I’ve been studying Buddhism for a long time, and I’ve always hit a stumbling block when it came to the concept of “emptiness” or “nothingness”, or shunyata: the goal of Buddhism.  In the West, these terms have definite nihilistic implications because we think of nothingness or emptiness as being negative things, generally speaking.  As a witch, I see something like an empty bottle or box and see potential, but I could never parlay that into understanding the Buddhist concept of “emptiness” or “nothingness”.  I didn’t like it because when I played out what I thought the progression of things was supposed to be, it seemed as though there really was absolutely nothing at the end of things, and that didn’t sit well with me.

Then I read Thich Nhat Hanh’s essay on “Interbeing”, required for my comparative religion class, and I understood.  It’s my opinion that “interconnection” would be a much better word than “emptiness” or “nothingness”.  Nothing can exist without everything else existing: nothing by itself has any intrinsic meaning.  Things literally mean “nothing” and are devoid, or “empty” of meaning unless one fully acknowledges the interconnected nature of the Universe.

He uses the example of a piece of paper to illustrate this truth.  On the surface, it’s just a piece of paper, but if you look more deeply, you see the tree that the paper’s pulp came from.  You see the timber worker who cut the tree down.  You see the timber worker’s family.  You see all of those people’s families and friends and all of the jobs they hold and the ways they contribute to the world you live in.  Look even more deeply, and you see the dirt the tree grew from.  You see the geological processes that created the dirt.  You see the astrophysical processes that created the planet we live on that drive those geological processes.  Ultimately, you find yourself at the Creation of Everything, when all matter and energy was bound into one singularity of unbelievable density before exploding and growing into the Universe we know today.

This was a revelation to me, having never been able to reconcile the inherent logic of Buddhism with what seemed like an inherently nihilistic outcome.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Instead of dissolving into “nothing” once achieving nirvana, one becomes aware of one’s unified existence with all things in the Universe.  This is not dissolution into oblivion, it’s bliss, ultimate communion with the Creator, whether it is Divine in nature or merely the Universe itself, if there is a difference.  “Godness” and the Oneness of everything are the same.

This realization has made me profoundly happy.  While I am not a perennialist in the traditional sense, I do believe that all religions are reflections or refractions of One Creator. These reflections and refractions are themselves interconnected in ways that are meant to get people interacting in such a way as to generate new reflections and refractions, because God or the Universe wants to be understood by us, and so provided myriad ways for us to find our way to them, knowing we would need them.  This does not negate the importance of individual religions, nor their differences, as critics of perennialism insist.  Solving this personal conundrum with Buddhism means that a critical connection between major Divine reflections has been forged for me, resulting in a clearing of the overall religious and spiritual picture that defines “God”.

It may seem odd for a Buddhist to insist upon having a clear image of God since Buddhism doesn’t believe in a Supreme Being that is separate from us, but there are still aspects of Buddhism I haven’t been able to fully accept, such as the doctrine of no-soul.  I accept that I am individually dependent upon everything else in existence and as such have no truly independent soul, and yet there is something unique about me, about each of us.  Buddhism acknowledges a system of reincarnation extraordinarily similar to Hinduism’s, which does acknowledge the existence of a unique soul, which begs the question of the Buddhist: if there is nothing unique about us, what is it that reincarnates?  If it is the accumulation of karma that causes us to return to life again and again until we learn what we need in order to escape samsara, the wheel of life and death, then what is this karma essentially sticking to, if there isn’t something unique about us?  According to Buddhist doctrine, there is no overseeing Spiritual Being keeping track of these things, so how does our progress towards nirvana over multiple lifetimes get kept track of?  All spiritual systems have a failing point, and this is Buddhism’s.

Clearly Buddhism is correct in asserting its doctrine of shunyata.  A simple analysis of the progression of the physical Universe for the last 14 billion years can prove that.  Everything that exists today is the result of 14 billion years of cause and effect set in motion by the Big Bang, itself the explosion of a singularity containing all of the Universe’s matter and energy.  Once upon a time, everything was unified, and in a sense, it still is.  This is the Original Lost Knowledge all Seekers on all Paths are in search of: that they are one with Everything, something we all know deep in our souls, but consciously forget the moment we’re born.

And yet there remains the unanswered question of “what is it that reincarnates?” As clearly as shunyata is correct, just as clearly there must be something inherently solid and unchanging about each of us that tracks our progress from our appearance upon samsara until our release from it, which is the Hindu perspective.  I have recently been made aware that there is a third perspective that blends that of the Buddhists and Hindus: the Jainists.  They too could not get around the inherent paradox of existing with both shunyata and a system of reincarnation.

