On the utility of not-being

On the utility of not-being:
Thirty spokes unite around the nave;
From their not-being (loss of their individuality)
Arises the utility of the wheel.
Mold clay into a vessel;
From its not-being (in the vessel’s hollow)
Arises the utility of the vessel.
Cut out doors and windows in the house (wall),
From their not-being (empty space)
Arises the utility of the house.
Therefore by the existence of things we profit.
And by the non-existence of things we are served.

The deepest core of being is non-being. The foundation of isness is nothingness. And when I say nothingness I don’t mean nothingness – I only mean no-thingness.

Form exists on the base of the formless. The form comes out of the formless just as waves come out of the sea, and then the form drops, dissolves into the formless again. The name arises out of the nameless, falls back, returns to the original source, becomes nameless again. Life arises out of death and moves to death again. The very basic thing to remember is that these opposites are not opposites, they are complementary. Death is not against life, nonexistence is not against existence, non-being is not against being. They are two polarities of the same phenomenon, which transcends all understanding.

Sometimes it expresses itself as being and sometimes as non-being, but it is the same that expresses in both. This has to be understood as deeply as possible because your whole sadhana, the whole effort towards ultimate understanding, will depend on it. Unless you are ready to become non-being you will never become a real authentic being. It looks like a paradox.

Jesus says to his disciples: Unless you lose yourself you will not gain yourself. If you cling to yourself you will be destroyed, if you don’t cling you will be saved. He is saying that if you move into non-being, only then is the being saved.

In India there exists a very old and very beautiful parable in the Upanishads.

A great sage, Uddalaka, was asked by his son, Shvetketu, “Father, who am I? What is it that exists in me? I try and try, I meditate and meditate, but I cannot find it.”

Shvetketu was a small child but he raised a very very difficult question. Had somebody else asked the question, Uddalaka could have answered easily, but how to help a child to understand? And he was asking the greatest problem that exists.

Uddalaka had to create a device. He said, “You go there, yonder, where you see the nigrot tree and you bring a fruit from it.”

The child ran; he brought a small fruit from the nigrot tree.

The father said, “Now you cut it. What do you see inside it?”

The child said, “Millions of small seeds.”

The father said, “Now you choose one seed and cut that seed. Now what do you see in it?”

The child said, “Nothingness.”

The father said, “Out of that nothingness arises this big tree. In the seed just at the center exists nothingness. You cut it – there is nothing, and out of that nothingness arises the being of this big tree. And the same is true with you, Shvetketu.”

And one of the greatest sayings ever uttered by any human being was born: Tattvamasi, Shvetketu – “That art thou, thou art that, Shvetketu.”

You are also that nothingness which exists just at the heart of the seed. Unless you find this non-being within you, you will not attain to authentic truth. Then you can move in theories, then you can philosophize, but you will not realize.

The boy meditated on his nothingness and he became very silent. He contemplated, he enjoyed this nothingness, he felt it very deeply. But then again a question arose. After a few days he came to the father again, and he said: “I can feel, but things are still not very clear, they are vague, as if a mist surrounds everything. I can see that out of nothingness everything is born, but how does nothingness mix with thingness? How does isness mix with nothingness? How does being mix with non-being? They are paradoxical.”

The father was again in difficulty – whenever children raise questions it is very difficult to answer them. Almost ninety-nine per cent of the answers that grownups give to children are false – just face-saving devices. You deceive. But Uddalaka didn’t want to deceive this child. And his curiosity was not only a curiosity, it was deep inquiry. He was really concerned. His body may have been that of a child but his soul was ancient. He must have struggled in the past, tried hard to penetrate into the mystery. He was not just curious – he was authentically concerned. It was not just a vagrant question in the mind, it was very deep-rooted.

The father said, “You go and bring a cup of water. “

The boy fetched a cup of water.

Then the father said, “Now you go and bring a little sugar.”

He brought the sugar, and the father said, “Mix them both.”

The sugar dissolved into the water, and the father said, “Now, can you separate the sugar from the water?”

The boy said, “Now it is impossible. I cannot even see where the sugar has gone.”

The father said, “You try.”

The boy looked into it but he couldn’t see any sugar; it had dissolved, it had become water.

Then the father said, “You taste it.” The boy tasted, it was sweet. And the father said, “Look, just like this. You may not be able to decide what is being and what is non-being; they are melting into each other just like water and sugar. You can taste and you can know that this water contains sugar. You may not be able to separate them right now – in fact nobody can ever separate them because they are not separate.”

Water and sugar can be separated – that was just a device to make the child understand – but non-being and being cannot be separated, life and death cannot be separated. It is impossible. They are not separate, how can you separate them? They always exist together. In fact to say that they exist together is not to say it rightly, because the very word “together” carries the concept of twoness. They are not two, they are one. They only appear two.

