“Do you see that chair?”
“Which one?”
“There’s only one chair.”
“Yes, I see it.”
“What is it?”
“A chair.”
“What is a chair made of?”
“Wood?”
“Who makes it?”
“A carpenter.”
“Who sits on it?”
“A person.”
“So for a chair to be a chair, three things must exist: the wood is one, the carpenter is two, the person who sits on it is three. Yes?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Without these three things, can a chair exist?”
“It cannot.”
“Then where does the chair-ness of a chair reside?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Without these, there is no such thing as a chair.”
“So you’re saying I should ask where the human-ness of a human resides?”
“That isn’t what I said. With this same questioning, describe a human.”
“A human is like a river.”
“What is a river?”
“Not one thing. A river is water. A river moves. A river changes every second.”
“What does this have to do with a human?”
“You are a human, made from the things you are made of. You haven’t dried up. You haven’t stagnated. You move. You change. So you are not just one thing. And being all of this, you are still you.”
“What is the use of knowing this?”
“When you think this way, you don’t always insist, ‘I am right,’ or ‘I must be.’ Nothing endures forever. You don’t say, ‘this thing, this problem, defines me.’ Things are not as they remain in your mind. They are changing. They are not separate either. Like the chair, they are interconnected, made from different things and conditions. An event does not stand alone.”
“If everything keeps changing, what value does it have?”
“None. It has no value. It is an empty thing.”
“If things are interconnected, how can they be empty?”
“If you remove the things that connect them, they become empty.”
“So everything is like a car, assembled?”
“Dere, I am Nagarjuna. The great Buddha who came after the Buddha. In our time, there were no cars.”
“What about computers?”
“What is that, again?”
“A machine. A modern thinking device that calculates using binary numbers.”
“I don’t know it. But even in our time, people thought of things by dividing them in two. Binary, as you say.”
“Saying what and what?”
“Existing or not existing. Truth or falsehood. I and the world. I and others. That sort of thing.”
“And?”
“That way of thinking has a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“First, that things are eternal. Second, that things are nothing, that they are empty.”
“Don’t the two contradict?”
“They seem to. But they don’t conflict. They are just intellectual addictions.”
“Then what is better?”
“To take what is called ‘the middle way.'”
“Then what is reality?”
“Nothing.”
“That can’t be.”
“Well then, take your own reality. Examine it through inquiry. Watch it as it dissolves on its own.”
“Can you simplify it for me?”
“We just looked at the chair. What is a chair without wood, without a carpenter, and without a person to sit on it?”
“Nothing.”
“Take this same inquiry and apply it to time, to the self, to movement, to reason, even to Buddhism itself.”
“So what are you saying, Nagarjuna?”
“Things exist by cause. Without causes and conditions, they are empty. So accept emptiness.”
“Are you saying I am empty?”
“No. You are not your body, your mind, or your thoughts. You are also not something separated from causes and conditions, nor are you something identical with them.”
“But this too is emptiness.”
“You human, what is your problem with emptiness? If you think emptiness has no value, you are mistaken. When you cast off your anxieties, shed your baggage, and accept your emptiness, you become more humble, kinder, more at peace.”
“So what should I do?”
“Accept. You are made from things, so don’t separate yourself from things. Life is process, relationship, flow. Brighten. Flow.”
“What kind of advice is this? Flow with the river, blow with the wind.”
God, who had been observing me all this while, seemed to whisper, “It is like chasing the wind…”
His wind, where does it blow from, where does it go? Perhaps he was expressing its unknowability. Even if you knew, what good would it do? But now, not only is it known, the American wind is predicted days in advance, and it doesn’t move leaves, it moves people. When it pleases, it rages. It says: let me yank hair, let me overturn whatever sits outside. Windows shake. Doors slam. Walls crumble. Houses are leveled. Trees torn up by the roots. How exactly does one blow along with that kind of wind?
If Nagarjuna, the Indian Buddhist author of Mūlamadhya makakārikā, were alive today, what would he say about heavy rain and floods? Without doubt, in his philosophy, a flood is not just water. It is the sum of many things. It could be policy. It could be construction failures. It could be negligence. A flood is an outcome. Still, if this worries you, the source of your worry is your desire to live as something eternal in a changing world. Rather, since everything is built from other things, what saves you from the flood is the preparedness you’ve built against it. Nagarjuna is not a man who lives by hope, nor one who ends in darkness. Whether preparedness exists or not, he says, the storm will come.
He’s telling the truth, I thought to myself. Trouble is inevitable. I considered asking him, “How can trouble be prevented?” and then let it go. He’d probably have answered: if it announced itself and arrived on schedule, what kind of trouble would that even be?
This article was originally published in Ledesta Amharic by the author.
Subscribe to Ledesta
New writing in your inbox. English and Amharic.