There Is No "True Nature" Of Reality

[Hyperion]

One of the most widely misunderstood terms in all of spirituality is the Buddhist notion of "shunyata", which is commonly translated as or at least closely associated with words like emptiness, voidness, groundlessness, nothingness and no-self (which is also known as "anatta"). It is often (mis)interpreted as a kind of nihilistic denial of any inherent substance or meaning of reality; but once you become directly conscious of what it actually points to, you realize that it simply means the following:

There is no particular way that reality is.

Shunyata points to the fact that there is no such thing as a specific definable ultimate truth that can be fully cognized, conceptualized and communicated through language; it therefore implies that all definitions (aka. conceptual limitations) of reality are nothing but relative perspectives which are partially true at best and downright delusional at worst. Simply put: Whatever you say about reality isn't it - and also it is, but so is the opposite of whatever you are saying. (Of course, the irony here is that the statement "all perspectives are relative" is itself a relative perspective; this is why Nagarjuna, the famous founder of the Madhyamaka school of Buddhist philosophy, pointed out that "even emptiness itself is empty" and therefore cannot be absolutized.)

So while shunyata should not be mistaken for an affirmation of existential nihilism (which erroneously tries to attach absolute meaning and validity to the relative concept of meaninglessness), it certainly refutes the notion of a concrete ground or essence of reality that you somehow safely "land on" upon enlightenment. Assuming the existence of such a specific definable essence is in fact a rather clear-cut logical fallacy, since it assumes the existence of something which is both absolute and definable. The simple fact of the matter is that the absolute (= undefinable) essence or nature of reality cannot be different from (all of) reality itself, as should be obvious to anyone who is capable of and genuinely open to coherent (meta)logical reasoning.

(Note: When you say that Being is the essence of reality, then that is NOT a definition. Being does not and cannot have an opposite since it is all that there is, meaning that it must include and transcend all possible opposites such as form/formlessness, time/timelessness, oneness/multiplicity, nothing/everything etc. Being is therefore synonymous with the totality of reality. Again, this is not so much an arbitrary opinion as it is a patently self-evident and tautological assessment based on very simple and obvious logic, and I would sincerely invite anyone who somehow feels compelled to argue against it to question their own underlying motives for doing so.)

Of course, the inherently attachment-based ego mind doesn't like to hear any of this. It craves and demands ideological safety, reliability and stability, or in other words: a solid, unshakeable ground that it can build a strong and rigid identity on and thereby keep itself stuck in the treacherous comfort of delusion. And so it will compulsively attack, deflect, distort and/or deny anything that threatens to pull out the rug from under its feet and try at all cost to maintain its dogmatic conviction that "reality is XYZ" and definitely not "not XYZ". You will almost certainly see this play itself out in the replies to this post; there will be plenty of people trying to convince me as well as themselves that I am (absolutely) wrong and they are (absolutely) right and argue until they are blue in the face for the validity of relative positions such as "I am a person", "I am not a person", "I am God", "I am not God", "I exist", "I don't exist", "there is a doer", "there is no doer", "all is one", "all is not one", "there are other minds", "there are no other minds", "reality is physical", "reality is a dream", "reality is logical", "reality is not logical" or whatever other perspectives/beliefs they have built their identity on.

Now, am I saying that I myself am totally free of this kind of argumentative pigheadedness? No, of course not. I assure you that I can be just as gleefully opinionated as the next guy; denying any such tendencies on my part would be just another dogmatic assertion and expression of deep egoic delusion. Besides, as long as reality is being observed and experienced from a certain first-person perspective, there is never going to be a 100% complete absence of attachment to that perspective, however faint and imperceptible it may be. But once this perspective is clearly "seen through" and recognized for what it actually is, there is now an opening where the gradual transcendence of all rigid ego identity becomes possible; where all relative perspectives are perceived as different sides of the same all-encompassing coin; where energetic contractions begin to soften, expand and dissolve, and where you start to taste the indescribable boundless bliss and freedom of tapping into and merging with the ineffable Divine, which is All That Is.

But of course, that's just my perspective. 😘

[Hyperion]

For an even deeper exploration of the dichotomy between relative truth vs. absolute truth, check out this video:

And in case you're curious and interested in hearing more about Nagarjuna's (anti-)philosophy, this video right here does a beautiful job of breaking it down in an easily digestable way: