Notebook Day #25: Great Accumulation
Day 25 (casting coins): ䷙ - hexagram 26, 大畜/Great Accumulation
Explanation here, keep track of all posts here.
“Sometimes, in darker moments, I was not even sure that I believed any longer in those strange, metaphysical entities we call ‘things’.”
“I closed my eyes and sensed innumerable things coming in and out of existence, surging like the foamy surface of the sea in a brisk storm.”
P. 144 of Sixty-Four Chance Pieces by Will Buckingham
Today I’ve taken two quotes, because it’s my daily writing project and I get to make the rules. Speaking of the rules, I’ve been thinking that I will probably wrap up the project at day thirty-two, this being halfway to sixty-four, and also a neat numerical flip of the ever enigmatic 23.
This question of the existence or non-existence of things is of particular interest to me at the moment. I’m currently reading Seeing that Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising by Rob Burbea, who very sadly passed away just last month. His explication of a Buddhist perspective on emptiness is lucid and rewarding, and if you have even a passing interest I can already strongly recommend it.
The Buddhist perspective seems to be that the question of whether or not things exist is a bit of a red herring. Putting that aside, one finds that investigation of things reveals a fundamental emptiness, which leads to more freedom. This is not just an abstraction — belief in the solidity and unchangingness of things causes suffering, when we cling to self, experience and the world, and they do not deliver what we are looking for. As Burbea puts it:
This mistaken seeing is the deepest level of what the Buddha calls the ignorance or fundamental delusion (Skt: avidya; Pali: avijjā) that we share as sentient beings. We cling, and so suffer, because of the way we see. Although it may not be obvious at first, any clinging whatsoever requires this mistaken intuitive sense – of the reality of what we are clinging to, and of the self as something real and so ‘invested in’ through clinging.
On the other hand, seeing this emptiness does not mean that things don’t exist at all — just that they can be seen as more processual and contingent on cause and effect, more like the ‘foamy surface of the sea’ mentioned above. Burbea goes on to emphasise that this discovery need not lead to nihilism or aloofness, but actually opens up more room for compassion and generosity in the freedom it brings.
There’s obviously a lot more to say, and the book is an invitation to experience these things for oneself. However, as a simple frame for meditation, even this level of understanding is useful, in reminding one to ask two questions of practice: is there freedom, and is there compassion?
