THE TENTH MAN : 98

Absolute Absence

Worried about something?
Yes, what I am. Do you happen to know?

Of course I do.
Well, what am I?

My absence. What else could you be?
Your absence?

Evidently.
But here you are, present, and evident.

You are speaking as a shadow, a reflection, a bubble....
Yes, yes, I've read the Diamond Sutra also.

When people who have understanding happen to ask questions the least one can do is to reply from the Prince-Host-Principal position, not from that of the minister-guest-function. We have an obligation at least to do that.
Very well, but what has your absence got to do with it?

My absence is what you are.
Then what is your presence?

My presence you can see, hear, touch - whenever you feel so inclined.
You mean that your absence as a phenomenal object accounts for all phenomenal presence, including mine?

You have come-to at last. Yes, yours and the beetle's, the elephant's, the sparrow's, the seal's, and my own as a phenomenal object.
You must have a potent kind of absence, old man!

All possible potency must lie in its non-manifestation.
Why so?

Where else could it lie? Can manifestation produce manifestation? Can potency produce potency? Can presence produce presence?
I suppose not. Why should anything so obvious be ignored? Why could I not think that up for myself?

Because like many other people, you are still just a trifle too rigorously conditioned to looking in the opposite and wrong direction! Also, although when expressed it has become a thought, in itself it is not such but just being aware of what is, or of how things are.
Sounds as though it might be important. Is it?

Every understanding is important. 'Understanding one thing, you understand all' - as several of the great Masters asserted. I can say at least that thoroughly to understand this is in itself to understand the little that I understand.
I can insee that it must necessarily be so, but I become muddled when I start to think about it.

Is that not because you look in the wrong direction and think, instead of looking in the right direction, and insee? Are you not looking phenomenally instead of noumenally, as the minister-guest-function instead of as Prince-Host-Principal? From that point of view you can only see goods and chattels.
Can I do anything about that?

You can. It is one of the things you can do.
I confuse the ordinary mundane and phenomenal stand-point with the noumenal point of view?

We all do, but it is an essential discrimination, the essential discrimination. Only Sages can allow themselves to ignore that illusory difference.
To them that difference does not exist?

There is no difference between Yes and No. Every statement is necessarily true and false both ways.
By which you mean that positive and negative, and all opposites, are one to them?

No, not one. But they both mean the same thing in their mind. Have you never experienced it yourself?
As a matter of fact and now that you mention it - I have, and to my great surprise!

Good! And don't discourage it! If any kind of practice could be helpful that one might well be.
It implies that understanding is there already and is mutual?

That may well be so.
Then, sagely speaking, what we all are is our phenomenal absence?

Perfect, to my ear.
So that Absence as such is the cause and origin of all presence?

Presence being appearance in a time-sequence.
Come to think of it, there could not be any such thing as being present if that thing could not also be absent. But could it not be absent here and present elsewhere?

It is; necessarily it must be. But then the 'where' is still 'here'.
I mean, apart from being round the corner or in Australia, where can it be?

Here, of course. But your question was phenomenal; in that optic being elsewhere is still presence; that is only absence to an individual spectator. But Absence as such is total absence - absence of phenomenal absence as well as of phenomenal presence.
Good, that one I can see. Total absence is transcendent?

'Transcendent' is a positive term which suggests the maintenance of a positive identity elsewhere. But there is no 'where', nor any 'when', and least of all a 'what'. My Absence, absence as 'I', implies non-entity as phenomenon and non-entity as noumenon. Only Such could manifest at all.
Do you not mean that only as Such could I manifest at all?

Quite so, you are correct; I was in error.
You said it on purpose to test me!

Not at all, I was just plain wrong. What matters is that you understood nevertheless.
I can see clearly that Absence could not be any absent thing or object that happened not to be present in the sense of being sensorially perceptible. But then what is it?

The utter absence of realness or thingness - of any sensorially perceptible or mentally conceivable object.
And Such is my Absence?

