ON THE NATURE OF VACUITY

by Dr. Vincent Vuillemin, zen monk, project leader at CERN

During billions of years our world by cooling itself off became a world of matter. Like a form of energy at rest, it defines the contours, the form, of a visible and tangible world. Our common perception allows us then to identify what we call the full and the vacuum. The full is constituted in our mind by the matter, the vacuum by what is around it, the first one taking its definition from the other one on a relative fashion. There is no full without vacuum, and no vacuum without full. This form of dualism, intrinsic to a world made of matter, finds also itself in a transposed manner between every material and invisible component, not tangible, like for example the brain and the thought, the body and the mind, the eyes and the sight or the ear and the listening. What we can call vacuity is largely beyond the dualism of the vacuum and the full, being itself not only a concept but also a physical reality, unique in itself, calling for no relative definition. However, depending of the domain in which we consider it, whether it is in the world of physics, of phenomenon, of the thought or of the consciousness, its signification must be transposed in the language by distinct explicative approaches, although the essence of its intuitive understanding is common, unique, undifferentiated, the nature of vacuity.

From the beginning of the twentieth century quantum physics has been developed, from observation as well as from an intuitive approach. This theory is also called the theory of the quanta. The basic of it is that any form of energy in our world is quantized; by the way also any form of matter; that means that the spectrum of the energy does not proceed in a linear way or continuous way but by successive jumps, by grains of energy, called the quanta. The smallest form of measurable energy is then a unique quantum, everything else being constituted by multiples of quanta. As soon as a form of energy goes above a quantum unity it springs out in the visible, tangible, measurable world, that we can call the full. A microscopic analogy could be represented by a ladder where only the rungs exist; nothing is visible in the space which separates them.
However it is legitimate to think that in between two quanta of energy exists a form non directly measurable of energetic fields. Every observation would then have as a consequence to project this invisible world in the world of matter. The world of matter being the world of the form, the forms that these energetic fields will take when they will be projected in this world will be diverse, depending on how this projection, this measurement, this observation is made. In this sense, every observation, or observer, depending on the method that he will use will change the reality of the material world, if we conceive the term of reality as limited to the visible world. This remark can by the way also be applied to other domains such as the consciousness or the thought. According to the quantum physics, verified experimentally, this projection will always give a measurement of an integer number of quanta.

It is then legitimate also to ask the question if anything invisible for us exists however in a subjacent way to the material world, anything for which the local energy is below the energy of a unique quantum of energy. We would then be dealing with a sort of ocean of an infinitively spread out energy, invisible, for which no manifestation would pierce directly in our so-called real world without an external action. An ocean of energy, without any aspect, without form, without reality in the sense of the term defined above. And however this world, below of a unique quantum, exists although it is not observable directly. In addition it cannot be considered as empty, as it contains energetic fields. That is what we can call the world of the vacuity, or of ku. From this world, constantly spring out, due to external perturbations or due to some local concentrations of fields, quanta of visible energy, or of matter such as the elementary particles. In this sense ku becomes the phenomenon, from the vacuity spring out the material phenomenon. On the same way during the interactions or the annihilations of particles, the energy corresponding to their masses goes back in this infinite ocean of very much spread out energy and disappears from our vision. The phenomenon go back to ku, the elementary particles go back to the vacuity. This, for the nature of the vacuity seen from an approach of the quantum physics.

This approach of the vacuity and the apparition of the form can also be made in the domain of the thought – the form – and the no-thought – the vacuity. On the same way as the ocean of the subjacent energy to the material world, exists also the ocean of the thought without aspect, without form, what we can call the no-thought. The thought is obvious to know, often taking the form of images, or reflections, reasoning, according to an organization which covers the whole domain from the furtive thought to the reflective one. However the world of the no-thought exists also, always in a subjacent way, taking no differentiated aspect; it stays at the latent stage, swimming in the totality of the body. The practice of zazen allows us to come closer, without touching it, to this vacuity of the thought. That could be put in perspective with what Dogen has called thinking without thinking, the first term alluding to the conscious thought, the other one staying invisible in the world of the no-thought, “existing” however by itself. In a similar way as the elementary particles spring out locally from the physical vacuity, the thoughts appear in the instant from the world infinite of the no- or sub-thought. The intimate relationship and the intuitive and integrated knowledge of the body allows us not to make it appear, what belongs to the domain of the thought, but to feel it in a non expressed way, like the bottom of an ocean of which we would only see the waves at the surface.

A similar approach can also be conducted for other concepts: for example, and in between others, humankind and the whole of the human beings. The whole of the beings is to be put in relation with multiple individuals, like drops of water; humankind itself makes reference to a unique entity, non separable and subjacent, impossible to describe with words, similar to an infinite ocean. Any description of it by the language would project tit in the world of the form, of the world of matter, of the world of all the human beings as individuals. Here also there is a parallel with the vacuity and the phenomenon of the reality. In the same way as ku generates the phenomenon, physical or psychological, and as the phenomenon go back to ku, humankind generates the human beings and these ones go back to humankind. There are both. In this sense the sentence of Buddha making reference to the salvation of all the beings suggests not only a salvation of humankind but also the one of all the individuals. At the end they cannot be separated. This can translate itself at the same time by the desire to save the entire humankind as well as by doing good everyday to save the individuals. To save only the humankind without the individuals would be without meaning and saving the individuals without any reference to the entire humankind would contain no universal signification. The point is then to follow both ways, which are in fact only one, on the same way as the elementary particles cannot exist without the subjacent ocean of infinite energy, and the ocean of infinite energy existing only through its manifestations in the material world.

In conclusion of these indications, the nature of vacuity, although it has different resonances according to the domains in which it applies itself, remains a very similar non expressible concept. Everything is only the tip of an iceberg of which the totality although invisible exists however in the unknown depths. Any consciousness of it would inevitably project it in the visible, tangible world of the real, of the form.