Nothing I Think Therefore I Am Nothing...I Think

While wrestling with Katagiri Roshi's "Each Moment Is The Universe" it suddenly occurred to me that our thoughts come not from the cells of our brains but from the infinitesimally small space between the end of one neuron and the end of another. In our heads we picture this as a kind of chemical or electrical exchange, something like the static arcs shooting between the positive and negative poles of Dr. Frankenstein's reanimator, our thoughts aren't just so many miniature lightning bolts (even though, with our monkey minds we create an awful lot of static for ourselves). No one knows what they are. No one's actually ever seen a thought, where it comes from or where it goes.

Thoughts arise not in the substance but in the empty spaces of our brains. Thus, as the Heart Sutra says, "all things are expressions of emptiness." All our perceptions---even the perception that we are having a perception---arise from this infinitesimal and yet infinite noplace that exists within the few cubic inches of our brains. The whole universe is in there. Now that's a pretty neat trick.

But better still is the fact that we therefore have the ultimate power to perceive what we want to perceive. Perceive love, and love will manifest itself. Perceive a war, and a war you will have.

These perceptions don't really exist, any more than the perceiver---in my case me, in your case you---exists. Nothing exists, but even that nonexistent Nothing is really a Something. A Something which is Nothing.

Thus we have the duality of Oneness, or as Sekito Kisen described it in the "Sandokai": "The Absolute meets the Relative like two arrow points that touch high in the air." In physics we have the lesson of Schrodinger's Cat, who is both alive and dead at the same time---1500 years ago Zen Master Dogo intuited the same concept and gave us a koan, "I Will Not Say"---and the choice is ours.

Knowing that we have full freedom of choice in this Virtual Universe, we can play at anything, because we are the Somethingless Nothing that is contemplating itself.

So, as long as we aren't here, we might as well play nice.