Such is Absence (lamentably referred to as 'Reality' - since that means thingness - the most unsuitable and probably the most inapposite word in the language). Such is all absence, absence of whatever appears and is assumed to be.
Am I unique in feeling a trifle lonely as 'total absence'?

Like an astronaut left behind in solitary circuit going round and round forever is cosmic space?
Yes, just like that!

Is it possible that you, of all people on this Earth, could be such an ass?
It is, but why?

Because my good dear chap, it is being God.
A lonely and tedious job, if ever there was one. Wouldn't take it on at any price.

Perhaps I should have used the impersonal term 'Godhead'.
Were you counting on the shock? Godhead still sounds a trifle isolated and diffuse. Tenuous and unsubstantial at least; something rather like a huge sponge!

It is not objectifiable, being the source of all objectivity. It cannot, therefore, be described, but the Vedantists call it sat-chit-ananda - which implies some such notions as 'being-consciousness-bliss'.
The first two sound familiar, the latter like one of the drugs these young men and women are said to live on nowadays. 'Absence' does not make my heart grow fonder.

People have always wanted something positive - joy instead of sorrow, pleasure instead of pain, bliss instead of misery, but what nonsense that is! The Buddha saw the suffering, but no one knew better than he that there is no suffering without its opposite.
So what was he up to?

Exactly what he declared: the abolition of suffering.
Which meant the abolition of joy?

Inevitably.
And so - what?

'Absence' means what it says.
And what is that?

Absence of everything - including affectivity.
So that this 'bliss' and 'joy' and 'light', and all the rest of it is 'all my eye'?

There is no entity to have an eye, not even a pseudo-entity. Awakening to Absolute Absence is integrally without 'ens'. How could it be imagined? If it were 'blissful' there would have to be 'blisslessness' - and an entity to experience both.
So have they all been pulling our legs?

They have been playing up to the universal craving for positivity as opposed to negativity, as they nearly all do except the Chan Masters.
So what can it be? To what does one awaken?

To Absolute Absence.
And what does that feel like?

My dear chap - there is no one to feel anything, and nothing to feel anything with! How or what could there be? Think for yourself. Insee for yourself.
I still ask for an answer. Every sentient being on Earth would do the same.

My answer is no better than yours, not one whit.
Give it me nevertheless.

The 'abolition of suffering', propounded by the Buddha, includes also negative suffering.
What is that?

'Suffering' not positively recognised as such.
Is there any?

Of course there is.
How do you know it?

Take the weight of your body. Do you cognise that as suffering?
No.

If you were suddenly relieved of that would it not be the disappearance of a burden, a phenomenon made absent? Is that not why you enjoy bathing, particularly in salt water?
Yes, I suppose it would be a relief.

Phenomenal living as such may well be a heavy but unconscious burden. Living in sequential time comprises painful memories, remorse, regrets, as well as fears of the future, of pain, loss and death, and, apart from apparently present pain and worry, may constitute a heavy load of unrealised and negative suffering, to which we are so used that it is not experienced positively as such.
You mean that the taking-out-of-experience of both positive and negative suffering must result in joy?

I mean rather that the re-establishment of a norm, of which we can know nothing now, may be assumed, and that norm may be something which, if we could experience it, might seem to us to be intense delight and supreme happiness.
You think that may be it?

That at least would explain the serenity and delight of which the jivan-mukta speak.
When they are still in the dream-phantasy?

There cannot be positive joy if there is no longer positive suffering, but the removal of both positive and negative suffering must surely restore a norm which is a condition corresponding to what we can imagine as serenity, which is unknown to us, and which we vaguely think of as 'joy'.
It should be just serenity, perfect serenity, but to us it must be imagined as pure joy? Having no cares, no worries of any kind, alone should constitute joy!

Serenity is not altogether incompatible with Absence. But Absence means what it says.
And what is that?

Absence is, quite simply, absence of self.

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