Meditation in the gap between

Nothingness carries being in its heart. — J.P. Sartre 

The wave does not need to die to become water. She is already water. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The space between the in-breath and out-breath, or between heartbeats, or neurons, or one thought and another can all be thought of as a kind of nothingness. But amid these gaps in our biological and psychological existence, form rises up, experienceable as cognition, respiration, sensation, and circulation. As the rests between musical notes engender melody from noise. Many of us meditate to relax, but, for some, meditation also becomes a gateway into expansive, restorative nothingness. Is it possible to become as interested in the mundane bits of “negative being” as by the flashy expressions of existence that populate our inner and outer reality? 

If the Buddha and (some) existentialists are to be believed, there’s a sense in which we are reborn in these gaps of in-between nothingness, for instance, the space between thoughts. From this perspective, conscious awareness isn’t merely a dumb backdrop that provides framing for our inner and outer reality, but, rather, the very medium upon/in which the reality we experience is able to take sensible form. And as the subatomic particles that create our physical reality sort of blink in and out of existence—despite our common-sense experience of a substantive and constant physical reality—so too our sense of ourselves as reliably continuous can be revealed—sometimes through meditation—to be a kind of illusion. One’s very existence as this who-I-am, then—these living beings we “normally” feel ourselves to be— always already includes elements of negation, nihilism, “death.” 

When we train ourselves to notice it, we may feel astonished at how/that our in and out breaths depend upon the implicit, but usually ignored, blank fulcrum between inhalation and exhalation, as a bird flying overhead takes form from the naked expanse of sky surrounding it. To paraphrase Sartre, when I walk into a crowded cafe, it is thanks to all that is not-her that I am able to pick my friend out of the plenum. From our “normal,” human point of view, this occurs in an unremarkable instant. Our bias toward “positive being” is so pronounced and habitual that we tend to overlook the “empty” ground from which it arises, the nothingness that is, perhaps, more true to reality’s ultimate nature than what we experience as ebullient, teeming, effervescent “life.” 

A potential side effect of meditation that leans into nothingness is that, if only for a “moment,” the “blank spaces” of being—the chasms and lacunae—are revealed as no less momentous, no less (or more) eternal than those more insistent, self-announcing forms of existence. While all that obviously IS shows up like Times Square on steroids, we can learn to commune with the little nothings, that which usually goes unbidden and unnoticed, like the bacteria and parasites that form so much of our visible biological organism. And to catch a glimpse of oneself as a kind of epiphenomenon of all that one is NOT can help loosen limiting identity ties. Why should I attach myself so doggedly to the narrative sinew that stitches me so loosely and temporarily into who-I-am? Why should I fear falling back into the ocean of nothingness that gives rise to the illusory wave of me? 

For lots of good reasons, most of us learn to meditate by focusing diligently on the breath, but this is not because the breath is more worthy of notice than the nothing-space between breaths. In fact, some Buddhist traditions hold that it is a fecund nothingness that ultimately anchors reality, almost like an underwater ice mass forms the root of an iceberg’s relatively tiny visible tip. But even so, it is the breath that promises a comforting, rhythmic, reliable familiarity. The beingness of breath is simply so very there for us—like the heartbeat of a mother or a lover—while nothingness sits patiently on the porch, invisible and unnoticed, waiting to be invited in.

If you’d like to be notified by email of new posts, hit the menu button above to find the link to subscribe.