Parts Unknown

Parts Unknown

The two matters you’re asking about are related. If there ever was an enigma, it would be the matter of what the mystics are attempting to describe as “nothingness.” Anything said about it is an unintended koan. And yet, it is the very mystery which every seeker is ultimately seeking. The query “how does something arise from nothing” can be an opening gambit. From the standpoint of ajata (“no creation”)—The most fundamental of teachings—there is no arising. Nothingness is meant to mean exactly what it is. Nothing. It is not, therefore, the opposite of somethingness. Somethingness is customarily a catchword for the “relative”: things, material or immaterial. Nothingness is a word often associated with the “absolute.” An actual meaning of absolute is “not relative”: not a thing; no thing; nothing. But, as used in the above sense, the Absolute is said to be an aspect of all that is relative; and all that is relative is said to be an aspect of the (“all-inclusive”) Absolute. In other words, the actual identity of both conditions is the same. So, if something (relative) is nothing (Absolute), while at the same time nothing is something, the two categories cancel each other out.

We could say that “what remains” is the nothingness, as alluded to by the (bedrock) nondual teaching called ajata. In other words, it is truly beyond conception.

As a baby, pre-cognitive, you knew nothing about nothingness; put another way, you knew as much about nothingness as is to be known. In fact, what you knew about nothingness was as much as you knew about your “self”: and that was all you needed to know about yourself. So, your first “I am” was superimposed on that emptiness of identification. With the arising of our first (even though natural) “self” identification, we began our limited identity as something. We give names to the various conditions or aspects of ice: cold, heavy, solid, crystalline, brittle, wet, slippery, glassy, clear, dense, changeable, etc. But beneath all the classifications, it’s simply ice. We could say “I am.” We could say, I am this: _________. We could say, “I am That.” All of it is the arising of an image, of some-thing-ness. The use of the idiom nothingness is meant to be a background upon which we can notice the “arising” of the naming of some thing, such as I.