Buddhism 102: Nothingness and Why it is Scientific

The concept of nothingness and emptiness is also something I view as particularly aligned with the scientific method, and my dedication to (and even affection for) the scientific method provided me what seems to me to be an easier springboard for truly understanding - grokking - the concept and embracing it on a deep level. It is a misconception that we discover the truth in science. The reality is actually the exact opposite: we use the scientific method to discover what is not true, and then we move forward with those disproven claims and beliefs excluded from our concept of reality.

I use the analogy of a pie. If we are given an apple pie and told there is a single cherry somewhere within it, how do we find the cherry? Do we point to some random area and declare Here it is!? No, we cut a slice out of the pie and investigate it, and when we find it does not contain the cherry, we repeat the process; we discover where the cherry, the truth, is not and exclude that slice from further consideration. We find the cherry by removing the parts of the pie where it is not, and what remains behind is an ever increasing amount of empty pie tray. 

Emptiness. This describes exactly the same process we go through to seek nothingness and emptiness and void in Buddhism. It is not nothingness in itself; it is the resulting nothingness that remains after we clear away all the falsities and the prejudices and the fantasies and the desires and aversions that our consciousness naturally brings to the table of our conception of reality. All the Sanskrit texts and mantras speak of truth and joy found in the simplest essences of now, when we shed all context, real and perceived, and connect with the immediate moment: the warmth of a sunbeam on our face, a cricket chirping, the sensation of weightlessness from a single jump as we dance, the watershed of physical tension from a single inhale during meditation. These are not nothing in themselves, but single things we experience intensely when we make everything else into nothing, when we carve away everything else as if we could carve away the entire rest of the pie in a single cut and leave only the cherry.

Nothingness is also the removal of vanity and self-focus which is inherent to the entire evolutionary process. As Sri Sri Ravi Shankar states in his 3 Principles of Meditation - "I want nothing, I am doing nothing, I am nothing" - approaching nothingness is merely the process of shedding that which is not the simplest essence of being.
  • "I want nothing"
    • Shed the evolutionary drivers of self: self-preservation, food, sex, not to mention all the bullshit desires and aversions
    • Nothing is what remains when other wants are removed
  • "I am doing nothing"
    • Shed the sense of needing to be doing something, anything, else, related to attaining the above (desires) or to avoiding the lack thereof (aversions)
    • Identify with the idea that this moment is not a springboard to something else, rather it is the very focus: the "doing" of nothing is the essence of "am", of being in this moment
  • "I am nothing"
    • Shed the very concept of the self itself
    • There is no self, no "I" behind the eyes. The very thing which needed to shed the wanting and the doing is an illusion. It is nothing more than the focus module of consciousness, just one of dozens of modules that regulate everything from focus to heart rate to insulin levels. It is not a tangible entity in itself; it is merely a subset of the millions of simultaneous electrical impulses firing in the brain.
Once all this is "accomplished", the only module of the brain which receives any amount of CPU power from the focus module is the focus module itself, and if/when this is actually accomplished, that state is enlightenment. Pure consciousness: consciousness which is undisturbed by being aware of anything other than itself. Again, not a thing in itself but a resulting state that arises when all the other pieces of consciousness pie have been carved away. This is the essence of "to be": the unconscious modules like heart rate and insulin level regulation - the biological processes required to maintain the "living" state of the organism - continue to function, but there is nothing in consciousness but consciousness itself. 

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