Not seen it all but its interesting that even our distant original ancestors realised something amazing: the something cannot come from something, it must come from Nothing! Its obvious.
It's more interesting that as time has progressed and the body of Human knowledge has grown we seem to have got further away from that initial inception of wisdom.
Science and Modern Economics are fundamentally caught within a bubble of the something. A scientist must discover "something" and in Modern economics you must produce something.
Modern humans are built into a world that expect something from them. They are "useless" if they do not produce something. We are "worthless" if we do not qualify as something.
Well all so well and good, all that focus on something is just a bubble within the infinite unbounded void of the Nothing.
I read "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl and the biggest take home for me was discovering that the camp way of life was actually really good for people's health. I actually borrowed the diet and exercise regime to get fit a while ago. But regarding the Meaning I found nothing.
You cannot really establish a meaning for life by basing your life on something. It is the very grasp for something which seems to be the problem with all these people struggling. It seems little more than the logic of "business", that if you keep busy you won't notice your life slipping away and you can die without ever thinking about it. Capitalism is a great religion cos it gives the illusion that something is happening in your life when actually nothing is happening. You work, you shop, stuff gets done, stuff gets consumed and you are back to where you started in the end wondering what it was all about.
If you really want to get to the bottom of the "something" like our ancient ancestors saw very clearly you need to face the Nothing.
Woo oooo mental gremlins
Isn't Nothing: depressing, boring, dark, evil, unknown, spooky, unsettling, weird...
Ans: Yup
But there is a MASSIVE error in thinking at this point.
Normally politics and advertising and even our own Flight-Or-Fight parasympathetic nervous system divide the world into 2 sides. The good side and the bad side. "If you are not with us then you are against us." Now the problem technically is the False Dilemma. Whenever faced with only 2 options you can be 100% sure there is at least a 3rd option: the "null" option in computer science. When faced with A or B you always have the 3rd option of not choosing at all. That is the essence of freedom!
I often think this reached its zenith in Nazi prison camps. You are given a gun and told to shoot a prisoner. If you don't then the Nazis will shoot everyone. In this case actually there are many options. Shoot the prisoner, but you know that will only inflate the Nazis power and legitimacy and who knows what happens next. Shoot the officer in charge and then you all die, but the Nazis took a big hit. Shoot yourself so you can die blameless, and then everyone dies but not at your hands. And there is also the option of doing nothing and not even playing the game. Yes the Nazis will shoot you all, but I think this is the best option cos it means you just ignored them. The null, the Nothing is by far the most powerful. Lead the Nazis into the terrifying face of the Void! Its interesting isn't it that despite all the work done today to try and remember the horrors of the Holocaust the world doesn't seem that fussed. The sun still rises and life carries on as thought nothing happened. The Void is so powerful it swallows even the Holocaust! Adorno would hate me saying that he wrote a whole philosophy of Negative Dialectics about how mankind was forever divorced from reality now. Surely just a modern retelling of the Garden of Eden?
Anyway so it is that in fact we all die in the hands of the Nothing, the null, the 3rd option that we were running from this way and that way in life. People talk about depression. They run onto the horns of nihilism and emptiness, perhaps they try to kill themselves. Then they run the other way onto the horns of affirmation and life, they try and live as hard as they can. Then perhaps they go the other way. Always getting caught by the Bull.
Actually there is no Bull. We don't have to chose between life and death. Its all our own creation. The Nothing does not drive you one way or the other.
And this is where the misunderstanding lies. Initially we think the Nothing is a removal of everything. We think its the putting of everything in the bin, the destruction and desecration of everything, the making worthless of everything. Absolutely not. The Nothing is just not making the choice. In the Nothing everything is pure, spotless and shines because it remains untouched by the bull.
Here is a picture of Nothing.
This is a hard one but here is another picture of Nothing:
Here is another
Here is another
Interesting isn't it cos each picture is ALSO a picture of something. A sunrise, a happy baby, bones in a tomb, sun shining through summer leaves. But what do they all have in common? It can't be what makes them something cos that makes them into different things. The thing they all have in common is the Nothing. It's that Nothing that shines through in their Something. The Heart Sutra of Mahayana Buddhism most famously says:
"this Body itself is Void
and Void itself is this Body."
Now this can sound like a load of nonsense. Things either are or are not. But that is the false dilemma of the Bull yet again. How do we grasp the Truth of Nothing when everything we grasp is something. This way or that, but never neither (or both). Well it can't be that hard because our ancestors called upon this Nothing to explain where the world came from. Logically we can see the world can't come from something, all these pictures can't come from the same something because they are different things. They are all different from where they came. And if we ever come up with a common source then where did that come from? Once its something you always have the problem where it came from. You can only stop and have your Creation in the Nothing.
The source and truth of the world cannot be grasped like this or that. But then we struggle with that cos the bull turns up again and says well if it can't be grasped then lets throw it all away.
Well no one can be ashamed for thinking that. Even the great spiritual investigators made that mistake. Most famously Buddha thought (in line with the thinking of his age) that the only way to liberate from the something was literally the nothing. Okay he didn't kill himself, but he got very close. The belief is that to separate ourselves from the something we must deny it.
This is an important practice in fact. But its just one the bull horns. The other horn of course are all those people who indulge and affirm the something. Lets enjoy it. In fact both people are being tormented by the same Nazi officer giving them the same binary choice: either indulge or kill yourself.
Well is it any clearer? The truth is Neither, there is no force to chose. But we see Neither and we still throw ourselves into the horn of nihilism. Okay if its neither Indulgence nor Ascetism let me look for something else.
Ok this can go on for a long time. But the emergence of that word "something" brings us back to the top. The problem is this search for something to grasp in our hands. That something can be actual something or denial of something. All those people contemplating suicide are really just rejecting life. When its time to really die, death will come all by itself. If you need to kill yourself its only because really you are living rather well. All those people who throw themselves into self mortifications are really just rejecting their indulgence. You can't get to the Nothing by swinging this way and that. You must stop the twisting one way and then the other.
Start where you are!
That is the only real tangible spiritual truth. If you are indulging no need to self mortify. If you are in poverty no need to struggle for indulgence. If you are living no need to seek death. If you are dying no need to seek life. Be what you are.
Now its interesting that "what you are" when seen like this is the same as Nothing. It is not this way or that way. Humans are not this way or that way. That is why seeing that baby above and seeing Nothing is so hard. We think humans are something, and as soon as they become something we start judge and hanging things on them like good or bad and worthy and worthless, friend or enemy, or whatever we wish to apply. But at root we are not this way or that way. Perhaps some might feel the need to say we are the "potential." We can become this way or that way, but in our soul we are not.
So its an unusual way to think. We are so habituated to grasping, making, doing, becoming, dreaming, but all of it is through the sense of "something." Rarely do we see through the horns of the Bull to the Nothing and the infinite freedom from which all this kaleidoscope of busyness and thingyness comes.
Meditation is exactly this practice of seeing through the apparent something of the world to its source in the Nothing.
So no you can't grasp the fundamental truth of the world in your hand. It will never be a possession of yours. It is not something that comes at the end of a noble quest. Is is not a treasure at the end of the rainbow. As Paul Coelho writes about in The Alchemist the fundamental truth comes when we return to the start, to where we are right now, and ease up the search so we can appreciate what is already here, not judging it as something we want or want to get rid of, not forcing it into a something this way or that, but just opening our palm and letting the world rest there.
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