Lost In Translation. Śūnyatā — The Line Between Nothingness and No-thingness
When do we know that we have reached the boundaries of language?
Introduction: symbols and interpretation
Every culture has its own art, symbols, values, and meaning systems, which are hard (if even possible) to transmit from one culture to another. Even if we know how to translate words, does it show that we are able to convey the meaning behind them? What if the meaning is to be found not in the words themselves, nor their combination, but in their thousands-year-old verbal or even pre-verbal cultural tradition? No wonder why it is sometimes so hard for us to understand one another. Not all of us share the same cultural context, nor do we have the same education as anthropologists do. Even they get bamboozled when confronted with ways of thinking, acting, or perceiving that exist outside of their immediate cultural circumstance.
“Nature is the shape in which the man of higher cultures synthesizes and interprets the immediate impressions of his senses. History is that from which his imagination seeks comprehension of the living existence of the world in relation to his own life, which he thereby invests with a deeper reality.” — Oswald Spengler
Even though similar symbols, disregarding time and space, can be found in various diverse regions of the world, it doesn’t mean that the meaning ascribed to them is and always has been the same. Take for instance the symbol of a dragon. For the East, it symbolizes the vitality of the swamps, the creature that yields the bounty of the waters and rewards one with power. In most appearances, it is one of the most positive symbols of life and creativity, but the dragon of the West is different.
In Western folklore, the dragon represents greed: a negative, dark and vicious force that guards the treasures that it itself cannot use. In these tales, a hero has to come forth and slay this monster in order to free the virgin who the dragon holds captive and retrieve the hidden treasure which it has kept hoarding. Same symbol, yet two vastly different interpretations, both relevant and appropriate for their own cultural context.
Nothingness — the inherent contradiction
Traveling back in time, I remember the first time I came into contact with the word “nothingness”. For a small kid raised in a somewhat Christian setting, it appeared intriguing. What is this nothingness? If all that I see “is”, is nothingness where it all goes when it disappears? But if it all disappears “into it” that means it “is”, therefore it is not “nothingness”! How bizarre! How can nothingness simultaneously be and not be? Isn’t it an inherent contradiction of both our spoken language and logic altogether?
Lying in bed I tried to imagine the world and its borders. Around those borders, there was the universe: a blackish dotted void, which went on without end… But there has to be an end, doesn’t it? If time is linear (or so most people raised in a Christian setting tend to think) then space has to have a beginning and an end as well, right? So what comes after we reach the end of the universe as we know it? Nothing? By trying to understand that which seemed to be supporting Being itself, I visualized a whiteness embracing the space. But whiteness is not nothingness, it’s whiteness! Thus the problem of incoherence persisted.
Emptiness is form, form is emptiness
Only many years after I became an adult did I encounter the ways of thinking prevalent in the ancient worlds of Greece, Egypt, India, Japan, and China. Concerning the concept of “nothingness” (emptiness, void) it felt like the Buddhists had the most to say about it. Encountering other cultures and their way of thought opened up new pathways for perceiving the same questions which had inhabited my mind earlier. For example, let’s take into account one of the most popular sutras in Buddhism: the Heart Sutra. Part of it reads:
“When Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva was practicing the profound prajnaparamita, he illuminated the five skandhas and saw that they are all empty, and he crossed beyond all suffering and difficulty. Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness; emptiness does not differ from form. Form itself is emptiness; emptiness itself is form. So, too, are feeling, cognition, formation, and consciousness. Shariputra, all dharmas are empty of characteristics. They are not produced. Not destroyed, not defiled, not pure, and they neither increase nor diminish.”
Translating texts from Sanskrit, Pali, or Old Chinese is not an easy task. Much can be lost, especially the eloquent meaning which lies dormant, hidden somewhere in between the lines of a text. Still, to find that meaning, first, there have to be lines, and no other lines, but the right ones. Throughout the years there have been many attempts to translate this sutra into contemporary English while maintaining its meaning as well as it is humanly possible. Back in 2014, a Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh decided to attempt to interpret the Heart Sutra once again. Explaining his reasoning, Aśoka Institute stated:
“The reason Thay must retranslate the Heart Sutra is because the patriarch who originally recorded the Heart Sutra was not sufficiently skillful enough with his use of language. For this reason, it has caused much misunderstanding for almost 2,000 years.”
