Beware the Awakening: Falling for ‘Nothing’
Love says ‘I am everything.’
Wisdom says ‘I am nothing.’
Between the two, my life flows.
— Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The No-News Truth
To awaken or to realise the truth, as the word implies, is to become aware of something that already is. It’s to wake up to the reality of what is, to become aware of what is ultimately true. Awakening brings you face to face with the raw truth of your being and the nature of reality as it truly is. The kind of truth I am talking about here is the absolute truth, the truth that doesn’t depend on or change by relating to a context. It’s the most simple, banal, ordinary and obvious what is. It is natural. It’s not about becoming anyone or anything new — as in, something you currently are not — by coming to think about yourself in new ways through new experiences. It’s unbecoming anyone or anything you believe you are. What remains is truth, and the truth is you.
Ok then, if it’s so ordinary and simple, why is recognising it so elusive? Part of the reason is precisely because it’s so ordinary and simple; you might be busy looking for a hidden secret of existence or new ways of reinventing an ‘I,’ instead of noticing what is. The truth is always already present waiting to be noticed. When is a secret hardest to crack? When there is no secret at all. The truth, too, is no secret and no news at all. Yet, waking up to the truth, in relation to the context of the paradigm where you believe you are a separate person living in an external universe of a billion separate things, is wildly new.
Recall a dream where you were someone or even something else entirely, oblivious to your waking-world identity as Mary, John, or anyone else for that matter. When you wake up in the morning, you snap back to the ‘real’ you, as you have habitually known yourself. How new is this realisation? Against the backdrop of your dream-identity, it’s very new. When compared to your waking-identity, it’s hardly news at all because ‘I’ve always been Mary (or John).’ This reacquaintance with your usual sense of identity annihilates the dream-identity as real. It doesn’t dismiss the dream however; rather it adds clarity that you, in fact, are not the character you played in the dream.
Invite yourself to delve deeper into this curiosity and consider how you discern what’s real about your waking-identity. Within the dream, the reality of your dream-identity is so convincing that questioning it doesn’t even occur. All there is to your being in the dream is the dream-identity. So then, how is your sense of waking-identity more convincing? How do you establish what is true about what you are and what you just go by?
To get a handle on this, consider what that ‘actual you’ is — the one that believed it was a character in the dream and is now pretty sure about being a Mary (or John) living on planet Earth. What is it about you that is unchanged through both the dream and the waking state, regardless of identity? What is the truth here?
So, What IS the Truth?
If you stick with this inquiry long enough, you’ll realise that the truth is what remains when untruth is seen through, with untruth being anything that depends on a context to relate to for its existence. If that context changes or vanishes, so does this truth. It has now become a relative truth. Just as your dream-identity holds truth within the context of the dream, and your waking-identity does so within the larger context of your waking reality. The first vanishes as the truth when you wake up, the second does so when you, well, wake up again. It is recognised as an illusion. The truth we are after doesn’t depend on context. It is immutable, absolute.
Let’s dive a little bit into the absolute truth of what you are, before considering some examples. Rumi called it love. The Tibetans call it rigpa. Some other traditions call it awareness or consciousness, presence, silence, divinity, God or Goddess, or absolute. Whatever the terms, all these are merely pointers. Though simple, ordinary and natural, once it’s noticed (or rather, once it notices itself), it’s also eventually recognised that this not-news-at-all truth is extraordinarily profound and unfathomable, conceptually unknowable. It is a paradox of being ultimately simple and infinitely inexhaustible.
Every time I try to put it into words, I end up sounding like I am pitching a script for a sci-fi mind-bender. Although any articulation can only point towards the truth as one of countless ways of talking about it and is never a complete representation, I’ll give it a try for the sake of the artform of naming the unnamable.
Peeling away all that can be peeled, after debunking all unexamined stories and assumptions taken for truth — seen through as only relative truths — what remains is the ultimate unchallengeable truth: a crisp and clear self-reposed sobriety, a spaceless and timeless lucidity that is 'beyond' any state of consciousness or exclusive to any particular state. When I say ‘beyond,’ I don’t imply that it’s a hidden ‘elsewhere.’ I only mean that the truth is ungraspable as anything at all. Yet, it’s the only essence that everything and every state is literally ‘made of.’ It’s the only ‘thing’ that IS every-thing, and there is nothing that is not it, nothing at all.
It is infinite aware nothingness that is beyond any dichotomy — that of life and death, real and unreal, simplicity and complexity, oneness and separateness, inside and outside, ‘I’ and ‘the other,’ and everything in between. It both contains and appears as all seeming opposites that are recognised as arisings of form. It has no continuity to it, nor is it ever broken. It never was or ever will be, but always is. It is beyond and it is not. The sight of a blooming flower, the birth of the universe, and death — all appear the same to it and as it.
