VBT – Meditation 33.3
Emptiness Has Its Own Fullness
Gautam Buddha does not make any distinction between the self and the ego – and there is none. It is just sophistry, linguistic gymnastics, to make such distinctions; then you can discard the ego and save the self. But the self is simply another name of the ego. You are only changing names, and no transformation of being is happening.
Buddha’s message is tremendously significant: you are an emptiness; there is no point in you which can say “I.”
Looking at it from my vision, when I say to you, “Melt, dissolve into existence,” I am simply saying the same thing in more positive terms.
Buddha’s way of saying it was so negative that many people were stopped, because the question arose, naturally, that if there is no self, why bother? What is there to achieve? Just to know that you are not?
A whole life of discipline, great effort for meditation, and the result is to know that you are not? The result does not seem to be worth it! At least without the meditation, without the discipline you have some sense of being. It may be wrong, but at least you are not feeling hollow and empty. Knowing that you are not, how will you live? Out of nothingness there is no possibility of any love, of any compassion – no possibility of anything. Out of nothing comes only nothing.
Why he was so insistent on negatives, because all other philosophies were so positivistic, and all their positivism was turning into stronger and stronger egos. He moved to the other extreme, seeing that positivism is going to give you egoistic ideas – and that is a hindrance between you and existence. To stop this idea he became totally negative.
You cannot complain about it, because the positivistic ideologies were in a strange situation: you have to drop the ego to find yourself, you have to drop the ego to find God, you have to drop the ego to become God, you have to drop the ego to find ultimate liberation – liberation of whom? Liberation of yourself.
So there was achievement, and achievement is always of the ego. There is a goal, and the goal is always of the ego.
Seeing all this, Buddha said, “There is no self. There is nothing to be achieved, and there is no goal to be found. You have never existed, you do not exist, you will not exist. You can only imagine, you can only dream that you are.”
Many came to Buddha and turned away, because nobody can make nothingness be his life’s achievement – for what? So much discipline and so much great trouble in getting into meditation just to find out that you are not… strange kind of man this Gautam Buddha. We are good as we are, what is the need of digging so deep that you find there is nothing? Even if we are dreaming, at least there is something.
Buddha simply means – You don’t have a self because you are part of a great self, the whole. You cannot have any separate, private, self of your own. This takes away the negativity, and this does not give you the positive desire for becoming more and more egoistic. It avoids both the extremes and finds a new approach: The universe is, I am not. And whatever happens and appears to be in me, as me, is simply universal.
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