Nothingness

"I do not hold nothingness to be diametrically opposed to being, nor is it of the same stature as Buddhist emptiness; rather, for Zhuangzi, nothingness is the milieu within which Dao moves and to which it turns in order to realize its onto-cosmological creativity." ~ David Chai, Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness.

I like Chai's conception of Zhuangian nothingness. Often when talking about nothingness (虚无 xūwú) people think that we are referring to emptiness. Absolute emptiness, or "The Void," which implies a complete absence of everything. But the Dao is not absence, not the opposite of being.

Think of a black hole. When I search for images of nothingness I found a lot of artwork depicting a black hole (light swirling around a completely dark circle). A black hole is not empty though, it only appears to me as being empty. Appearances are not always reality, thus, when I view a black hole my assumption that it is void of everything is mistaken.

Chai continues, "...wu as nothingness distinguishes itself from wu as non-being in that the latter is a counter-element to ontic being while the former is the meontological material used by Dao to fulfill its own self-so nature...Dao can hence remain aloof and atemporal while at the same time giving birth to the myriad things. Nothingness thus represents the facilitative capacity of Dao while being is its actual embodiment."