may be - we take hold of a thing: a discrete object. It is discrete because it is separate from other objects, or in this case other ideas. While we are contemplating an idea we are not contemplating other ideas - it is discrete.

Thus when we contemplate the idea of Nothing we may be doing so but we are packaging it as something.

The mundane use of Nothing goes like this. We are looking for something and someone asks what we found and we say "nothing". An empty room has "nothing" in it. Yet each of these "events" and "results" is a discrete something. As Lao-Tze points out "nothing" is a very useful something when we consider a door or the hole in a wheel for the axle. Nothing and Something are both results, they are both something.

To consider Nothing as it truly is we need to consider it packaged as Nothing also. Then it is self-similar: or it describes itself. Now SRH alert but I'm passing this time...

A naive way to do this is to "clear the mind". This is often a beginners approach to meditation. It is strictly warned against by meditation masters, but as a thought experiment it is revealing. If we gain a clear mind then that mind can be distinguished from an unclear mind: therefore having a clear mind is a discrete phenomenon and so it is something. "Clearing the mind" is actually filling the mind with "Nothing"!

It should be apparent at least logically that to grasp Nothing is actually to not obtain any state or concept that can be distinguihsed from others. It is not the holding of anything, and Nothing is to be found in Everything. Nothing and Everything cannot be distinguished!

Now it is clearer what the nature of the Absolute is. It explains also the importance of "impermanence" in the Buddha Dharma. He taught this by getting us to profoundly live with the fact that Everything is temporary - that is to say that all Things can be distinguished from one another and so none of them are absolute and fundamental. To Truth must therefore be "not a thing".

Nothing is thus not only a concept, but a "Way of Being" which enables us to package the concept not as a discrete idea to be grasped and held at the expense of other ideas - i.e. not as something to be placed before our inner eyesight for a duration - but rather existing so that Nothing is seen as common to all things and All things are unified in Nothing.

Thus we have Nothing, Emptiness, God and Absolute all as One. Arguments, agreements, beliefs, dis-beliefs, affiliations, memberships, non-memberships: how can there be any of these in the Kingdom of the Lord!?