Emptiness
"There are some philosophers who imagine we are every moment conscious of what we call 'ourself,' that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence and so we are certain, both of its perfect identity and simplicity. For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call 'myself' I always stumble on some particular perception or other -- of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never catch myself... and never can observe anything but the perception... nor do I conceive what is further requisite to make me a perfect non-entity."
- David Hume, Treatise on Human Nature
Mostly, you, me, and the entire universe are empty - a conglomeration of voids. I don't mean this in a "post-World War II nihilist" sense, but in a purely ontological sense, we now "know" (kudos to Ernest Rutherford) that the atom consists of a superdense, infinitesimally small proton+neutron structure, enveloped by a shell of complete emptiness at least a hundred thousand times larger than it, with a hubbub of electron activity on this void's outer edge. 99.99% of the atom's volume consists of empty space. You should experience this, really:
http://www.phrenopolis.com/perspective/atom/ (It seems to only load properly on Internet Explorer)
The virtual emptiness of the atom is a platitude of chemistry and physics, but I believe on a more metaphysical level that this facet of the way the universe is constructed represents a far more all-encompassing and central aspect of reality. What is emptiness then, really? And what am I getting at with this all in the first place?
Let's take a common everyday object-a bowl for example. How is a bowl empty? Before I pour, let's say, cereal into it, there's "nothing" in the bowl - it contains neither liquid nor solid. But of course it's not "really" empty, the bowl still contains air, in fact it's brimming with it. Even if the bowl were in some kind of a vacuum tube, it would still not be completely empty - it still contains space, light, radiation, and its own substance, naturally. So really when one gets down to it, nothing is ever "empty" in the colloquial sense, but in the sense that I'm using, everything is always empty, because the bowl itself has no inherent existence to it.
This is not to say that the bowl doesn't ultimately exist - things in the world obviously physically exist (sorry George Berkeley!) but simply that there's nothing "inherent" in the bowl, the bowl depends on every other phenomena in the universe for itself to take place as a bowl. Like a mirror, which is nothing by itself but depends on everything around it to give it an identity - it depends on reflecting the world around it to exist but is really "nothing" independently, the bowl's properties and components are neither bowls themselves nor do they imply bowlness on their own. The material is not the bowl. The shape is not the bowl. The function is not the bowl. Only all these aspects together make up the bowl. Hence, we can say that for an object to be a bowl we require a collection of specific conditions to exist. It depends on the combination of function, use, shape, base material, and the bowl's other aspects. Only if all these conditions exist simultaneously does the mind impute bowlness to the object. If one condition ceases to exist, for instance, if the bowl's shape is altered by breaking or melting it or whatever, the bowl forfeits some or all of its bowlness, because the object's function, its shape, as well as the imputation of bowlness through perception is disrupted. The bowl's existence thus depends on external circumstances. Its physical essence remains elusive. This is precisely the opposite of Plato's metaphysics - there's no inherent "ultimate essence" to anything, at all. This is why I'm philosophically perturbed by such concepts as "soul" and "God" and most organized religions but especially Christianity, which is basically Platonism for the masses (although I find all of these fascinating in an anthropological sense), because they depend upon such essentialist notions without considering the vast interconnectedness of all phenomena. Even the concept "essence" doesn't even really make any sense in the constant flux of the real world, when you think about it...
If this is the case for a simple object, such as a bowl, then it must also apply to compound things, such as cars, houses, machines, etc. A car, for example, needs a motor, wheels, axles, gears, and many other things to work. But maybe one could say that in case of a human being, there is a body, a mind, a character, a history of actions, habits, behavior, and other things we can draw upon to describe a person. We can even divide these characteristics further into more fundamental properties. For example, we can analyze the mind and see that there are sensations, cognition, feelings, ideas. Or, we can analyze the brain and find that there are neurons, axons, synapses, and neurotransmitters. However, none of these constituents describe the essence of the person, the mind, or the brain. Again, the essence remains elusive.
Our brain is advanced enough to reflect on its experiences. By means of self-reference we can direct mental activity onto itself. For example, we can think about thought. From this arises a division between subject, percept, and object. The percept is the mental impression, the subject is the owner of it, the thinker, and the object is that which causes the mental impression. This threefold division seems so natural to us that it is reflected in the grammar of most human languages. We perceive the separation of subject, percept, and object as real, because mind attributes an owner to experience and thought. This owner is the "self", the subject, the center of consciousness, the supposed psychological entity. Surprisingly, this entity remains completely undetectable. Body, feeling, perception, and mental formations are not the self. Consciousness is not the self either, otherwise it would follow that the self temporarily ceases to exist during unconscious states, for example during deep sleep.
We might ask how "self" can be independent of a surrounding world. Is it possible for the self to exist in a mental vacuum, a world devoid of sense impressions, thought, and mental images? Would the self not literally run out of fuel if it lacked thoughts and contents to identify itself with or to set itself apart from? It seems there is no basis an independent entity. It seems more that the self is an emergent phenomenon arising from the application of complex interpretative schemes to perception. In particular, it arises from the conceptual division between subject, object, and percept. After studying Zen Buddhism and the likes for quite a while now, I've really come to realize that the "self" and the entire universe is not fundamental...not just in a theoretical way, but in a way that I can live intuitively. It is created by the mind through identification and discernment. The "self" is itself a mental formation - a product of mind. It is therefore empty of inherent existence, just like everything else in the world. Even the atom in quantum physics is merely the outcome of various interactions within and outside of the atom, a cloud of energy that is always "verbing" and never "nouning" - a continual process with no inherent "substance" to it.
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Earth, mountains, rivers - hidden in this nothingness.
In this nothingness - earth, mountains, rivers revealed.
Spring flowers, winter snows:
There's no being or non-being, nor denial itself.
- Saisho (? - 1506)
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"The Infinite" - Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1832)
I always loved this solitary hill,
This hedge as well, which takes so large a share
Of the far-flung horizon from my view;
But seated here, in contemplation lost,
My thought discovers vaster space beyond,
Supernal silence and unfathomed peace;
Almost I am afraid; then, since I hear
The murmur of the wind among the leaves,
I match that infinite calm unto this sound
And with my mind embrace eternity,
The vivid, speaking present and dead past;
In such immensity my spirit drowns,
And sweet to me is shipwreck in this sea.