Nothing Happening

(From the Archive of writings from 2009-2011)

Email conversation with a friend:

Friend: I’ve been doing some research into buddhist teachings from the 6th Patriarch to the 16th Karmapa, and have discovered that nothing happens. Have you ever experienced this nothing happening?

Reply: It’s not an experience – it’s the nature of reality. There is a stillness in which life appears and disappears and leaves no trace. This is only obvious in the absence of identification with part of experience. The sense of being any sort of experiencer is actually part of the experience. This can’t be intellectually understood, or glimpsed and lost, or experienced by anyone. No way to get hold of it, nothing to get hold of and no-one to do it. Which can sound very frustrating!

Friend: I see now that there is a very subtle idea or assumption that I exist as a separate being. This idea or assumption is already here before anything else, and is so pervasive that it is barely seen.

Reply: Beautiful! And there is also an energetic experience which seems to suggest this.  But both the subtle assumption and energetic experience are just part of what’s arising in stillness, like everything else. Nothing appearing as something. So there is still actually nothing happening.