While I was in Germany on my current European tour, I found a special double-disc edition DVD of the Godzilla movie commonly known in the US as Monster Zero. This version has a bunch of extras available only in Germany and I’m a geek so I bought it. In Germany the movie, originally called Kaiju Daisenso (The Great Monster War) in Japanese, was titled Befehl Aus Dem Dunkel, or “Command from the Darkness.” The title refers to the plot of the movie in which we Earth people receive a message from an alien race requesting us to loan them Godzilla to help them defeat an even scarier monster on their planet. It can also be sung to the tune of this Guns and Roses song.
I like that title. It’s very evocative. The first person I asked mistakenly translated it as “Message From the Darkness,” which is even better. A message, a communication, from that which is unknown, perhaps even unknowable.
In Zen, we often talk about emptiness. But we could use other words. St. John of the Cross wrote about unknowing. Lately I’ve been talking about silence. We could refer to the same idea by calling it darkness. We’re trying to indicate the area of life, the universe and everything that we cannot express in words.
There’s a recent scientific theory that emptiness gave rise to the universe of form. The idea of the Big Bang has been widely accepted for decades now, but nobody can explain where that tiny little ball of stuff that exploded into the universe as we know it came from. Now some folks are saying that maybe emptiness itself gave rise to its opposite.
They only need a little more coaxing to make the leap that the Buddhists made a thousand years ago, that what we know as form didn’t just derive from emptiness. It is emptiness. One of the manifestations of absolute nothing is this world, is you and me.
Silence or emptiness is the most powerful thing there can be. Nothing can ever harm it because it is nothing. Nothing can escape it. Silence underlies everything. Silence is the basis of all sound. It’s there even in the loudest place there is. Emptiness is the basis of all form. Emptiness is what allows form to be form. Form is what allows emptiness to be emptiness.
Everybody wants to know what will happen after they die. We fear death. We fear the darkness, the silence. In the novel John Dies At The End by David Wong, a character says, “You’re going to die, Arnie. Someday, you will face that moment. Regardless of what you believe, at that moment you will either face complete nonexistence, which is something you can’t possibly imagine, or you will face something even stranger that you also can’t possibly imagine. On an actual day in the future, you will be in the unimaginable, Arnie. Set your mind on that.”
Darkness, or silence, or emptiness is the unimaginable. It’s beyond our ability to comprehend. Or maybe it’s not. Kobun Chino Roshi talked about what he called “the other side of nothing.” He said, “Wanting to be alone is impossible. When you become really alone you notice you are not alone. You flip into the other side of nothing, where you discover everybody is waiting for you. Before that, you are living together like that — day, sun, moon, stars, and food — everything is helping you, but you are all blocked off, a closed system. It is very important to experience the complete negation of yourself, which brings you to the other side of nothing. People experience that in many ways. You go to the other side of nothing, and you are held by the hand of the absolute.”
The silence we fear is the basis of ourselves and of everyone and everything else there ever was, will be, could be or isn’t.
There is no reason to fear complete nonexistence. Complete nonexistence is what you are made from.
Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form.
This is a message from the darkness. A message from that part of ourselves which is darkness, which is silence, which is the unknown and unknowable.
But rather than being from aliens asking us to lend them Godzilla, it is ourselves telling ourselves that there is nothing to fear, nothing to run from, nothing to fight against. That which terrifies us more than anything else is just ourselves. Our infinite and nonexistent selves.
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If I had a child, I get him to read that to me at bedtime, with some cottleston pie.
Cheers
Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie.
A fly can’t bird, but a bird can fly.
Ask me a riddle and I reply:
COTTLESTON, COTTLESTON, COTTLESTON PIE.
Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie.
A fish can’t whistle and neither can I
Ask me a riddle and I reply:
COTTLESTON, COTTLESTON, COTTLESTON PIE.
Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie.
Why does a chicken, I don’t know why.
Ask me a riddle and I reply:
COTTLESTON, COTTLESTON, COTTLESTON PIE.
Gassho
Eye’d listen like a typo, halfway down the stairs.
Emptiness is so awesome that someone should make a religion out of it. Why? Cuz sheepies need a fence.
Typing furniture!! Gooood typing. Gassho
Oh, me so empty!
Emptiness is awesome, but it’s no cure for Blueballs.
Godzilla is emptiness, Zafu is form.
