You Don't Have to Be Buddhist to Know Nothing

“Nothing is the force that renovates the world.”
— EMILY DICKINSON

Buy now on Amazon.com:

In Coverline Design’s Gripping on Nothing: Research Into the Concept of Nothingness, Katarzyna Matuszewska writes about the difficulty of researching nothingness and cites Joan Konner as an expert on nothing.

“Joan Konner – the author of You Don’t Have to be Buddhist to Know Nothing: An Illustrious Collection of Thoughts on Naught – is another influential expert on nothingness. She claims that “the concept of Nothing, in Western thought, is a paradox. We simply cannot accept, no less conceive of, the paradoxical concept that ‘Nothing exists’. (…) In the material world, which we inhabit, the very words ‘Nothing exists’ are a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron.”

From the book review by Wisconsin Bookwatch, a monthly library newsletter of book reviews generated by the editorial staff of the Midwest Book Review for titles
in all genres and categories.

“Nothing is more than nothingness. “You Don’t Have to be Buddhist to Know Nothing: An Illustrious Collection of Thoughts on Naught” is a discussion of the concept of nothing, tracing the history of nothing, as many minds come together and discuss nothing. As these assorted individuals come into a collection compiled by Joan Konner expertly, “You Don’t Have to Buddhist to Know Nothing” is nothing more than utterly fascinating, and highly recommended.”

Beliefnet.com showcases a gallery of quotes from You Don’t Have to Be Buddhist to Know Nothing.

“I found it hard to sober up from the intoxication of the void.”

—André Malraux, Anti-Memories, p. 65

From the book review in the Sydney Morning Herald:

“Now here, for those friends and family members who go “Bah! Humbug!” at the mention of Christmas, is a very alternative gift.

Joan Konner, who scored a US bestseller with The Atheist’s Bible, has edited an eclectic and unusual collection of quotations all dealing with the complex issue of “nothing”. They range from the epigrammatic (Oscar Wilde’s famous “I love talking about nothing … it is the only thing I know anything about”) through the beautiful (Omar Khayyam’s “The Stars are setting and the Caravan/ Starts from the Dawn of Nothing/ Oh, make haste!”) to the poetic (D.H. Lawrence wrote: “The end of the rainbow is the bottomless gulf down which you can fall forever without arriving, and the blue distance is a void pit which can swallow you and all your efforts into its emptiness, and still be no emptier”) and, of course, Samuel Beckett with such misanthropic gems as “The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.”

This is just the present for those who feel they should celebrate nothing during the festive season.”

BBC producer John Lloyd gives humorous insights on the invisible in this TED talk.

You Don’t Have to Be Buddhist to Know Nothing was reviewed in the blog Monkey Mind, written by James Ford.

“It is a delightful conceit. A compilation of non-Buddhist bon mots, sayings, anecdotes, passing thoughts, all touching upon nothing.

The quotes come from an astonishing range of people. Emily Dickinson, Voltaire, Harold Pinter, Alfred Hitchcock and Kung Fu Panda just barely begin the list…”

You Don’t Have to Be Buddhist to Know Nothing has been included in Bill Moyers’ Best Books of 2009.

“This little book, conceived and edited by my longtime friend and collaborator Joan Konner will surprise you with absolutely Nothing. Read it — and Nothing happens. Nothing is the joy of it.”

Joan Konner’s interview with Joan Hamburg will be broadcast this Thursday December 3, 2009 at 1PM EST on WOR 710. The interview will be streamed live on the WOR website.

Once you start noticing Nothing, you see it everywhere. In a recent New York Times Week in Review piece, “Naming the ’00s,” exploring the “pithy, reductive phrase that somehow encapsulates the multitude of events, trends, triumphs and calamities of the past 10 years,” the science fiction writer David Brin offered up this:

“I would recommend the Noughty-aughts,” he said. “‘Nought’ as in zero. ‘Aught’ as in nothing. Both words contain essentially nothing, because this was an era when no progress was made.”

Mary Karr describes Nothing in her brand new memoir, Lit:

“There’s a space at the bottom of an exhale, a little hitch between taking in and letting out that’s a perfect zero you can go into. There’s a rest point between the heart’s muscle’s close and open—an instant of keenest living when you’re momentarily dead. You can rest there.”

You Don’t Have to Be Buddhist to Know Nothing was reviewed in the January 2010 issue of Shambhala Sun.

“The quotes— always insightful, sometimes wickedly funny—are by thinkers of
all stripes, such as Sylvia Plath, Bob Dylan, Lao Tzu, and Shakespeare.”

Publisher Prometheus Books is featuring You Don’t Have to Be Buddhist to Know Nothing in its Holiday Guide 2009.

