- Introduction: The Philosophical Weight of Nothingness
In every tradition of thought, the question of “nothing” provokes a tremor. To speak of nothingness is to flirt with paradox: how can one speak of what is not? How can one reflect on what refuses to appear, what resists being grasped either as object or concept? In ordinary discourse, “nothing” is a lack, a privation, the absence of something that could or should be present. Yet in the context of spiritual philosophy, “nothingness” is not a deficit but a revelation. It is not the failure of being, but its most radiant unveiling.
Both Unborn Mind Zen and Advaita Vedānta situate nothingness at the center of their soteriological vision, though in strikingly different ways. For Unborn Zen, “no-thing” is the Unborn—a luminous, ever-present awareness that is not an object among others but the groundless ground of all experience. It is “empty” not because it is void of value, but because it is free of all clinging, free of all fabrications, free of every birth and death.
For Advaita Vedānta, the approach to nothingness takes the form of neti-neti—the relentless negation of all predicates: “not this, not that.” What remains when all attributes are stripped away is not a void, but the resplendent Self, Brahman, the Absolute. Here “nothing” functions as a spiritual scalpel: the negation of illusion in order to uncover the only real.
These two articulations—Zen’s “luminous no-thingness” and Advaita’s “negative stripping toward Brahman”—invite comparison, and they invite tension. Zen’s nothingness is not a substance, not an ultimate “thing,” but a radical openness beyond all grasping. Vedānta’s Brahman, while approached through negation, is ultimately affirmed as the one, unchanging Absolute. Both dissolve the world of appearances, but they diverge on what lies “beyond” dissolution.
The deeper question, then, is not merely definitional but existential: what does it mean to encounter nothingness? Is it the recognition that there is no ground, no substance, no permanence? Or is it the unveiling of the ultimate ground, a reality so absolute that it can only be revealed through the collapse of all relative names and forms?
This chapter will trace the role of nothingness across both traditions, not to collapse their differences into an artificial unity, but to allow their distinct approaches to illuminate one another. We will see that nothingness is not a void into which meaning collapses, but a paradoxical fullness—at once the absence of determinate being and the plenitude of unconditioned reality.
- Unborn Mind Zen: “No-Thing” as Luminous, Unborn Awareness
To understand how Unborn Mind Zen articulates nothingness, one must turn to the central teaching of the Unborn. Bankei Yōtaku, one of the greatest exponents of this Zen approach, declared:
“The Unborn Buddha-mind is originally unborn and undying. This Buddha-mind is beyond illusion and enlightenment, beyond birth and death, beyond coming and going.”
Here, “Unborn” does not mean that it is simply prior to birth, as if it were an antecedent substance. Nor does it mean it is destined never to be born, as though it were absent. Instead, “Unborn” means it is beyond the very polarity of birth and death, presence and absence. It is the no-thing that underlies all things precisely by not being a “thing” at all.
This “luminous no-thingness” is not annihilation but immediacy. When one rests in the Unborn, one discovers a reality that is empty of fabrication yet radiant with clarity. Thought subsides, but awareness remains—awareness without grasping, without self-reference, without division.
One might call this “nothingness,” but it is a nothingness more real than any something. It cannot be reified as an object, yet it is the very condition for the appearing of objects. It is like space: without space, nothing can appear, yet space itself is never an object within what it contains.
In this sense, Unborn Zen’s nothingness is not nihilistic, but liberating. To realize the Unborn is to be freed from the tyranny of dualities, from the compulsive identification with the constructed “self,” from the restless grasping of mind. What remains is the open clarity of Suchness, beyond assertion and denial.
- Advaita Vedānta: “Neti, Neti” (Not This, Not That)
If Unborn Zen speaks of nothingness as luminous immediacy, Advaita Vedānta approaches it as a relentless negation. The Upanishadic formula neti-neti—“not this, not that”—is not a denial of reality, but a stripping away of all that is unreal.
The seeker is invited to examine every aspect of experience: body, senses, thoughts, emotions, even subtle states of consciousness. Each is subjected to inquiry: is this permanent? Is this self-luminous? Is this ultimately real? When the answer is no, it is negated: neti, neti.
What remains after the total sweep of negation is not “nothing” in the ordinary sense, but the one reality that cannot be negated: Brahman, pure being-consciousness-bliss (sat-cit-ānanda). The logic here is subtle. The practice of negation brings the seeker to a space that seems empty, bereft of all attributes. Yet this emptiness is itself the gateway to the fullness of the Absolute.