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oh! the sixty characters rule is in abeyance
One problem with equating new physics discoveries as explained to the masses to age old philosophical metaphors is that while philosophical metaphors (form is emptiness, emptiness is form) are made of natural language which is imprecise, physics theories are made of mathematics which is very precise. So while on the outside it may seem that physicists today are talking about the same thing that hindus/buddhists/kabbalah were talking were talking about hundreds or thousands of years ago you can’t really make the claim unless you understand precisely the underlying mathematics. To compare equations of physics theories to words in the english language and claim they say the same thing is … well, to quote one famous philosopher of ages past, the question does not fit the case.
Emptiness vs Monster Zero
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
Emptiness vs Zero Defex
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJH6_HEG-7Y
“This is a message from the darkness. A message from that part of ourselves which is darkness, which is silence, which is the unknown and unknowable.”
The state of unknowing doesn’t send a message because there’s no one to send it, and the conditioned self which could receive it, is incapable of making sense of it.
The state of unknowing is being.
So the unknowing itself is a state of being without parameters defining its state.
It is beyond natural language, mathematics and conceptual meaning.
Knowing/unknowing is the fence that contains the sheeps.
Knowing is one parameter. Unknowing is another parameter.
Silence (unknowing) vs Zero Defex (knowing)
Of course it is an imaginary fence. It doesn’t need to be real to be meaningful.
The paradoxes of self reference are not difficult.
Hard to think with Zero Defex in the background (maybe that’s the idea):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF9Undn7a-A
I put it like this to a friend, based on Genjo-koan:
“Finding your place where you are, practice occurs, and the activity of being alive where you are is set in motion. That’s how I read actualizing the fundamental point, and the fundamental point is the singularity of being where you are (unless the connection between your vestibular organs, your proprioceptors, and your eyes is damaged, in which case you might find yourself being in two places at once).
Finding your way at this moment, practice occurs; things enter into the place where you are, at this moment, and practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point.
The fundamental point doesn’t appear in the third of Dogen’s summary lines. If the inconceivable were the fundamental point, finding your place where you are or finding your way at this moment would suffice. Yes, you’re right, the wind that reaches everywhere is like empty space, but how does empty space actualize immediately? For me, this experience comes out of the nature of breath, when my feeling for what affects this breath extends out beyond the boundaries of the senses (including the mind- hence, the inconceivable).”
emptiness = outside the boundary of the senses
The wind reaches everywhere; “there is nowhere that the wind does not reach” moves the arms and legs as well as sits the posture- even if you do watch out (I blame Zero Defex).
Zero Defex vs Monster Zero
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEyeeEYDKYo
The Darkness vs. giant crustaceans…Love wins!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRYNYb30nxU
Got Marshalls?
Great youtube solution to the equation Mumbles, I was watching this yesterday, this is the other video that I think fits best with the poster at least, cosmonaut and everything…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwH1g2fW6Pc
No boundaries,
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/science-will-never-explain-why-theres-something-rather-than-nothing/
The truth is stranger than imagination, or is imagination stranger than truth, either way it’s all infinite and nonexistent.
Great post Brad, nailed it.
Got Ampeg?
Message from the Darkness
Massage form emptiness.
Hey, isn’t that bass player from Zero Defex the same guy who does the warm-up sketch on the Zafu show?
Blueballs vs Keith Richards
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
Of course!– peace and happiness can only be gained through realization, through understanding!
There’s an objective reality right in front of me, let’s dance!
Kidding. Ok, I’ll admit I stopped there, maybe he pulled a rabbit out of the hat later but I couldn’t go on listening.
Emptiness sits, emptiness walks. “People who are moving around outside all sit with you. They don’t take the sitting posture!”, as Kobun put it. Although actualized immediately, the inconceivable (beyond the boundaries of the senses) may not be readily apparent:
“The idea of the Big Bang has been widely accepted for decades now, but nobody can explain where that tiny little ball of stuff that exploded into the universe as we know it came from. ”
The explanation for that “ball of stuff” is blue balls. That is why the orgasm is such a mind altering event. We are in essence re-enacting the birth of our universe and the beginning of the present kalpa. This cycle of blue balls, release, and decay, will repeat until every last one of us realizes the fundamental principle.
http://www.getthebigbang.com/
Actually it’s only as powerful as your belief in it, and is weakened by meaninglessness or lack of belief.
“All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.”
~ Peter Pan
This moment.
Darkness always gives massage.