If it happened to you many times, I am puzzled why you cannot
understand the concept of nothingness and emptiness. In fact, you
are very close, just need a little more in-depth thinking.
I do not know whether this analogy is suitable. A human
being is made up of bones, skins, blood, flesh, needs air and
so on. Any one of these give you problem or no longer functioning,
the person is close to collapse. Thus, human being is not stand
alone.
If you observe all the things around you, nothing exists
without combination. Thus, they do not actually exist, they exist
because of combination.
Yes because everything is just combinations and aggregations,
there is no separate or permanent 'self' entity to be found, just
as there is no permanent or separate entity 'weather' to be found.
There is no human 'being', there is only a stream of becoming, of
sensations, thoughts, manifesting and subsiding in lightning speed
- in other words there is only human Becoming (not a static
being).
As Toni Packer said:
A somber day, isn't it? Dark,
cloudy, cool, moist and windy. Amazing, this whole affair of "the
weather!" We call it "weather," but what is it really? Wind. Rain.
Clouds slowly parting. Not the words spoken about it, but just this
darkening, blowing, pounding, wetting, and then lightening up, blue
sky appearing amidst darkness, and sunshine sparkling on wet
grasses and leaves. In a little while there'll be frost, snow and
ice-covers. And then warming again, melting, oozing water
everywhere. On an early spring day the dirt road sparkles with
streams of wet silver. So — what is "weather" other than this
incessant change of earthly conditions and all the human thoughts,
feelings, and undertakings influenced by it? Like and dislike.
Depression and elation. Creation and destruction. An ongoing, ever
changing stream of happenings abiding nowhere. No entity "weather"
to be found except in thinking and talking about it.
Now — is there such an entity as
"me," "I," "myself?" Or is it just like the "weather" — an ongoing,
ever changing stream of ideas, images, memories, projections, likes
and dislikes, creations and destructions, which thought keeps
calling "I," "me," "Toni," and thereby solidifying what is
evanescent? What am I really, truly, and what do I think and
believe I am? Are we interested in exploring this amazing affair of
"myself" from moment to moment? Is this, maybe, the essence of
retreat work? Exploring ourselves minutely beyond the peace and
quiet that we are seeking and maybe finding. Coming upon clarity
about this deep sense of separation which we call "me," and "other
people," without any need to condemn or overcome.
Most human beings take it
totally for granted that I am "me," and that "me" is this body,
this mind, this knowledge and sense about myself which so obviously
feels separate from other people. The language in which we talk to
ourselves and to each other inevitably implies separate "me's," and
"you's" all the time. All of us talk "I" and "you" talk, we think
it, write it, read it, and dream it with rarely any pause. There is
incessant reinforcement of the sense of "I," "me," separate from
others. Isolated. Insulated. Not understood. How is one to come
upon the truth if separation is taken so much for granted, feels so
common sense?
The difficulty is not
insurmountable. Wholeness, true being, is here all the time, like
the sun behind the clouds. Daylight is here in spite of cloud
cover.
Continued in http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/search/label/Toni%20Packer