Sharon Salzberg discusses nothingness and Joan Konner new book in a post to the Huffington Post.

From Sharon’s post on Joan Konner and Nothing:
“I first met Joan when she was working on the Mystery of Love, a PBS documentary. From love to nothingness, in a few short years. That makes sense to me. In Buddhism we would say that when we perceive the transparency, the insubstantiality of life, we grow in wisdom. When we perceive relatedness within life, the interconnectedness, we grow in love. One never excludes the other.”

On the book:
“Almost every page invited me to take a few risks in perception, and step out of the strictures of feeling this day to day reality as all too solid.”

Joan Konner just posted a short essay, A Book About Nothing, Just Like Seinfeld to the Huffington Post.

Here is an excerpt:

Nothing is. Nothing exists. Although Nature abhors a vacuum, Nature would have nowhere to rush in to fill it, if a vacuum didn’t exist. Where would something happen? Stars disappearing. Novas appearing. Leaves falling. New leaves growing. One generation dying, another being born. That vacuum, that Nothing, is with us all the time, everywhere, rushing in and out of existence in an instant. Nothing is the still center of the wheel of life. In the dark evanescence between equal and opposite, the Universe ignites.

Thanks go to Boing Boing for their kind words, “I didn’t know so much could be said about nothing.”

You Don’t Have to be Buddhist to Know Nothing
An Illustrious Collection of Thoughts on Naught
Conceived and Edited by Joan Konner

In a series of classic Seinfeld episodes, Jerry and George co-create a TV sitcom based on their lives in New York. At the pitch meeting at NBC, they proudly describe the concept. “It’s a show about nothing.” When a network executive insists that the show must be about something, George is adamant, “No, it’s about nothing. Nothing happens!”

The concept of nothing (often spelled with a capital “N’) has intrigued philosophers and scientists since ancient times. In You Don’t Have to Be Buddhist to Know Nothing, distinguished journalist Joan Konner—author of the bestselling The Atheist’s Bible—has created a unique anthology devoted to, well…nothing.

From Ernest Hemingway to the Beatles, from Jerry Seinfeld to Zen masters, from Homer to Andy Warhol, from Albert Einstein to Woody Guthrie, Konner takes readers on a journey through the complex land of nothing. You Don’t Have to Be Buddhist to Know Nothing brings together, in one portable and user-friendly volume, the thoughts of well-known mystics, artists, musicians, poets, philosophers, playwrights, geniuses, and jokers, to demonstrate that some of the finest minds explored, confronted, and played with the presence of nothingness and emptiness in their lives.

You Don’t Have to Be Buddhist to Know Nothing shows that, like many Eastern sages, deep thinkers in the West also recognized and pondered nonexistence as an essential component and complement of existence itself. Organized in short topical chapters from “Knowing Nothing” to the “Joy of Unknowing” and “Nothing is Sacred,” the verbal snapshots captured in this collection create a coherent work of wisdom, humor, and wonder.
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“I love talking about nothing…. It is the only thing I know anything about.” —OSCAR WILDE

“Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being–like a worm.” —JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

© David Sipress/ Condé Nast Publications / www.cartoonbank.com

The concept of Nothing, in Western thought, is a paradox. We simply cannot accept, no less conceive of, the paradoxical concept that “Nothing exists,” given that we learn to think and reason in the Western tradition, which is based on Aristotelian logic. The Age of Reason, the Enlightenment and the scientific method have trained us to think otherwise–rationally, that is. In the material world, which we inhabit, the very words “Nothing exists” are a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron. We are not conditioned to perceive a contradiction-in-terms as possible, as real, as able to be. Our way of seeing does not admit that something is and is not at the same time. We live in an either/or construct.

Take the notion that we are living and dying at this very moment. We just don’t think that way. Either we are healthy and alive; or we are ill and dying, although we know that each day of life brings us closer to our inevitable death. A both/and construct, which some call holistic, is not in our cultural curriculum, except that more and more, Eastern thought and spiritual traditions, which are rooted in paradoxical logic, are being assimilated into Western culture.

In fact, Nothing can and does co-exist with Everything, because everything, even in physical terms, has its equal and opposite. We accept “equal and opposite” because we trust science. We also trust, from science, that Nature abhors a vacuum. If a vacuum occurs, nature rushes in to fill it. But where and what would Nature rush in to fill if there wasn’t a vacuum? Without Emptiness there would be no opportunity for something new, or something else, to occur. Where would Something happen? Stars disappearing. Novas appearing. Leaves falling. New leaves growing. One generation dying, another being born. Nothing is the still center of the wheel of life. Nothing is the core of creation. In the dark evanescence between equal and opposite, the Universe ignites.