In Advaita, then, nothingness is a method, not a destination. It is the peeling away of the unreal, not the revelation of voidness. Unlike Zen’s luminous emptiness, Advaita’s “nothingness” culminates in the affirmative realization: “That Thou Art” (tat tvam asi).
Still, in the lived practice of Advaita, there is a deep resonance with Zen. For the practitioner, the negation feels like a collapse of the world of appearances, the vanishing of all determinate form, the confrontation with the ineffable. Whether one names what remains as “Unborn clarity” or “Brahman,” the experiential movement through nothingness is unmistakable.
- Śūnyatā and Brahman: Diverging Visions of the Absolute
At the heart of the dialogue between Unborn Mind Zen and Advaita Vedānta lies a crucial question: Is ultimate reality emptiness (śūnyatā) or fullness (pūrṇatā)?
4.1 The Buddhist View: Śūnyatā as Emptiness
In Buddhist thought, particularly in the Mahāyāna traditions from which Zen descends, śūnyatā is the core insight. To say that phenomena are “empty” does not mean that they are non-existent. Rather, it means that they lack any fixed, independent essence (svabhāva). Everything arises in dependence on conditions; everything is interrelated. Because nothing stands alone, nothing can be grasped as ultimately real in itself.
Śūnyatā is thus the antidote to clinging. When one sees that all things are empty, one is released from the illusion of permanence, substance, or selfhood. Freedom arises, not by grasping something ultimate, but by relinquishing the compulsion to grasp at all.
Zen radicalizes this insight by directing attention away from conceptual elaboration and toward immediate awareness. The Unborn is not a new metaphysical principle but the living recognition that nothing can be pinned down—awareness is “no-thing,” yet it shines with unconditioned luminosity.
4.2 The Vedāntic View: Brahman as Fullness
In Advaita Vedānta, by contrast, the ultimate is not emptiness but Brahman, pure being. While the process of neti-neti strips away every finite predicate, what remains is not a void but an irreducible fullness. Brahman is sat (being), cit (consciousness), and ānanda (bliss). It is self-sufficient, eternal, and beyond change.
For Advaita, the world of appearances is indeed unreal (mithyā), much as Buddhism declares it empty. But the negation of appearances leads to the unveiling of a positive Absolute. Nothingness is not the final truth but a threshold through which the fullness of Brahman is revealed.
4.3 The Tension
Here lies the crucial distinction:
* For Buddhism, to posit an ultimate ground—even an ineffable one—is already to fall into grasping. To reify emptiness as a substance would contradict the very principle of emptiness itself. Hence Nāgārjuna’s famous warning: “Those who cling to emptiness are incurable.”
* For Advaita, the refusal to affirm an ultimate reality risks sliding into nihilism. Without Brahman, negation leads nowhere. The Upanishads insist: the seeker does not rest in a void, but awakens to the very essence of existence itself.
The dialogue between śūnyatā and Brahman is thus not merely a scholastic puzzle but a profound difference in spiritual temperament. One finds freedom in letting go into groundlessness; the other finds freedom in awakening to the ground of all.
- Absolute Nothingness: The Paradox of Fullness in Emptiness
To speak of Absolute Nothingness is to enter the realm of paradox. Philosophers like Nishida Kitarō, who sought to bring Zen and Western philosophy into dialogue, described Absolute Nothingness as “the self-identity of absolute contradictions.” It is the nothingness that is not mere negation, but the creative locus from which all things arise (same principle (dark matter) as in the Universe itself).
5.1 Nothingness as Dynamic Potential
In this sense, nothingness is not static emptiness but dynamic openness. It is “no-thing,” and precisely because it is no-thing, it can give rise to everything. The Unborn of Zen expresses this insight: because it is beyond birth, it is the inexhaustible source of all arising.
Advaita, though it uses a different language, converges here in practice. Brahman is not a “thing” among things; it is beyond attribute, beyond category. When approached through negation, it may appear as nothing. Yet this nothing is overflowing with being, consciousness, bliss.
5.2 Fullness and Emptiness as Two Faces of the Same Real
The paradox becomes clear: emptiness and fullness are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they are two faces of what cannot be captured in concepts. To say that ultimate reality is empty is to emphasize its freedom from grasping. To say that it is full is to emphasize its inexhaustible richness.
Zen prefers the language of emptiness to prevent attachment to concepts of substance. Advaita prefers the language of fullness to prevent despair at the apparent void. Both gestures point beyond words, into the heart of the ineffable.
