Nothingness: where the self confronts nihilism through withdrawal

Being present in a world where the noise of a constantly connected life overwhelms. Everything and everyone exists like all lives inside a grand performance, a show where we are all cast as characters on this big stage. The stage provides a frame to tell a story about the self, the individual as the main character. The characters provide the self as characters in the self’s own story, just like the self becomes a character in others’ stories being told in another stage. In this drama, the self continually encounters others, all of whom are connected to the self because they are part of the same production. But if everything strips bare–no prop sets, no supporting roles, just the self under one light–does the show disappear? Is the self just a character in the story, or is the story the self? What is the self when she is just her? The silence of the empty stage and the absence of dialogue create a sense of dread where the self is confronted by the vast, empty space. At first, this appears as nihilism: the self feels small, alone, and tempted to fill the void with props, characters, or sounds to mask the emptiness. But doing so avoids the confrontation itself. Still, if this were true, the self knows that she is nothing prior to the story.

For Keiji Nishitani, this silence and solitude–the void–is not about detachment from the story. It is not the self escaping from her reality. He reminds one of the inevitability of the self to encounter the question, “What am I if I am not what my parents, friends, city, education, work and more?” When this question encounters the self, the self will see that everything on the “stage” is empty but her. This is the scary part of unloading reality, which is that the self is merely alone. This emptiness, Nishitani understands, is what we know as nihilism. It is the hopelessness one feels when comparing the small size of oneself against the big stage. Naturally, many would consider filling this gap with everything they can. But this is where the self may need to reconsider. When they fill it, they avoid confronting the void, rendering a contradiction to what was even questioned at the start. This means the self rejects seeing herself as a conscious part outside of the story; rather, she waits for the story to define her.

Instead, Nishitani understands that confronting the void means the self is not afraid of finding what lies beyond the story and the show. She sees herself as both in the story and as an audience observing the self playing her part. When the self withdraws from the story as the audience, it does not find an empty void, like how the stage self sees herself as smaller than the stage. The audience self sees the self and the empty stage as one: a blank of canvas that can be painted as anything. The absence of the narrative from withdrawing oneself as part of the story and the disappearance of characters creates a silence where the self meets its own ground as both the subject of the stage and the object of the audience’s observation. Rather than nihilistic emptiness, this is a transformative nothingness in which the self realises that there is no longer anything external to rely upon. The self is compelled to stand face to face with its own groundless ground. In this manner, Nishitani emphasises that this confrontation is precisely the significance of silence and solitude. In this silence, the self is exposed to absolute nothingness, which is not sheer absence but the field in which all things, including the self, arise and interconnect.

The self no longer defines itself by external attachments or external and disruptive validation. The self’s identity emerges from emptiness that is full because even the absence of a thing is, in itself, part of the self. The self discovers the radical interdependence that underlies reality. Silence is, therefore, a ground that collects objects of creative observation–the finding of the self that exists between and outside the collective. In doing so, the self is able to return to the world not as a performer clinging to a role, but also as an audience looking at her role from outside the stage.

True presence in the world, therefore, requires the self to confront the underlying nothingness of anything that is collected. Just as an actor cannot always remain on stage, the self is both a character of the stage and an audience observing herself on the stage. In an age of constant connectivity, this withdrawal is not an escape but a necessary passage: by passing through nothingness, the self re-emerges with clarity, compassion, and the capacity to genuinely connect with others.