From where have you come? Have you ever pondered over this very basic problem? – from where have you come? Nothingness. Where are you moving, where are you going? Nothingness. From nothingness to nothingness… and just in between two nothingnesses arises being. The river of being flows between two banks of nothingnesses. Being is beautiful, but non-being is also beautiful. Life is good, but death is also good – because life cannot exist without death. Ordinarily you think that death is against life, that it destroys. No, you are wrong. Without death life cannot exist for a single moment. It supports it. It is the very base. Because you can die, that’s why you can live.

Life and death are not two things but two wings – two wings of the same phenomenon. Science has always thought that religion talks in paradoxes, is irrational, illogical. But just within the past few years in science, particularly in physics, a phenomenon has arisen which can be very helpful to understand this meeting of being and non-being. The phenomenon is called the black hole. Science has come somehow to feel that in space there exist a few spaces which are holes, black holes – non-beings. In the beginning it was difficult to conceive of it but now, by and by the concept is becoming clearer and clearer – because science also feels that everything exists with its opposite. How can existence exist without nonexistence? Life exists with death, love exists with hate, compassion with anger – how can existence just exist without nonexistence being there, somehow involved in it? It has to be there. They searched, and now a man has got a Nobel prize for the discovery of the black holes. The black holes are non-existential holes in space where nothing exists, not even space. And they are very dangerous phenomena because if something goes into a black hole it simply disappears, because the black hole turns everything into nonexistence. […]

Try to understand Lao Tzu’s sayings. On the utility of not-being he says:

Thirty spokes unite around the nave;
From their not-being (loss of their individuality)
Arises the utility of the wheel.

A wheel moves because in the nave, in the center, there is emptiness. If there is no emptiness in the center the wheel cannot move. It moves on emptiness.

Mold clay into a vessel;
From its not-being (in the vessel’s hollow)
Arises the utility of the vessel.
Cut out doors and windows in the house (wall);
From their not-being (empty space)
Arises the utility of the house.
Therefore by the existence of things we profit.
And by the nonexistence of things we are served.

This is how one can become total and whole, and to be whole is holy for Lao Tzu. There is no other holiness. It is not a cultivation of religious ritual, and it is not even a cultivation of morality. It has nothing to do with character. Holiness means a life that is whole, a life that has not denied anything, a life that knows no denial, a life that has not said no to anything, a life that accepts, accepts the opposites, a life that doesn’t choose. A life that is choiceless is holy. Holy comes from the same root as whole. If you are whole you are holy, and if you are whole it means you are at the same time life and death also. You don’t hide the fact of death and you don’t try to hide your inner hollowness, emptiness. You don’t try to fill it with rubbish. You enjoy the purity of emptiness also. Nothing is as pure as emptiness, nothing can be – because whenever there is something, impurity enters. Only emptiness can be absolutely pure.

But we are so afraid of emptiness. People come to me and say it is so difficult to be alone because one starts feeling one’s emptiness. Then you seek friends, then you seek lovers, and the whole effort from the very beginning is doomed, because a man who is afraid of his emptiness cannot really love. He is afraid. Deep down there is fear. How can he love? When he moves and pretends that he is in love with somebody he is just trying to escape from himself, his own emptiness. He is trying to forget that somewhere inside there is emptiness and nothingness. He is trying to fill that emptiness by somebody’s presence – and the other is also doing the same.

So almost ninety-nine per cent of the love affairs on this earth are false. Sooner or later you come to realize that they have been deceptive. Lovers come to realize that they have been deceived, fooled. But they think that the other has fooled them, they never think that they have also done the same thing to the other. And they don’t understand the misery of human beings and their stupidity; if they understood their own stupidity, what they are doing, they would be able to feel compassion for all. When you cannot be alone, silent, it means you are afraid of your loneliness, you want to fill it by somebody. You pretend. The other is also doing the same with you, he cannot be alone. Two persons who cannot be alone are trying to be together; now this is going to be a miserable phenomenon, a hell.

If you cannot love yourself in your loneliness, how can the other love you? How can you expect anybody to love you if you cannot love yourself? If you are so fed up with your loneliness, sooner or later the other will also be fed up with your loneliness. You cannot fill it, it is something that cannot be filled. It is something that exists as part of your being – you cannot fill it, it has to remain empty. It will remain empty. All efforts fail to fill it.

So the first thing is to get in tune with this emptiness, to allow it, to live it. Don’t suppress and don’t escape. Feel it, enjoy it – and by and by you will understand the beauty of it. Once you understand the beauty of your loneliness it becomes aloneness. Then it is no more empty, then it is no more nothingness. Then it is a purity – it is so pure that it is formless. […]

Osho, Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 1, Ch 7 (excerpt)