5.3 Living the Paradox
The question, finally, is not which doctrine is correct, but how nothingness transforms the way one lives. In Zen, realizing the Unborn brings spontaneous freedom, compassion, and clarity. In Advaita, realizing Brahman brings peace, non-duality, and bliss. Each tradition insists that the fruit of realization is not speculation but transformation.
Nothingness, in this light, is not a doctrine to be debated but a path to be walked. It dissolves the ordinary sense of self, and in that dissolution reveals a freedom beyond fear, beyond clinging, beyond death itself.
- Experiencing Nothingness in Practice
Philosophy becomes transformative only when embodied. Yet “practice” means very different things in Unborn Mind Zen and in Advaita Vedānta, and even within the Zen world itself.
6.1 Unborn Mind Zen: Remaining Prior-to Phenomena
Unborn Mind Zen is not a matter of posture, ritual, or “sitting in Buddha-nature” as in Dōgen’s shikantaza (just sitting). In fact, it critiques such approaches as mistaking phenomenal activity for the Unborn itself. For Unborn Mind Zen, awakening requires a radical stance of remaining prior-to all arising phenomena:
* Before-thought: The practitioner learns to rest in the Mind before thought arises, where cognition has not yet fractured reality into subject and object.
* Before-birth and death: The Unborn is not a state achieved within time, but the timeless ground untouched by cycles of birth and death.
* Before-form: The Unborn is no-thing, no object, no event. To sit and wait for some mystical arising is to miss it entirely.
Thus, Unborn Mind Zen rejects the equation of enlightenment with formal sitting meditation. While seated posture may serve as a discipline for beginners, true practice is a continuous resting in the Unborn luminous awareness that precedes all mental and physical formations.
The critique of Dōgen is sharp here. Dōgen taught that sitting itself is the full manifestation of enlightenment—that the act of zazen is realization. For Unborn Mind Zen, such a claim risks tying realization to a bodily phenomenon, thereby reducing the Unborn to an event within samsara. Awakening, instead, is to remain ever “prior-to,” a stance available in any situation, not bound to the cushion.
6.2 Advaita Vedānta: Neti-Neti and the Clearing of Self
By contrast, Advaita’s approach to nothingness is a path of rigorous discrimination and negation.
*Discrimination (viveka): The seeker identifies the changing as unreal, the unchanging as real. The body, mind, and emotions are observed as transient.
*Negation (*neti-neti*): Through inquiry, each layer of identity is stripped away: “I am not this body, not these thoughts, not this fleeting sense of self.”
*Brahman revealed: This negation culminates not in a barren void, but in the recognition of Being-Consciousness-Bliss (sat-chit-ānanda). The nothingness here is paradoxically the infinite fullness of the Self.
Advaita thus approaches nothingness as a clearing—created by negation—in which the eternal shines forth. Unlike Unborn Mind Zen, which insists on staying prior-to phenomena without positing an ultimate substrate, Advaita arrives at fullness after negating the phenomenal.
- The Transformative Fruits of Nothingness
Despite different methods, both paths insist that the realization of nothingness transforms the practitioner’s entire way of being.
7.1 Freedom from Birth and Death
*Unborn Mind Zen: By remaining prior-to phenomena, one stands in the Unborn, untouched by birth or death. Fear of annihilation vanishes, since the Unborn was never born.
*Advaita: Through neti-neti, the seeker realizes the Self as Brahman—eternal, indestructible. Death becomes irrelevant to that which is never subject to time.
7.2 Compassion and Non-Dual Love
*Unborn Mind Zen: Insight into the Unborn dissolves all clinging to self and phenomena. Compassion arises naturally, since there is no fixed subject to defend.
*Advaita: Realization of Brahman as the Self in all leads to universal love. To harm another is to harm one’s own deepest Self.
7.3 Ordinary Life Transfigured
*Unborn Mind Zen: Because the Unborn is prior-to every arising, every act—walking, speaking, eating—becomes radiant with its unborn nature. There is no special posture, no privileged moment. Life itself is the play of the Unborn.
*Advaita: The realized one sees Brahman in every form. Even the illusion (māyā) is recognized as nothing other than the Self. Daily existence becomes divine play (līlā).
- Parallels and Convergences
Both traditions converge in their refusal to let the seeker settle into conceptual reification:
*Unborn Mind Zen avoids mistaking sitting or mental states for the absolute, emphasizing the stance of remaining ever prior-to.
*Advaita Vedānta avoids nihilism by affirming that what remains after negation is fullness, not emptiness.
