59. From Nothing to Something to No-Thing

You may have the notion that you are an individual first, and that only as a consequence you developed the idea of 'mine'. This is because 'me' is assumed to be a certain concrete entity, whereas 'mine' is merely a process — an act of assertion and defense. So one unconsciously favors the notion that the concrete entity 'I' came into being first, and then 'I' developed the impulse of defending some other entity as 'mine'. But look into this keenly.

If 'I' am entity X, calling a distinct entity Y as 'mine', what about X? Is X also mine? We are necessitated to say 'Yes', because if X is not mine, if I am not mine, then how can I assert anything else as mine? But if X is mine, then how is X any different from Y? That which is mine is intuitively understood as something apart from me. If X is mine, how can it be 'me' at the same time?

We can posit many things here and write a philosophical paper to argue that X is both me and mine. But nevertheless, something seems off. We do sense that at the very core, it cannot be that 'I' defend a distinct 'mine'; at some point 'I' and 'mine' have to converge. But this does not seem to work out coherently if we start with a concrete 'I' into which 'mine' eventually converges. So, can it be the other way round? Can it be that 'mine' is first into which 'I' converges? Can it be that at the core there is no concrete entity at all?

What does this mean? This means that at the very core, the very impulse of defense IS 'me'.  A claim 'mine' of nothing IS 'me'. The very resistance IS the individual—the 'original sin', the first error, a defense of nothing, a dummy claim, a resistance towards existence for the sake of nothing, upon which accrues all the paraphernalia, giving rise to a complex personality. The great show that is put up upon this nothing makes it look like there is indeed something very precious at the core ('soul' and the like), and the individual accrues more and more protective layers upon it (including 'spiritual' layers), and becomes more and more defensive in a vicious manner, resisting the rest of the existence, and becoming increasingly constipated.

But this very hardening cracks it one day, giving a glimpse of the idiocy of the whole affair. A longing to end the drama, a force to counter the stagnant fortress, rises, not resting until the whole structure is dissolved.

Defending nothing comes into being some-thing

And dissolving that something remains the Being that is No-Thing