Nothingness

In this recording, Traktung Rinpoche graciously discusses nothingness as the essence of reality.

We are blessed to have yet another sublime teaching to enlighten our minds. Enjoy!

One way that we approach the understanding of nothingness from a Western religious context is the conversion of St. Paul on the road to Damascus where he fell down and was blinded by brilliant light. Meister Eckhart’s description of this gives us some crucial insight into this Divine mystery:  

"Paul rose from the ground and with open eyes saw nothing. I think this text has a fourfold sense. One is that when he rose up from the ground with open eyes, he saw Nothing, and the Nothing was God; for when he saw God, he calls that Nothing. The second: when he got up, he saw nothing but God. The third: in all things he saw nothing but God. The fourth: when he saw God, he saw all things as nothing."[1]  

These four statements about what St. Paul meant are all correct and true simultaneously. This is what is meant and understood by Divine nothingness.
[1] Meister Eckhart, The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, trans. Maurice O’C. Walshe (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2009), 137.