- Joan Konner, You Don’t Have to Be Buddhist to Know Nothing

Discover Magazine has an illuminating list of 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Nothing, published in June, 2007.

Excerpt:
Aristotle once wrote, “Nature abhors a vacuum,” and so did he. His complete rejection of vacuums and voids and his subsequent influence on centuries of learning prevented the adoption of the concept of zero in the Western world until around the 13th century, when Italian bankers found it to be extraordinarily useful in financial transactions.

Prof. Lawrence Rudnick, an astronomer at the University of Minnesota is an expert on Nothing. He discovered the biggest expanse of nothing in the universe, a hole 6 billion trillion miles wide.

U scientist finds nothing can be something special

Sara Bader worked closely as a researcher with Joan Konner on You Don’t Have to Be Buddhist to Know Nothing.

I researched the Nothing book with Joan, and after working together for more than a year—digging for and fact checking quotations on emptiness, silence, the abyss, nothingness, the void, etc.—it was heartening to see that the World Science Festival had devoted an evening to the subject on June 11. Even more encouraging: the venue at the New School in New York City was sold out, with crowds of people milling about in the lobby, hoping to secure a seat in the packed auditorium. I was lucky enough to attend the event, which was covered on the Tierney blog by the New York Times journalist John Tierney, as well as on the TED blog.

The most interesting panelist on the stage was Frank Wilczek, who won a Nobel Prize in physics in 2004 and teaches at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We quote him in the book (”Quite undeservedly, the ether has acquired a bad name.”) He’s , unpretentious and funny, and he manages to explain very complicated ideas in easy-to-digest language.

The moderator, John Hockenberry, asked Wilczek to explain the concept of nothing. He broke it down by saying something along the lines of: “imagine intelligent fish, and these fish have been evolving. Some of the fish became physicists, and those fish-physicists realize, for the first time, that the world around them is a substance (i.e. in the case of fish, the substance is water). In that picture, humans are the fish, and we’ve come to realize that nothingness, which surrounds us, is a medium with properties. It actually has stuff in it.” Nothing, it turns out, “is very active.”

Wilczek is working on a project taking pictures of Nothing. There are materials and waves in space, he explained. There is constant activity—particles and antiparticles. What we see as empty space is a boil of all this. But our eyes are not evolved to resolve distances that small. If we had that vision—if we could see distances that small—we’d be able to see Nothing. But, as Wilczek points out, that vision wouldn’t have helped us with the more practical tasks we face as a species, like, for example, finding a mate.

His short answer to the big question, “why is there something rather than nothing?”:

“Because nothing is unstable.”

In response to whether we should be nervous about something catastrophic happening (another big bang)? Wilczek wasn’t concerned: “Nature has been doing experiments more intense than we can ever do,” he assured the audience, “if something catastrophic was going to happen, it would’ve happened already.”

During the Q&A, someone asked how we can move from nothing to something to things you can measure. Wilczek explained quarks and antiquarks in space, and the fact that the presence of this medium can be checked and calculated.

He also mentioned the high-energy particle accelerator on Long Island. The accelerator’s goal is to create a temperature so high that quarks and antiquarks boil away, space is emptied out, and we can then “calculate the consequences.”

On Aristotle, Wilczek offered this one-liner: “If your standards are low enough, you can never be wrong.”

He also talked about nothing from an evolutionary perspective. Our sensors (i.e. eyes) show a small sampling of reality (we can’t see radio waves, x-rays, etc.). Nature created eyes to solve practical issues. “It would have been shocking if our sensors exhausted reality.” It’s not shocking that there’s so much stuff in nothing. By using “our noodles” and doing scientific experiments, we can see what our eyes cannot.

As to whether string theorists can add anything to the theory of nothing: “They can add a lot of nothing,” he offered, and then followed up with this: “string theory hasn’t made scientific contact with empirical reality.”

“What would it mean to have a final theory of everything?” Wilczek asked. “That we can’t do any better.”

This is a country whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. You do not find it by traveling but by standing still.

- Thomas Merton

Sharon Salzberg, well-known Buddhist meditation teacher and author, speaks with Joan Konner about her new book. (35 minutes)

Joan Konner Interviewed by Sharon Salzberg by Nothing Book

When sunya [zero] is added to a number or subtracted from a number, the number remains unchanged; and a number multiplied by sunya becomes sunya.

—Brahmagupta (598-ca. 665/670), Indian mathematician and astronomer

David Gerder has posted a slide presentation entitled, The Physics of Nothing.

My name is Nobody. That is what I am called by my mother and father and by all my friends.

—Homer

The Enso is the Japanese word for “empty.” In Zen Buddhist paintings the symbol represents a body / mind state open to creation. The circle can be shown open or closed.

Link:  commons.wikimedia.org