Taken together, these approaches create a dialectic balance:
* Zen negates the temptation to objectify the ultimate.
* Advaita negates the temptation to fall into despair at negation.
- Absolute Nothingness in Modern Thought
The dialogue between Buddhism and modern philosophy reached a profound turn in the work of Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945), founder of the Kyoto School. Nishida’s formulation of Absolute Nothingness (zettai mu) sought to articulate a category beyond both Western metaphysics and Buddhist emptiness, providing a meeting ground where East and West could converse.
9.1 Nishida’s Absolute Nothingness
Nishida’s Absolute Nothingness is not mere negation, nor is it simply Buddhist śūnyatā. Rather, it is:
* The locus of reality: Nothingness is not a void outside phenomena but the very field (basho) in which all phenomena arise and dissolve.
* Self-contradictory identity: Absolute Nothingness includes all opposites without resolving them into synthesis. It is the identity of difference itself—the place where being and non-being interpenetrate.
* Dynamic creativity: Nothingness is not static absence but the inexhaustible source of creativity, out of which every event manifests and into which it returns.
For Nishida, the Absolute is not substance (like in much of Western thought), nor pure emptiness (as sometimes caricatured in Buddhism), but the absolute negation of fixedness—a nothingness that grounds all becoming without itself being determined.
9.2 Heidegger and the Nothing
In parallel, Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) turned to the question of “Nothing” (das Nichts) as a way of breaking Western metaphysics open. For Heidegger:
* The Nothing is not an object among others but the background clearing in which beings show up.
* Anxiety (Angst) reveals the Nothing, as the collapse of familiar meaning opens the abyssal ground of existence.
* The Nothing and Being are inseparable: one cannot think Being without at the same time encountering the Nothing.
Though Heidegger did not identify this with Buddhist emptiness, his reflections on Nothing provided an entry point for Western thinkers to engage with concepts like śūnyatā and Nishida’s Absolute Nothingness.
- Unborn Mind Zen and Absolute Nothingness
How does Nishida’s Absolute Nothingness relate to Unborn Mind Zen’s “no-thing”?
* Prior-to phenomena: Unborn Mind Zen insists on abiding prior-to all phenomena, refusing to identify the ultimate with any positive description or dialectical synthesis. In this sense, it is more radical than Nishida’s effort to name the “place” of Absolute Nothingness.
* Rejection of synthesis: Nishida’s “self-contradictory identity” still offers a conceptual category. Unborn Mind Zen would critique this as too conceptual, arguing that the Unborn cannot be thought or categorized, only realized directly by resting prior-to thought itself.
* Dynamic radiance: Yet both converge in seeing Nothingness as luminous, creative, and not a barren void. Nishida’s Absolute Nothingness is a philosophical mirror of what Unborn Mind Zen calls the radiant, unborn awareness underlying all.
- Advaita Vedānta and Absolute Nothingness
Advaita’s dialogue with Absolute Nothingness is more complex:
* Brahman is fullness: Advaita insists on Brahman as Being-Consciousness-Bliss, not as Nothingness. For Advaita, to call the ultimate “nothing” risks nihilism and denies the fullness of the Self.
* Neti-neti parallels: Yet the method of neti-neti resembles Nishida’s negation of fixedness. By stripping away all predicates, Advaita too points beyond all determinate being.
* Fullness in emptiness: Nishida’s paradox—that nothingness is the most creative source—resonates with Advaita’s teaching that negation leads to the realization of fullness. Both affirm that the clearing of false identities unveils an inexhaustible ground.
Thus, while Advaita and Unborn Mind Zen may both critique Nishida’s conceptual framing, Absolute Nothingness serves as a bridge: it shows how negation, when radicalized, is not sterile but fruitful.
- The Paradox of Fullness in Emptiness
At this point, a striking convergence appears among the traditions:
* Unborn Mind Zen: The luminous no-thing is prior-to all. To rest there is to discover inexhaustible freedom, a kind of fullness within emptiness.
* Advaita Vedānta: Negation of the finite reveals the infinite Self, fullness itself. Emptiness is not final but the doorway to fullness.
* Nishida: Absolute Nothingness is the paradoxical field that gives rise to all being while being no-thing itself.
The paradox is this: Emptiness is not the opposite of fullness but its deepest expression. Nothingness is not a void to be feared but the inexhaustible womb of all reality.
