Blog Post #69 - The Ancient Hindus,Buddhist and Jains were thinking about nothing!

Do you exist?  - Most of us do. Some of us live.

When I asked a colleague what he did last weekend he said ‘nothing’. Nothing?

Do you do nothing?

What is nothing?

The interesting fact is you cannot experience nothing but you can recollect ‘nothing’.

What you did last Tuesday evening 2-3 may be nothing unless there is something interesting that happened. 

 Really , your outlook said you had a meeting or you picked your kid from school, how about 11:40 to 12:15?

You take nothing. You leave something. You exist. Then you don’t exist.

Here are a few different versions from Hindu, Buddhist and Jain philosophy .

Nothing or something:

Abhava means Nothing.  Before Abhava there has to be something or else what is the nothingness pointing to. Bhava means becoming,existing or appearing.

There or not there?

According to Hegarty, the paradox of nihilism is "that the absence of meaning seems to be some sort of meaning

Real or not?

Bhava can be classified as real. Abhava as Unreal.

Contains  or not

For anything to exist it must have

1.      Substance – Dravya – does it have something = mass?

2.      Quality – Guna - does it have any feature ?

3.      Action – Karma- does it do something? Does it move? Does it fly?

4.      Community or Generality – Samanya  - does it belong to a community or can it be feneralized?

5.      Vinesa – Particularity – does it have anything particular to mention?

6.      Inheritance – Samavaya – does it inherit anything from any other thing?

What kind of nothing

1.      Pragabhava i.e. Prior non-existence – house built from brick. Before the bricks were layered out there was no house. After laying the brick voila there is house that means house didn’t exist earlier. Cloth before the cotton is woven.

2.      Pradhvamsabhava i.e. Posterior non-existence  - break a jar you will never get the same jar with the same property.

3.      Atyantabhava i.e. Absolute non-existence  - Never existed – Child of a barren women

4.      Anyonyabhava i.e. Mutual non-existence – this and that cannot exist – Water and ice from the same water/ice body

To exist means

An imaginary idea to explain what it will be like without the existence of a thing.

About 50-60billion died in planet earth most left nothing (the number is according to Sir. Ken Robinson and he said in a tedtalk people who calculated these numbers might have low social life).

Are you ready to do something now.

The next time when you say I did nothing think what 'nothing' from this list of nothingness.

Go do it.

Sivakumar Manikanteswaran