The Doorway to Emptiness

Church of Saint-Pierre-de-Curtille – France

An inquiry into what we are, and what there is, really boils down to finding out what emptiness is. It boils down to nothing. It boils down to the realisation that we’re not in the picture. We’re nowhere to be found. We are in reality an absence. This is the truth. What truly is is an isn’t. For the simple reason that no-thing owns its own ‘isness’, and no-body owns its own ‘amness’. So this ‘isn’t’ or ‘am not’ gives way to the only thing that can ever be. A reality that is the true and only one reality in presence. Nothing else but this, is. This reality or absence is supreme presence, supreme being. And this absence can only be known by being of it, which means being yourself as empty as this emptiness is. For true being is always about noticing first that ‘I am not’. You can only apprehend the truth of emptiness by being yourself empty of anything that exists in separation. That’s how you can be naked being, by being yourself stripped of anything that can be without nakedness. You have to give yourself away. That’s the only way to truly be. Every form of objective existence is only the product of a belief, of a thought, an image that you have invented to reify yourself. That’s how you become a mere thing separate from other things. And that’s how you become a fearful, suffering, lacking entity or self. By being something. A ‘something’ that can never be enough, never be whole. For ‘something’ is the signature of separation, and is a form of death.

Wholeness, and therefore peace, can only be found in emptiness, no-thingness, non-separate-beingness. In a way, only non-being can you ever truly be. Only the ungraspable can you ever truly grasp. Because you are naturally and fundamentally of it. Your deepest self is made of that empty being. Otherwise you remain a stranger, a thing existing alongside many other things. If you want to know what life is, if you want to be of it, an intrinsic part of it, and feel the aliveness contained within it as your own, you have to become as life itself: undefinable, ungraspable, non-existing, non-objectifiable, empty. That’s the doorway. Life’s secret is to be found in its very substance, its very making as pure, empty being. Everything that come to exist or appear ceases being alive. It separates from life and becomes something doomed to disappearance, and to death. But the essence of your utmost being is found in eternity, in no-thingness. This is ultimate death. A death that is so profound, so effective, that it cannot be found in disappearing, but in truly being. Ultimately, death is the signature of being. That’s where life hides itself — in death. In formlessness. Emptiness. Nothingness. That’s where you will find it. But let yourself be the least little thing, the tiniest appearance, the remotest person, and pure being will remain to you a thing unknown. No thing or person have a reality of their own. Forget that idea. Absence is the only door or access to your true nature, to the knowing of your self. Absence is the very home and address of being. And your absence is your knocking at its door. Then you might find out: the door was never there. It was emptiness, nothingness all along. That’s how a world can be given birth to. On account of this emptiness. And this emptiness is you at your fullest.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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