- Toward a Comparative Synthesis
While Unborn Mind Zen would resist Nishida’s philosophical elaboration, and Advaita would resist naming the ultimate as Nothingness, both traditions can still be illuminated by Nishida’s vision:
* For Zen, it shows how “no-thing” can be described philosophically as the ground of creativity.
* For Advaita, it suggests that negation is not sterile but leads to the recognition of fullness as paradoxically arising from emptiness.
* For comparative philosophy, it provides a common language—Absolute Nothingness—that gestures toward what transcends all categories.
- The Unborn as Luminous No-Thing
Unborn Mind Zen places a unique emphasis on the “no-thing” prior-to phenomena. It is not merely the absence of things but the refusal of any identification with things at all. This refusal is not nihilism; it is the discovery of a radiant awareness untouched by arising and ceasing.
* Prior-to thought: In Zen terms, the mind that clings neither to form nor to emptiness abides as unborn clarity. This unborn awareness is not a blank nothingness but the open field of Suchness.
* Freedom from “sitting”: Where Dōgen emphasized embodiment in zazen as the very expression of Buddha-nature, Unborn Mind Zen critiques such an approach as mistaking the phenomenal enactment for the prior-to ground. The true seat of awakening is the unborn seat of awareness itself, not the posture of the body.
* No-thing as inexhaustible: Because the unborn cannot be objectified, it is no-thing. Yet precisely in being no-thing, it is inexhaustibly everything.
In this way, Unborn Mind Zen insists that the deepest freedom is found not in phenomena, nor in an “absolute being,” but in resting prior-to all things in luminous no-thing.
- Advaita’s Neti-Neti: Negating to Reveal Fullness
In Advaita Vedānta, the method of neti-neti—“not this, not that”—strips away every predicate and object until the seeker stands in silence before the Self.
* Negation as path: Neti-neti denies the finite but does not leave the seeker in a void.
* From emptiness to fullness: Once all that is not-Self is negated, what remains is Brahman, pure Being-Consciousness-Bliss (sat-cit-ānanda).
* No-thing as fullness: For Advaita, the “nothing” uncovered through negation is not barren but the most complete fullness, the Self that is infinite, unconditioned, and whole.
Thus, while Unborn Mind Zen rests in “no-thing” as the luminous unborn itself, Advaita uses “no-thing” only as a ladder—climbed and discarded when fullness is realized.
- Śūnyatā vs. Brahman
The distinction between Buddhist emptiness and Vedāntic Brahman becomes sharp here:
* Śūnyatā (Zen): No independent self, no ground as a substance. Emptiness is the radical openness of all things, their lack of self-nature.
* Brahman (Advaita): The Self beyond all predicates, absolute and eternal, fullness itself.
Yet paradoxically, both lead to a similar realization: the transcending of the finite, the dissolution of the ego, and the discovery of what cannot be spoken yet grounds all speech.
- The Paradox of Fullness in Emptiness
A recurring theme across these traditions is that emptiness and fullness are not opposites but two sides of the same coin:
* In Zen: Emptiness (śūnyatā) is fullness in disguise—the unborn radiance manifesting as phenomena.
* In Advaita: Negation of all finite things unveils Brahman, the fullness of the Self.
* In Nishida’s philosophy: Absolute Nothingness is not sterile but the womb of being, the paradoxical identity of opposites.
The paradox is this: when one loses everything—clinging, identity, concepts—one gains the inexhaustible All.
- Toward a Comparative Understanding
By juxtaposing these views, a more nuanced understanding emerges:
* Unborn Mind Zen teaches the practitioner to rest in luminous no-thing, prior-to phenomena, refusing both nihilism and reification.
* Advaita Vedānta teaches the seeker to negate until only Brahman remains, revealing fullness beyond emptiness.
* Nishida’s Absolute Nothingness provides a conceptual bridge, showing how Nothingness can be both negation and dynamic creativity.
* Western echoes in Heidegger reveal that even in European thought, the Nothing is not absence but the horizon of meaning.
Together, these traditions suggest that the role of Nothingness is central not only to Eastern mysticism but to the very structure of human thought about the Absolute.
- Conclusion: The Role of Nothingness
Nothingness, across these traditions, is not the enemy of meaning but its deepest ground:
* For Zen, no-thing is luminous clarity.
* For Advaita, negation unveils fullness.
* For Nishida, Absolute Nothingness is the paradoxical womb of being.
* For philosophy more broadly, Nothingness is the horizon where thought encounters its own limits.
The ultimate paradox is that the Absolute can only be reached through negation—through nothingness. And yet this nothingness is never empty; it is always already full, radiant, and inexhaustible.