All About Nothing

Friday, October 14, 2005

Repost: All About Nothing I remember reading an apocryphal story about the boy Jesus being tested by a scholar. Jesus was asked to explain the letter Omega/Tau. If I can be allowed a paraphrase, Jesus relied "Do you not know the Alpha/Aleph (beginning)? Then you shall know the Omega/Tau (end)." Emerson wrote: "Our eating, trading, marrying and learning are mistaken by us for ends and realities, while they are symbols only; when we have come by divine leading, into the inner firmament, we are appraised of the unreality or representative character of what we esteemed final." What we seek then, is what we must have already had or known in order to feel a present loss or desire. Then we try to fill that emptiness with objects. Our true end and goal is not the object but that "feeling of" something which the object we hope will provide, such as satisfaction, fulfilment, or belonging. Edward L Kramer says it this way: "The secret attainment does not begin with the possession of an object but rather the feeling of an objective, a feeling that you alone can conjure but it must be ascertained before any object can be yours." As a child I contemplated numbers, being inspired by my seventh grade teacher. I was fascinated by the zero which was a non quantity, a place holder. But more than that it is was an absence of something which made the presence of a mathematical something meaningful. In my ordinary life too, there seemed to be nothings, or no-things as well, which made life meaningful. No-things in the sense of their inability to be weighed and measured or located in geometric space. These no-things were love, truth, beauty and happiness to name few. It seemed that the more I pondered these nothings as having a real existence apart from any desire for the things themselves, which I attached these feelings to, then I could conjure my happiness almost at will. And as a paradox, the less desperate I was for the object, the more readily did it appear in my life in unexpected ways. I think of the Buddha saying "life is suffering". I think of the saying of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas; "That which you do not have within you will kill you." And I smile as I look at the monks rejection of the world as he abides in perfect peace. Apart from the ego "I" am nothing. Yet to know this No-thing is perhaps the fulfilment of everything. And all in between is simply a game called life and death, which we forget is only play and hang on with dire seriousness. "Know Thyself " was inscribed above the door to an earthly temple. Said a living temple; "The kingdom of heaven is within." © Arjay 2005, 2008