This infinite aware nothingness (you) is indistinguishable from the infinite and spontaneous play of forms it expresses and presents as (and that, too, is you). Everything you are aware of is you. When I say ‘form,’ I mean everything perceptible, however slight: a rectangle is a form, but also a thought is a form, a feeling is a form, a sensation is a form, the aroma of your morning coffee is a form, a dream is a form, space is a form, emptiness is a form. These forms only get a separate ‘life’ of their own in concept.
What is ultimately recognised, however, is that nothingness and form are the same. Nothingness is form; form is nothingness. Nothingness is indistinguishable and inextractable from the form. Form doesn’t exist without nothingness. Only as form is nothingness available to itself for self-reflection as this entire theatre of creation.
Let’s Work It Out: A Closer Look
To ground this seeming conceptual paradox of nothingness and form in experience, imagine a green parrot for a second. Take a moment, close your eyes (or not) and really observe your parrot. Now, ponder this: in your direct experience, what is your imagined green parrot made of?
You might immediately notice that it’s made of ‘kind of nothing,’ and then your mind darts hunting for a satisfying answer because ‘there’s got to be something here.’ Notice the temptation to rationalise about how it’s all the brain and thoughts, and all that jazz, or to expect that ‘nothing’ must mean ‘transparent.’ If you catch yourself going down that path, go back to the question and curiously observe again. What you’re really digging for here is not how it works or why it works. Ignore the narrative you tell yourself about it. What you’re after is the raw directness of what is. Truly, really – what is it made of?
If your mind is blank, you’re onto something. Stay there for a bit. Notice how the mind craves for the carousel of something new, like an experience or new knowledge to give a name to, and instead gets the good old what is.
Take this directness further. Have a look around - what is your seeing made of? Tune in with the sounds - what is your hearing made of? Are there any boundaries to what senses are made of? Does it possess spaciousness or even emptiness? Does it have any qualities at all?
To really hammer in this form-nothingness paradoxical mind bender, take a few steps even further. Go through each question one by one, paying attention to what is immediately noticeable and not a thought:
How do you know you are not asleep right now? …
What have you just checked in with to determine if you are not asleep? …
Does it have any shape or form or quality at all? Can you capture it? …
Is it something or is it nothing? Is it simple or is it unfathomable? Or is it both, or maybe neither? …
Can you separate something from nothing here as anything other than a concept? …
Now, let’s put a personal spin on it:
How much of a ‘me’ does it feel like? How does it compare with the word or thought ‘I’? Which is truer? …
If this something-nothing 'stuff' feels like the 'you-you,' then what about the seeing and the hearing, made of the same 'stuff,' of the same ‘you-you’? …
What are you then, really?
After diving into these questions and trying to grasp something, you walk away with empty hands. You have learned nothing new, and that’s great! Yet, you might have come in touch with something about you you hadn’t noticed before.
Nothingness is, after all, nothingness — it cannot be objectively grasped in any way at all. You cannot conjure up an image of nothingness or witness it as if it were an object or an experience. Being everything, it remains out of reach from any attempt to distill and grasp it. Nothingness has nothing and is described as exactly that — nothing, through and through; a kind of nothing so profound it’s beyond any imaginings or a possibility to articulate; utterly, utterly beyond. Yet, it is that and only that which is your very being. You embody it, and in truth, you are it, literally.
The Beautiful Paradox of the Is
Only infinite nothingness, free from having to be anything in particular, can arise as infinite creation. Countless universes and worlds upon worlds that it appears as are merely an infinitesimal expression of nothingness’ unfathomable, infinite profoundness. Yet, if there were only a speck of dust in existence, and just that, nothingness would be fully embodied in it and as it. Remember what I said about articulating simple truth as sci-fi mind-bender? That’s what I meant. And yet, in direct experience as being it, it is simple!
Paradoxical? Certainly, but only to your mind, with its desire to capture the uncapturable, find solid ground and rest in certainty. Paradox is how infinity naturally expresses itself to the mind. Only at the level of the mind and in the articulation of concepts does it become a paradox. In truth, there is no paradox; such is the nature of infinity. Don’t let the seeming complexity of conceptual articulation take your curious attention away from the simplicity of what is, of what you are.
Ultimately, when you find your ‘I’ on the pristine ashes of undoing, when you, as nothingness, have explored your bounds and come full circle, you recognise that being you — right now, exactly as you are — is the most divine perfection; a sanctuary for resting in curious wonder. You are what infinity has let go of itself for, just to experience itself as a character you take yourself to be.
In the end, it doesn’t matter that what you truly are is infinite nothing-everything. Infinity is unattached to itself. It yearns to be you: as the taste of coffee that you drink, the red of sunrise that you see, the warmth of your body, the sadness and the joy, desires, confusions, and the thoughts about your plans for the day. You are your own most beloved ‘attainment’ with or without the clarity of this realisation. You are the source, the journey and the destination, with ‘you,’ as you believed you were, nowhere to be found. An ‘I’ doesn’t awaken; the truth awakens from the ‘I’ that it lovingly dreams.