VBT – Meditation 33.5
Vast Nothingness
The “soul” is simply a consolation to people, because if you say to them that meditation will end up in nothingness … In a million, perhaps one person will become interested in meditation. And if you tell them, “All your effort will come to a vast nothingness,” you will frighten them. You will create a question in their minds: “Then what is the purpose? We are – at least, we are. Doing meditation, we will not be.” It is going to be the ultimate death. Yes.
Gautam Buddha was continually asked, “Why do people go on coming to you when you offer nothing but nothingness?”
And Buddha said many times, “Nothingness is not just no-thing-ness. It has its own universality. It is becoming as vast as the whole universe, unlimited. Your personality is too small.”
The people who are afraid of nothingness, of dissolving not only their personality but their individuality too.
This is very consoling. At least it gives you something to hang on to. Zen does not give you anything; it simply takes away all the layers of the onion and then says to you, “Look, this is you – just pure nothingness.”
But the purity of it is so overwhelming that you are not, but your laughter is. You are not, but your joy is. It has become cosmic. You are not, but your ecstasy is, and now it is not confined to a small area of your personality or individuality; now the whole of existence is ecstatic. The birds flying and the flowers opening and the clouds showering – everything is happening in the deep nothingness of your realization of the cosmic emptiness as the source of all things.
Perhaps Zen alone has given a very scientific answer to the question. “From where do things come, and to where do they go back?” Even science shrugs its shoulders the moment you start asking them questions about the origin. All that has been said about the origin by the religions, by the scientific people, is simply guesswork. Nobody was a witness, obviously. How can there be a witness when existence has not started yet? You will come later on; you cannot come before. And, in fact, if there was a creator, existence was already there; otherwise how can the creator exist?
But people don’t go to such depths. They don’t bother about that, believing in a God who created the world. Why don’t you ask who created God? When did he start to be? His family, his nationality, his race – any trace? Suddenly he comes and starts creating the world. Such a stupid idea, and millions have believed in it, and still believe in it.
Zen is very clean and clear, saying that there has been no beginning at all; hence the question of creation does not arise. And there is not going to be any end; hence the question of anybody destroying it, God or Devil, does not arise. It is always here, it has always been here, and it will always be here. It just goes on playing in many forms. It is a tremendous drama.
Tags: Vast Nothingness