That is the most prevalent problem of translation: not everyone is skilled enough in terms of language and cultural understanding to translate and transmit meaning adequately. That is one of the reasons why early Christian missionaries used to translate the word “Dao” into “Logos” or “God”, which is both incorrect and misleading. Taking the mission to guide English speakers through the leeways of Buddhism seriously, Thich Nhat Hanh rephrased the old translation of the Tang Dharma Master Tripitaka Hsüan-Tsang in this way:
“Avalokiteshvara while practicing deeply with the Insight that brings us to the other shore, suddenly discovered that all of the five skandhas are equally empty, and with this realization, he overcame all ill-being. Listen, Sariputra. This body itself is emptiness, and emptiness itself is this body. This body is not other than emptiness and emptiness is not other than this body. The same is true of feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. All phenomena bear the mark of emptiness; their true nature is the nature of no birth no death, no being no non-being, no defilement no purity, no increasing no decreasing. That is why in emptiness, body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness are not separate self-entities.”
The bridge connecting language and lived experience
For some, Thich Nhat Hanh’s words might shine more light on how the Buddhists see both “form” and “emptiness”, but for people who cannot yet separate the lived experience from language or concepts, this excerpt might sound like an eloquent wordplay. And that is good! It brings us to the nature of the scripture and the point of its translation.
According to Thich Nhat Hanh and other Buddhist priests alike, “being” and “non-being”, just like “form” and “emptiness” are not more than words, and words in themselves are simply sounds fluttering through the air and bumping into people’s eardrums. Different meaning can be ascribed to those words, but what is truly meaningful is not what lies in them, but towards what they are pointing. Maybe that is one of the meanings that can be retrieved from the Heart Sutra. It is hard to say, for it is just my view, but reality itself both encompasses and transcends all views altogether. As commented in Thay’s translation notes:
“The true nature of all phenomena is the nature of no being nor non-being, no birth and no death. The view of ‘being’ is one extreme view and the view of ‘non-being’ is another extreme view.”
Reality is to be found not in words, but outside of them. The only truthful answer to the question “what is nothingness” or “what is emptiness” is “three pounds of flax”, “wild geese flying through the sky”, or simply — “I don’t know”. An answer such as “I don’t know” is not a mere show of ignorance, but a willingness to look and inquire into the question anew and deeply. Socrates said that he knows that he knows nothing, and that is true. Words are stagnant, the world is changing. The words “changes” does not capture the changes which are taking place, it only points to them. Maybe that is why the Lithuanian philosopher Arvydas Šliogeris on the back of his book “The Silence of Transcendence” inscribed:
“The thought presented in this book is based on a simple belief that is quite obvious to a sane person: thinking and speech are a bridge connecting a person to things themselves. It makes sense to talk only about what is beyond language, because that “beyond” is the true source of meaning in both life and thinking. A person alone cannot create meaning or “conjure” it. Meaning is the gift of transcendence. Beyond speech there is silence, and things rest in its quietness.”
The world does not have borders, words do. Things have frames because thought has placed them there. Thus emptiness is not to be found outside of things, it is to be found outside of language. Both the spoken and the written word always operates in terms of contrasts: black and white, hot and cold, being and not being, but let’s not mistake helpful figures of speech with the phenomena themselves.
There is no nothingness without being and no being without nothingness. They are inseparable, and unfortunately — incomprehensible. Yet, not all things have to be comprehended. Some of them have to be sensed, while others have to be intuited. That is both the power and the wonder of language and the human mind.
In conclusion
Not all knowledge can be found in concepts, and not all of it is to be sensed directly. Some of it has to be intuited. Thus the careful observation of what is visible and presented to us gives us a chance to comprehend it. The way we mould that which we comprehend depends on both our upbringing and the cultural context to which we have been born, not to mention our temperament and its idiosyncrasies.
That which can be described as “the real Truth” is an amalgamation of 8 billion personal truths present today, of those who have lived in the past, and who will live in the future. It encompasses all life forms and at the same time transcends them. It is an enigma that is both alluring and so outside of our reach. It sparks our curiosity and simultaneously transcends both languages and thought. Without it, there would be no creative thought, no “something”, and certainly no “nothing”.
Thus differentiating concepts from our lived experience is a must to understand the thin line between nothingness and no-thingness. One is a figure of speech, another is a way of experience. Both of them are important, yet astoundingly different. So, with which does your attention align? Is there such a thing as “nothingness” or is it all just a sign of our limitation in terms of knowledge, experience, and a form of wordplay?
“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”
That is a phrase attributed to Buddha Siddhartha Guatama Shakyamuni, yet if it was truly uttered by him does not really matter. What matters is the message. Everyone should attempt to think for themselves, and not blindly follow any writers, gurus, or other figures of authority. Therefore I would like to know, what do you think of the word “nothingness”? Is it an important concept, and to what does it allude to you personally? Let me know in the comments down below. Thank you for reading.
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