The Way of Zen — Part 9: The Void That’s Void

Thoughts and musings from reading The Way of Zen by Alan Watts

As with many religions and practices, I believe the myths and minutiae are often ways of conveying fundamental truths about the human mind. In this case, what can be applied to a human — the journey of life and death, the possibility of enlightenment — can also be applied to the nature of our own minds in every moment.

Watts elaborates on this phenomenon: “If my grasping of life problem which may be expressed thus: “If my grasping of life involves me in a vicious circle, how am I to learn not to grasp? How can I try to let go when trying is precisely not letting go?” Stated in another way, to try not to grasp is the same thing as to grasp, since its motivation is the same–my urgent desire to save myself from a difficulty.”

In nearly every moment, we can see a construct arise from our mind: an ego, a representation of ourselves in one moment that is moving toward or away from something. That is attempting to avoid suffering or reach something else. Eventually, that construct falls away, and you move onto the next desire, the next goal. Birth and death, birth and death. Happening in your own mind, over and over throughout the entire day. We string together a narrative to help us make sense of this, but in reality, we are seeing the process of reincarnation happen perpetually inside our own heads.

Understanding this basic impermanence of the mind is incredibly useful, but it still doesn’t answer the question of how do I stop trying without trying to stop trying? According to Watts “Mahayana philosophy proposes a drastic but effective answer”.

“Stated baldly, the answer is that all grasping, even for nirvana, is futile–for there is nothing to be grasped.”

Watts says this is called the “Sunyavada or “Doctrine of the Void,” otherwise known as the Madhyamika, the “middle way,” because it refutes all metaphysical propositions by demonstrating their relativity.”

While many would see this as nihilism, or Watts also uses the term “absolute relativism”, this is not the point. This philosophy of nothingness, of non-essentialism, is “merely a device for breaking the vicious circle of grasping, and the terminus of his philosophy is not the abject despair of nihilism but the natural and uncontrived bliss (ananda) of liberation.”

Watts goes on to describe this as the insight that all conceptions of the human mind — words, thoughts, beliefs, hopes — are empty of inherent nature or quality. They only exist in relation to other concepts, words, thoughts, etc. The Sunyavada, this doctrine of the void, even extends to unconscious motives and notions. The void itself is clearly stated to be nonexistent as well:

“It cannot be called void or not void,

Or both or neither;

But in order to point it out,

It is called “the Void.”

This strikes a deep chord with me, as I have recently come around to a fundamental idea in Zen of pointing. At its base, all language is pointing to something else as a way of communicating it to another. All of our theorems, drawings, poems, essays, etc. are still just an act of pointing, no matter how complex they get.

How do you describe a glass of water, perfectly? How do you represent it, it’s true absolute nature, with every changing atom, and share that with someone else? You cannot. You can only point, with your finger, with your words, by invoking a memory… you can never fully, fundamentally capture and relate something to someone else.

In that same way, this inherent emptiness of existence cannot be represented. It can be experienced, but to communicate it to another, it can only be pointed at or intimated.

This “doctrine of relativity” is a fundamental truth, a feature of the conscious awareness that is the human experience.

“All things are without “self-nature” (svabhava) or independent reality since they exist only in relation to other things. Nothing in the universe can stand by itself-no thing, no fact, no being, no event–and for this reason it is absurd to single anything out as the ideal to be grasped. For what is singled out exists only in relation to its own opposite, since what is is defined by what is not, pleasure is defined by pain, life is defined by death, and motion is defined by stillness. “

The Yin and Yang. No dark without light. No good without evil. This “points” to the fundamental non-duality at the center of existence.

“The mind can form no idea of what “to be” means without the contrast of “not to be,””

This perplexing conundrum then leads us back to the original question of how to stop grasping: “as soon as nirvana is made an object of desire, it becomes an element of samsara [the cycle of death and rebirth, grasping].”

“The real nirvana cannot be desired because it cannot be conceived.”

Watts quotes the Lankavatara Sutra:

“Again, Mahamati, what is meant by non-duality? It means that light and shade, long and short, black and white, are relative terms, Mahamati, and not independent of each other; as Nirvana and Samsara are, all things are not-two. There is no Nirvana and Samsara are, all things are not-two. There is no Nirvana except where is Samsara; there is no Samsara except where is Nirvana; for the condition of existence is not of a mutually exclusive character. Therefore it is said that all things are nondual as are Nirvana and Samsara.”

Put another way: “Form is not different from emptiness; emptiness is not different from form. Form is precisely emptiness; emptiness is precisely form.”

To try to ground this lofty concept, think of the time you felt the freest, whatever that means to you. When you were unaware of time passing. You had no desire for something to add, not a care for anything to subtract. You accepted every iota of your awareness just the way it was. That experience, with no grasping, no desire, that is nirvana. And that nirvana is emptiness.

Again, this is not nihilism. This is non-essentialism, recognizing the impermanence and lack of inherent substance of all objects of awareness.

“Once again, this is not to say that awakening will cause the world of form to vanish without trace, for nirvana is not to be sought as “the future annihilation of the senses and their fields.” The sutra is saying that form is void just as it is, in all its prickly uniqueness.”

If nihilism is seeing all as void — darkness, nothingness, meaningless — than you can view non-essentialism and awakening as seeing all things as light, everything, meaning.

“Nothingness, but shining” as Jason Louv expressed in an episode of The Midnight Gospel that addresses this topic.

Finally, I want to acknowledge that these claims can be quite mind-bending and can easily muster questions surrounding the nature of reality. While I think those issues are perhaps best addressed by delving into the idea of absolute relativity, Watts makes it clear that metaphysical claims are not at all a focus of these ideas.

“The point of this equation is not to assert a metaphysical proposition but to assist the process of awakening.”

For conscious beings, for those with this mysterious gift of awareness, waking up is the first step in understanding who and what we really are.