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Don’t play with words; see a simple fact. Buddhism is not giving you an image of nothingness, there cannot be any image of nothingness. Can you imagine nothingness? Try. How will you imagine nothingness? What image? Nothingness simply means: no thing, no image. You cannot make an image of no image.

Buddhism is not saying create an image of nothingness. In the first place, it cannot be created. If you create an image of nothingness, then certainly you are conditioned again; then God will look like nothingness. But Buddhism is not saying to create an image of nothingness. Buddhism is simply saying avoid all images. And if you can create the image of nothingness, that is included in “all images.” Avoid all images; just keep your inner space clean and open, mirrorlike, and then see whatsoever is seen.

Buddhism is simply saying: Don’t decide before knowing. That is the meaning of don’t have an a priori image: don’t decide before knowing. Let knowing happen, and let the decision come through knowing. Don’t believe beforehand, because your belief will contaminate your knowing, and you will never be able to know whether what you have known is really there, or is there because of your belief. Your belief can create it.

Man’s mind has great potential to create imagination. That’s why hypnosis works. Have you watched a hypnotist working? He can hypnotize a person, and he can just put a small pebble on the hand of the person and can say, “This is burning coal, red hot burning coal.” And the man who is in deep hypnosis simply believes it, because deep hypnosis means your faculties to doubt have been put to sleep. He believes, and the belief creates reality. His hand will burn – from the cold pebble! He will shriek, he will scream in pain; he will throw away the pebble. Not only that – a blister will arise on his palm.

Now what has happened? When this man is dehypnotized, the blister will be enough proof that a burning coal had been in his hand. And you know that there was no burning coal, nothing like that, just an ordinary cold pebble. But the belief has created the reality. Vice versa also happens: you can put a burning coal in the hand of a deeply hypnotized person, in a deep trance, and you can say, “This is a cold pebble,” and there will be no blister, the man will not scream and there will be no mark left. That’s how people fire walk.

Now, what Buddhism is saying is: belief can create a certain kind of reality, which is not there. Buddhism is not saying believe in nothingness, because that will create, certainly. But how can one believe in nothingness? You can’t create the image of nothingness. Nothingness simply means no image.

So don’t play with words. Logically, it looks relevant, your question looks relevant, that Buddhism creates the belief, the image of nothingness; then God appears as nothingness, and so it is the same vicious circle. It is not. Buddhism simply takes all the beliefs away. It does not create any belief; it leaves you in a state of no-belief.

Remember: it does not create disbelief either. It simply leaves you in a state of no-belief. No-belief is not disbelief. Buddhism is not atheist; Buddhism is not theist. Buddhism does not say anything about God. Buddhism says be silent, utterly silent, utterly imageless, empty, your eyes completely clean of all dust.

Now you can say, “This cleanness will be the dust in the eyes” – then you are playing with words. If I say, “Let your eyes be clean, then you will be able to see better,” you can say, “But cleanness will be there. How can I see better? Cleanness will be a disturbance just like any dust!”

Logically, linguistically, you are right. Existentially, you are not right. Cleanliness does not mean any thing; cleanliness simply means there is no dust, all is clean. When I say, “Nothing is written on this paper,” will you say, “Then nothing is written on this paper, so something is written?” You say nothing is written on this paper – nothing at least is written on the paper. Now you are creating an unnecessary puzzle for yourself.

When I say nothing is written on the paper, I am simply saying nothing is written on the paper, the paper is empty. But you can start a philosophical argument: “At least nothing is written on the paper, so the paper is not empty because nothing is there.” Nothing is nothing, sir.

There is a beautiful story…

Alice reached the king. When she reached the king, the king asked, “I am waiting for a messenger. Did you meet somebody on the way coming toward me?”
Alice said, “Nobody, sir.”
The king thought that she had met somebody who is known as “Nobody.” Alice simply said, “Nobody, sir.” She is saying, “I have not met anybody,” but the king must have been a great linguist, a philosopher. He thought, “So she has met Nobody on the way.”
After a few minutes he asked, “But it seems Nobody walks slower than you, otherwise he must have arrived by now.”
Alice thought, “He is saying, ‘Nobody walks slower than you,’” that he was condemning her. So she said, “No, sir, nobody walks faster than me!”
And the king said, “But then it puzzles me: if Nobody walks faster than you, then why has he not arrived yet?”
Out of desperation Alice said, “Sir, ‘Nobody’ is nobody!”
And the king said, “Of course, Nobody has to be Nobody – but why has he not arrived yet?”
And so it goes on…

Buddhism is not saying nobody is there inside, not in the sense the king took it. Buddhism is saying there is simply nobody, it is empty.

And beliefs gather around. And then you start looking through the beliefs. Then those beliefs change the color of reality. Then you start seeing things as they are not. Drop all belief systems. And remember: Buddhism is not a belief system; you are not to replace it. It is not saying to drop Christianity and replace it with Buddhism. Then you would not be doing anything except choosing one disease for another. Then you would move from one prison into another, from one bondage into another.

That’s why Ikkyu says Buddhism is not an “ism.” It is not a religion in the ordinary sense of the term. It is not a church: it is an insight. It is not an organization: it is an understanding. It is not a philosophy: it is a realization.

Once you understand the point, this problem will not arise. But if you have a philosophical bent of mind, you can go on creating such unnecessary questions and solving them, and you can get very messed up.

It happened:

Dashing young Edward was walking through the park one afternoon when he heard a female voice cry out, “Get down, you beast! If you put your filthy paws on me once more I’ll never come on the grass again.” He rushed behind the hedge from whence the voice had come, hoping to rescue a fair maiden from a foul creep, but instead discovered a little old lady talking to her pet dog.

These are your ideas, your interpretations. Drop all ideas, drop all interpretations. Ikkyu is not saying to accept Buddha’s interpretation instead. Listen to what he says: “Sakyamuni, this mischievous guy – how many people has he misled?” Not that Buddha has misled anybody, but people have been misled, that is true, people like you. They start creating images of nothing, they start believing in nobodies, they start believing in nothingness, they create a belief around nothingness, and then nothingness is lost. Then your nothingness is no longer empty, it is full of nothingness. Then you miss the point.

When Ma Tzu attained to emptiness he went to his master, bowed down and said, “Sir, now I have attained emptiness.” He had been waiting for this moment for years and years, to go one day and tell the master. Now the moment had come, he had attained. And the master slapped him. He said, “What nonsense are you talking? Go out and empty your mind of this emptiness. Empty your mind of emptiness! Go out! How can you have emptiness inside you? Because then emptiness becomes something.”

And Ma Tzu understood, and that very moment the illumination happened. He bowed down, and he said, “Yes, I had started clinging to emptiness. I was cherishing it as something great. Again the ego was coming from the back door. Now it was claiming, ‘I have attained emptiness.’”

One has to be empty of emptiness too. One has to be simply without any beliefs; then the reality is as it is, then you know its suchness.