The Blissful Void

"In postmodern culture, after the end of the old metaphysics, nothing any longer has any assured and objective value, basis, or foundation. There is no fixed order of things out there. Everything is contingent, an outsideless flux of energies-read-as-signs that just pours out unceasingly and flits away. To repeat popular phrases already used, This is it; this is all there is - and now we are suddenly overcome with vertigo, because we have no idea whether to say that this fleeting life of ours has become infinitely important or inifinitely unimportant. The juddering back and forth between weightiness and lightness is very difficult for many of us to bear right now, and I am suggesting that we should use the Discipline of the Void, meditation upon the underlying universal emptiness and nothingness, as a background against which to set and to see the flux of our life. The Blissful Void, sunyata, can thus replace the old metaphysical God, and give - to us Westerners in particular - a new and much-needed way of getting our life into perspective."