It seems like thereās often a misunderstanding around phrases like āeverything is nothingā or āitās all nothing.ā Many people donāt really grasp what that means because you canāt fully understand it until you see it directly for yourself. Iāve seen this idea thrown around a lot, including on my own blog in the past, and itās easy to confuse the meaning.
For example, when people hear āitās nothing,ā they might think it just means something trivial, like when you stub your toe and the pain fades after a few minutesāitās ānothingā in the sense of being insignificant. But thatās not the kind of nothingness weāre pointing to here.
A better analogy is a dream: you dream at night, and while youāre dreaming, it feels realāthereās a whole story, events, even emotions. But when you wake up, you instantly recognize, āOh, that wasnāt realāit was nothing.ā It seemed to happen, but where is the dream now? Where was it even located to begin with? Can you pinpoint it? Noābecause it arose from nowhere and dissolved back into nowhere. Thatās the kind of nothingness being referred to.
And here's the thing: in dreams, you often know of the happenings in the dream without necessarily being a person in it. You might witness the events without any specific identity or point of view. Even when you think you're seeing the dream āas a person,ā that person is just part of the dreamāitās not who you actually are.
The same applies here: if you think youāre a person, pause and ask yourself, āWho is the one that knows of this person? Who is aware of this body, this mind, this identity?ā If youāre the body, how could you know of it? You can only know of something if youāre not it. For example, you know of your body, your thoughts, your experiencesāso who is the one doing the knowing?
Some might then say, āWell, I know I am awareness.ā But even then, ask yourself, āWho is it that knows they are aware?ā Keep going backwards. No matter how far you go, youāll find that every answer dissolves. Thereās no person doing the knowing, no object that can be pinned down. And thatās the pointāitās not something you can explain in words, because itās not an idea or a thing.
All of this is just an appearanceāarising from nowhere, grounded in nothing. And the moment you directly see this, the misunderstanding falls away effortlessly.