Śūnyatā: Nothing Empty About Emptiness
One of the central notions in Buddhism is śūnyatā, which is often translated as emptiness or void(ness). It, like all other religious concepts, has many meanings and definitions depending on the doctrine in which it is included and the way it is interpreted. But the most central essence of this notion is that fundamentally, existence is empty, and all forms arise from it as illusions with no inherent, substantial reality of their own.
This may sound very pessimistic, nihilistic or reductionistic to the unfamiliar ear, but it is actually far from such notions.
It can be quite nicely demonstrated by observing the word itself.
In the Devanagari script—the writing system employed in languages originating from India, in this case Sanskrit—, the numeral for zero (0), is śūnya. Śūnyatā could for the sake of example here perhaps be translated as zeroness.
Now, what’s the significance of this?
Think about the number zero.
It contains no value in itself; only the numbers that follow it have any value. It is in this sense empty, or void. But the interesting thing is this: though it is empty, it is what stands before any other numbers. Were there no zero, the counting—and practical use—of numbers could never be begun. It is in this sense perhaps even more important than any other number, because it is the precondition for the arising of any numbers with defined value in the first place.
Let’s shift this analogy from the numbers to examples in reality.
All plants grow from the bottom-up. Before a plant can take a form in the visible world above ground, it must send its roots down under the ground. It can only then begin sprouting upwards—to take its unique, visible form from which it can be recognized. The observing eye tends to ignore that it could not have this form were it not for the ground from which it can draw nutrients using its roots.
Another thing about plants, and all other growing things, is that they unfold from the inside-out: plants unfold from seeds, animals unfold from minuscule sperm and egg cells. Though these first steps are greatly smaller than the forms they eventually unfold into, they are vital prerequisites for their coming-into-existence. Though a seed or a sperm cell does not by any means resemble what will unfold from it, it contains within it precisely that.
Similarly, the Sun’s light appears to the eye to be white, in a sense empty, but in reality, it contains the whole spectrum of visible color; it only needs to be shone through a surface that filters these colors into existence. In this sense, sunlight, though appearing empty to the eye, is the source of all colors—colors are born only when sunlight is filtered through the surface it’s shone through. And, also, in order for there to be sunlight in the first place, there must be darkness—or an absence of light; something void of light—from which it can be distinguished; from which it can spring from like the sprouting plant.
Such is it with everything else. For there to be sound, there must be silence. For there to be a figure with a form, there must be a background from which it can be distinguished. For there to be consciousness, there must be unconsciousness. They are like the first step on a hundred-thousand-step journey, and the idea and inspiration before even taking the first step—that actually fuels the whole journey.
And for there to be life, there must be something before and after it which births and sustains it—something we cannot put into terms of life. And this is what śūnyatā (along with Tao, Brahman and, dare I even say God, in other traditions) essentially refers to.
I’ve come to realize that what modern humans fundamentally tend to fear is emptiness. This is not hard to observe: look at the amount of light pollution in cities (where the darkness of the night must be overcome with artificial light); people needing to ‘fill the silence’ with music, TV noise or podcasts; the fear of loneliness (which needs to be escaped into forced, superficial social interaction on social media); and ultimately, fear of death—the ultimate gate to this so terrified emptiness we must all pass through eventually. The modern world does its most to escape this inevitable destiny of all humans, with the cost of minimizing vitality by being overprotective and terrified of illness; avoiding life to avoid death, thus making life a grim display of stagnancy—by many means an image of death.
But do recall again the numbers: for there to ever have arisen something with attributable value in it, there has to have been the fundamental, unchartable void from which it sprouted. And precisely in the same way, for there to have been conscious life in the first place, it must have sprung from a similar void.
Since ‘you’ as a conscious individual, a persona, are essentially like the number with some form and value attributed to it, you cannot exist in the void. But the thing is that from this void springs always another number; another form of life that will regard itself as ‘I’, and whenever there’s just the void, ‘you’ or ‘I’ aren’t there to experience it. What precisely could it contain that would be so horrendous, considering that you are not even there to experience it?
Because we view emptiness as something to be filled, we begin to view it as something horrible, something that we ought to get rid of. But as this passage from Tao Te Ching so wonderfully puts it,
Thirty spokes connect to the wheel’s hub; yet, it is the centre hole that makes it useful. Clay is shaped into a vessel; yet, it is the emptiness within that makes it useful. Doors and windows are cut for a room; yet it is the space where there is nothing that makes it useful. Therefore, though advantage comes from what is; usefulness comes from what is not.
(Chapter 11, translated by Tolbert McCarroll)
Indeed, emptiness is by no means empty. It is what stands before the arising of anything deemed substantial, and it is also what sustains the substantial’s ability to be used. Space is what we move in, like the water for the fish; and we tend to ignore it, but it is still precisely that which allows us to move, breathe and exist. Were there no space, nothing substantial could exist and thus ever be used.
Once you really understand this—that everything unfolds from the inside-out, from the small to the great; that space precedes form—, you realize the power you hold all the time. You are the filter for your own existence. You decide what is brought forth to perceived reality. First is the intention or inspiration (in the unseen), then the idea (in the mental plane), then the first steps of execution (in physical reality), and finally, the idea executed and manifested, brought forth in reality.
Herein can also be observed the secret of blank paper: you can either view it as empty, or as something pregnant with an infinity of potential, ready to filter into existence something nobody has yet even begun to think about—through you.
When you open your hands instead of filling them with copper coins you’d hold on to with all your might, your hands become full of the same vast space that occupies and holds in it everything in this universe.
In other words, when you empty your hands, you hold the entire universe in them.