Within Jainism is a doctrine called anekantavada, or “not one-sidedness”.  It means that there is no one right way to view any given situation, that there are always multiple viewpoints and if one wants to arrive at the Truth, all viewpoints must be considered and weighed against one another in something of a dialectic process.  While the Buddhists assert that there is no soul (anatman) and the Hindus assert that there is (atman), the Jainists assert that both things are true in different circumstances (pissing off both the Buddhists and the Hindus).

I found it interesting to be led to a school of thought that rejects dualism, just as I have been led to reject dualism over the last few years, in favor of what Buddhism calls The Middle Way and what other philosophers have referred to as the Reconciliation or Union of Opposites.  It is a repeating theme throughout the history of philosophy around the world.

I do not pretend to know the mechanics of reincarnation, but I do believe that it exists, and as such there must be some unique core to our being that is learning all of these lessons upon the wheel of samsara and knows when we’ve learned enough to achieve nirvana.  I also believe that the doctrine of shunyata is logically accurate, that we are ‘nothing’ without everything else.  And so we are both unique, and yet empty.

This is the multifaceted nature of Truth that anekantavada refers to, when there are two seemingly opposite yet undeniably true things.  In such cases, one has stumbled not upon an inherent destabilizing conflict within the Universe, but upon an inherently stabilizing influence once one determines the Middle Way that combines the opposites: the Reconciliation between them.  In the case of atman vs. anatman, perhaps the defining factor is Time.  When we are incarnated upon the Earth in whatever form, we are unique.  When we have passed beyond this Life into whatever lies Beyond, we dissolve into Union unless we retain some uniqueness in the form of an unlearned lesson that sends us back to incarnate once again.  Perhaps it is only thinking that we are unique that keeps us from reattaining the Universal union that we once had and still remember on an unconscious level.  Perhaps thinking we are unique for a time or a number of lifetimes is actually necessary in order for us to learn certain things in our Time on Earth.  We humans seem to need to learn things the hard way sometimes, and indeed, sometimes that is actually the best way to learn something and have the lesson stick.

Perhaps the problem is merely both Buddhism and Hinduism’s assumption that if there is no soul, there can be no Creator, and I do not believe that’s true.  My personal experience leads me to the personal Knowledge that the Hindu view of the Universe is accurate, that the entity they call Brahman plays the role of a Creator deity and that each of us has a unique soul.  By the same token, my personal experience leads me to the personal Knowledge that the Buddhist view of the Universe is also accurate, that while we may possess unique qualities, ultimately we are “empty” and “devoid” of individual meaning and that our bodily, mental, and spiritual existence is dependent upon every single other thing in existence.

How do I reconcile these opposing viewpoints?  By allowing for a Creator that is process oriented, that allows itself to be a part of the Universe, not outside of it.  A Creator that allows its Creations to be a part of it, or more accurately, makes both its existence and the existence of its Creations to be mutually dependent.  We are the manifestation of the Universe trying to understand itself because we are intrinsically a part of the Universe.  If there is no difference between the Universe itself and this thing that everyone calls “God”, then then of course God is a part of the Universe and is affected by it.  We aren’t just made in God’s image, God is made in ours.

I can’t help but be reminded of the Gospel of Thomas as it is paraphrased in the movie Stigmata.

The Kingdom of God is within you
not in houses of wood and stone
lift a stone and you will find me
split a piece of wood and I am there

Seeing the world through the eyes of shunyata doesn’t show me emptiness and nothingness from the Western perspective, it shows me fullness and connection.  The world takes on a depth and breadth that is almost psychedelic, although I have to be open to it.  It’s all too easy to fall back into seeing with shallow, greedy Western eyes.  If people could truly see how much of value is right at their fingertips, they would not yearn for so much materially.  I do not say this with sanctimony, it’s a lesson I’m still learning myself.  All of us in the West have been trained to see the world with material, capitalist eyes and to yearn for what we don’t have, even if we don’t really need it.

If I could pass on just one lesson from the many that I’ve learned, it would be this one, that we are all interconnected with one another and the land we live on.  That realization changes everything, and would be the radical shift needed to effect a great number of needed changes in the world and in our country in particular.  Regrettably, there are still too many who adhere to the notion that they are entirely and independently unique, without connection to anyone else but God themselves.  This is the thinking of a megalomaniac, and we can see the results.

More and more people are coming to this realization of interconnectedness.  I can only hope that there are enough of them to turn the tide, however slowly, away from selfish individuality and towards cooperation on a collective level.  Only by doing this will we be able to solve the problems that are threatening our very existence.