Nothing Matters Anymore

Nothing Matters Anymore (Theme: Emptiness)

Practicing Zen means attending one’s own funeral. How can we tap into beginner’s mind without dying first?

But we don’t want that. We cling to everything. To fall into the coffin, we must therefore cause ourselves to stumble. To do this, we constantly set traps for ourselves. This is how we shape our path. There is no path waiting for us or laid out for us.

If we are lucky, we may then step into the void. In free fall, everything loses its relevance: our views, attachments, aversions, fears, ideas, and memories. Emptiness is called śūnyatā in Sanskrit. Śūnya stands for “empty” and also means “zero.” Nothing counts or matters anymore.

Walking meditation, therefore, has a deeper meaning than simply putting one foot in front of the other. Appropriate Effort, one of the eight aspects of the Noble Eightfold Path, can mean—in the language of Zen—entering the void with every step and surrendering to emptiness.

In doing so, we should catch ourselves off guard, because the “I” has a firm hold on us: I. I am. I am like this. I want this. I hate that. Yet the self cannot outwit itself. We must understand the “nothing” of śūnyatā for what it truly is: no thing. Śūnyatā is not the absence of all existence, but the emptiness of every some-thing we try to cling to. A glass empty of water is full of air. When that dies, this comes alive. Yet we cannot reason our way into transcending duality. One should not speak of such things for too long.

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