The other day I received a note from a fellow Zen practitioner. For the tag line he used one of those jokes floating around the web.
“Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkis.”
As I read it I felt a flash of guilt.
I recalled being contacted with an offer of a copy of a book to review. Actually the book has been sitting on my bedside for a while, and as it is essentially a compilation of quotes, I’ve enjoyed dipping into it most nights of most weeks.
But the review just never quite happened.
Well, here it is early Christmas morning. I’m sitting in the family room, the family not yet up, my laptop on my lap, a cup of coffee by my side, and I’m looking at the book.
Journalist Joan Konner conceived of it and edited it.
The title is You Don’t Have to be Buddhist to Know Nothing.
It is a delightful conceit. A compilation of non-Buddhist bon mots, sayings, anecdotes, passing thoughts, all touching upon nothing.
The quotes come from an astonishing range of people. Emily Dickinson, Voltaire, Harold Pinter, Alfred Hitchcock and Kung Fu Panda just barely begin the list…
Among those I really liked is in the section called “cemetery.” Edmond Jabes, a luminary of the twentieth century French Jewish community provides a quote that caught and tickled me. I gather it to be a text from his gravestone, although I might be wrong. I hope I’m not…
“Silence precedes us. It knows we will catch up.”
Konner reflects about the reasons for this book briefly in her forward. It’s an interesting piece that shows some insight into the spirituality of emptiness. She asserts, and for me critically, how her book shows, “if nothing else, that Nothing capital N, exists simultaneously with Everything, capital E.” I consider this insight the foundation of my own life. And it can be the gate to liberation for all of us.
At the same time despite some Thomas Merton and one quote from St John of the Cross, Konner seems to miss the wealth of the Christian apophatic tradition. Actually she doesn’t seem quite to get the religious encounter with nothing and nothingness writ large. She seems to think there is little connection to religion in nothing. Considering the title of the book she makes an assertion I find confusing. “Religion admits no nothing, no uncertainty, no unknown or unknowable.” Konner then says “God appears to fill the void.”
She writes this apparently ignorant of how that ancient and problematic and seriously weird word does indeed point for many to nothing. And then goes on to quote Thomas Merton writing of his own spiritual journey. “From moment to moment I remember with astonishment that I am at the same time empty and full.”
Really a small quibble. And not at all meant to discourage someone from getting this book. The introduction is actually quite intriguing. It suggests a spiritual insight from a non-spiritual person. Which I find delightful. And important.
It has long been my thesis that if the great insights of the Zen way, particularly how we are at once unique creatures precious beyond description and that each of us is at bottom boundless, open, empty, nothing – then that insight should be stumbled upon by people outside the Buddhist world.
Konner shows it is.
I very much recommend this book.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In