The Empty Space

The lake at Prospect Park at night.

Dear friends, 

On Wednesday morning I joined the Shul’s Meditation Chevrutah for the weekly meditation. I had spent the week studying the Hassidic master Rabbi Nachman of Bretslov, who was deeply interested in meditation, although his meditation practice was likely quite different to the sitting meditation of Buddhist influence that is most common today. Before we began, I offered the group a word about Nachman’s notion of החלל הפנוי, the empty space (not to be confused with Peter Brook's!) This is the space of not knowing, of doubt, sometimes even of depression. It is the space of lack, which is also a pregnant space, except that what will come out of it is not known. It’s the primordial space of pre-creation. And it also seems that this non-space is a desirable destination for meditators. 

Emptiness is a tricky concept for Buddhists as well. Like Nachman, they also refuse to make up their minds about whether emptiness is empty or full. My brother, a Buddhism scholar even wrote a book called The Fullness of Emptiness. The Heart Sutra tells us that:  

“Whatever is form is emptiness, whatever is emptiness is form.” 

In Kabbalah the empty space denotes the place from which God removed herself to allow for creation to take place. But this couldn’t possibly contradict the maxim: אין עוד מלבדו, Besides Him there is nothing. In other words, necessarily that empty space is God too. This contradiction may have something to do with why Nachman tells us that: 

אִי אֶפְשָׁר לְהַשִּׂיג כְּלָל בְּחִינַת חָלָל הַפָּנוּי, עַד לֶעָתִיד לָבוֹא.  

It is not possible at all to grasp the empty space, until Messiah comes. (or in his words: until the future comes). 

But all of this should not deter us from seeking to find that elsuive place of emptiness. The monastic Thanissaru Biku describes emptiness as “a mode of perception in which one neither adds anything to nor takes anything away from what is present, noting simply, "There is this." When we are able to simply hear sound, for example, without judging it or even categorizing it, that is an empty experience in the best sense of the word. In these moments we are able to lose ourselves to a simplicity of being.  

This is similar to the Hassidic notion of Bittul, or abnegation, of which Nachman was one of the early messengers. Bittul is the act of losing your self and becoming part of the אין, the nothingness. Nachman writes: 

דע שעיקר הביטול שאדם מבטל ישותו ונעשה אין ונכלל באחדות השם יתברך אין זה אלא על ידי התבודדות 

Know, that the principle of Bittul (abnegation), in which a person cancels their is-ness and becomes nothingness, and is enveloped in the oneness of the Blessed God, is only accomplished through meditation.  

I do have to note that the word I’m translating as “meditation,” Hitbodedoot is normally understood as a kind of self-isolation, in which a person goes out to the forest or some other deserted place alone. But the type of quiet and reflection that I imagine the Hassidic masters must have sought in the forest is exactly the empty space that we were seeking on Wednesday morning with our eyes closed in meditation. When you carve out a special space and time, Rabbi Nachman tells us, “at night when people are asleep, in a spot where people won’t show up, then you can vacate your heart from everything and anything, and you can arrive at the cancelation of all that is. That is when you will be a part of the oneness of the Blessed God.” 

May this Shabbat vacate our hearts and minds from everything and anything, and let us feel the peace of being a part of the unity at the heart of existence. 

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha