Nothing

It is interesting to me that this is the follow-up topic to fairy dust. It feels right.

In some types of addictions treatment, they say that you have to hit rock bottom before you can truly make life-altering changes concerning your addiction. I have found that as long as there is something left to lose, that's not rock bottom. As long as there is something valuable that can be taken away, people can be manipulated by their fear of loss. But, if you feel like you are at the rock bottom, there is still some solidity there, still some feeling of emotional sensation that can be felt as better or worse. There is still something, maybe seemingly for the first time, to rely on.

If you go beyond rock bottoms, you find nothingness. This nothingness leaves not even the sense of something solid to lie on or fall down to. In my experience, memory has still functioned at these life-moments even though there are moments within that rock-bottomlessness where nothing discernible is functioning mentally. As with many quasi-contemplative or contemplative states, there is often a residual or echo of something from the moment before. Like in dreams, we may see something from earlier in that day or week. When we come home from work, we may bring excitement or disappointment in the front door of our homes with us. The preceding moment usually has some effects that noticeably carry over.

The first time I lost my soul-deep unhappiness in exchange for nothingness, it was horrifying. My mind struggled like a fish whose tail is nailed to the cutting board. You're aware of where you were and where you are and what that means is happening as you gasp for air, thrash, and hope for some miracle. When the knife comes instead of the miracle, depending on your situation, the reality of disappointment may be harsher and more real than the pain of the knife. When you realize that the disappointment and pain go so deep that they mean nothing, not even to you anymore, something completes itself. Not only does the fish get no more air as it is eviscerated, but the disappointment also runs out of air and it breaths no more.

The nothingness is unimaginable.

I've been reading Hui-neng again. Always liked Hui-neng. The first major occurrence once Hui-neng gets to the monastery is that the teacher calls him a barbarian, denies his sense of reality, tells him to shut his mouth, and sends him off to do menial work. This is quite a contradiction to the flash of insight or recognition or realization that comes when Hui-neng hears the Diamond Sutra being spoken (his motivation for completely changing his life and heading for this Zen master).

Hui-neng says, "If you just do not think of anything at all, once all thoughts end you die and come back to life someplace else. This is a big mistake; those who study the Way should think about it."

While I am altering the context to some extent, this was the feeling of coming through the moments of nothingness. There was the lack of air or a total suffocation of spirit (sometimes accompanied by some other sort of pain or suffering), some sort of death and the stillness of death, some strange state in between where there was what I can best describe as glimpses or flickerings of feelings or perceptions or sensations, and the awareness that waking up tomorrow would bring a different "someplace else" but that I would be no wiser, better, no healthier for that change. After the first time, those flickerings felt as if soul or self or whatever was clothing itself once again in its same old trappings--something like a dance of the seven veils in reverse.

Somewhere in the repetitions, you become familiar enough with the process that the surprise lessens; when that happens, the horror begins to drop off; the interest in paying attention to the suffering--the fascination with one's own suffering--begins to fall away. And although there are moments within this moment where there is no attention that can be called as such, there are also moments where--without some previously or instinctively chosen "object" or focus, attention is present. In "Braveheart", we have the William Wallace character find something through the pain of being quartered and he cries out heroically, "FREEDOM!" If the gutting happens, but for some mundane reason like dinner, and if you are something like prey rather than a hero, there is no heroism or other ideas to draw that momentary attention.

Now, if all of this seems melodramatic, it is not far from a great deal of the Theravadin focus on death and decay. We can imagine ourselves a good bit of the way into this process and pair that with analytic meditation. As long as there is some drama to hang our attention on, we can imagine into it. But when it happens often enough, slowly enough, or deeply enough, we are there for the moments of attention as well as everything else I have described. I don't know that it is pleasant or that I recommend this aspect of Theravadin monk training for anyone, but the process is like that which has become somewhat popularly known in the all the assassin movies when the Cleaner comes in to clean up the mess. The bodies must be disposed of, usually in some caustic manner.

In contemplation--spontaneously or intentionally--the body and mind are disposed of. Especially if it is your first time, you may feel a slight burning sensation.

I don't specifically know any Buddhist take on the matter, but if you pay attention during those moments of attention, you may notice some light, almost careless, curiosity. It's without care, but it isn't the common connotative usage of careless. It may be one instance of bare attention--bare due to wearing everything else out rather than some degree of actualization. The sense of utter nothingness provides a great deal or depth of equanimity afterwards. Nothing can be taken from, nothing can harm you because you are already gone. It's like the shadow of prajnaparamita.

Gretel Ehrlich is a fascinating author who has been struck by lightning twice. She said that a cowboy is most like a pile of stones. More than anything else, he makes it through the brutality of the seasons; he lasts. That is the impression afterwards: "I last", or "Awareness lasts." This is different from the more vital "I am" experience. The lasting is more a sense of vulnerability than invulnerability; there is no escape, no way out, no relief available, the wind and rain and cold abide. The word "unremitting" describes everything that is and ever was. The lastingness is different from the equanimity, but the association between them runs deep as the feeling of a razor's edge cutting into the inside of your backbone.

After all of this, the brightness of attention or awareness stands out like the feeling at the end of A DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENOSOVITCH, like if you ran until you collapsed from complete exhaustion--long after running through vomiting and migraine and sunstroke--then a cool breeze blew across the back of your left ear. The equanimity seems less something that came from the nature of the universe or humanity or consciousness and more something that has been hammered into your spine by a sledge with the weight and force of a collapsing star. And you may not know if the lastingness is the greatest blessing that could be given or the harshest sentence even a cruel god could devise.

With all of that, I say smile. But bullshit doesn't mean much here.