Quotes about Void

The nature of the Absolute is neither perceptible nor imperceptible; and with phenomena it is just the same.  But to one who has discovered his real nature, how can there be anywhere or anything separate from it?...

...Therefore it is said:  'The perception of a phenomenon IS the perception of the Universal Nature, since phenomena and Mind are one and the same.'

As soon as the mouth is opened, evils spring forth.  People either neglect the root and speak of the branches, or neglect the reality of the 'illusory' world and speak only of Enlightenment.  Or else they chatter of cosmic activities leading to transformations, while neglecting the Substance from which they spring---indeed, there is NEVER any profit in discussion.

A perception  (experience), sudden as blinking, that subject and object are one, will lead to a deeply mysterious wordless understanding; and by this understanding will you awake to the truth of Zen.

The approach to it  ( Mind, Absolute, Void, Buddha Nature, Enlightenment )  is called the Gateway of the Stillness beyond all Activity.  If you wish to understand, know that a sudden comprehension comes when the mind has been purged of all the clutter of conceptual and discriminatory thought-activity.  Those who seek the truth by means of the intellect and learning only get further and further away from it.  Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the right road to the Gate.

...concepts are related to the senses; and, when feeling takes place, wisdom is shut out.

If, conceiving of the phenomenal world as illusion, we try to shut it out, we make a false distinction between the 'real' and the 'unreal'.  So we must not shut anything out, but try to reach the point where all distinctions are seen to be void, where nothing is seen as desirable or undesirable, existing or not existing.  Yet  this does not mean that we should make our minds blank, for then we should be no better than blocks of wood or lumps of stone;  moreover, if we remain in this state, we should not be able to deal with the circumstances of daily life or be capable of observing the Zen precept:  ' When hungry, eat.'  Rather, we must cultivate dispassion, realizing that none of the attractive or unattractive attributes of things have any absolute existence.

There is a void in your soul,
      ready to be filled.
You feel it, don't you?
You feel the separation
      from the Beloved.
Invite Him to fill you up,
      embrace the fire.

Q:  Is the ultimate truth the same as "void"?

A: The term "void" has created much confusion and has misled people throughout the centuries.  It implies nothingness, or nonexistence, wihch is not a possibility in the Real.  There is no opposite to God.  Only Truth has actual existence.  What is more commonly meant by the term "void" is absence of form, absence of substance, or nonduality.  It is often confused with nonexistence.  To confuse the Ultimate Allness with nothingness/void is to fall victim to the falsity of trying to prove that nonexistence actually exists.

I ask you only to stop imagining that you were born, have parents, are a body, will die and so on. Just try, make a beginning--it is not as hard as you think.

The greatest error of science is in relation to space. Science thinks of space either as a void or as an ether through which solids of matter travel. The fact is that space travels with its solids, for each solid is surrounded by a minus zero equal-and-opposite vacuity of the plus zero which we call matter. Matter floats in these insulating spatial counterparts. Positive electricity is accountable for the solids and negative electricity is accountable for the space. All matter comes out of space by the action of positive electricity and is returned to space by the action of negative electricity. White-hot suns come from the blackness of cold space and cold space radiates from hot suns. The matter of space consists of holes surrounded by corpuscular solids, while the matter of solids consists of small
dense cores surrounded by vast tenuous holes of space. The very purpose of the hot suns is to act as crucibles for melting the raw materials which the Creator needs for expressing the idea of the universe. Contrarily, the very purpose of space is to cool the melted matter set out in order that it may become conditioned for the complex expressions of Creation. The two-way interchange between spatial holes and material solids is continuous."

The consolations are gone; the skull will grin in at the banquet; it can no longer tranquilize itself with the trivial. From the depths, it cries out to gods no longer there, searches for a meaning not yet disclosed, still to be incarnated. Its very agony is worth a million happy magics and a thousand believing myths, and yet its only consolation is its unrelenting pain - a pain, a dread, an emptiness that feels beyond the comforts and distractions of the body, the persona, the ego, looks bravely into the face of the Void, and can no longer explain away either the Mystery or the Terror. It is a soul that is much too awake. It is a soul on the brink of the transpersonal.

Zen is consciousness unstructured by particular form or particular system, a trans-cultural, trans-religious, trans-formed consciousness.

It is therefore in a sense "void".

But it can shine through this or that system,  religious or irreligious,  just as light can shine through glass that is blue, or green, or red, or yellow.

If  Zen has any preference it is for glass that is plain, has no color, and is "just glass."