Emptiness Is Not Nothing

When a Western reader first hears that Buddhism speaks of emptiness, a misunderstanding often arises immediately.

Emptiness sounds like denial. Like loss. Like nihilism. As if nothing truly has meaning. As if everything ultimately dissolves into a cosmic nothingness.

But that is not what is meant by emptiness. On the contrary.

Perhaps one of the greatest misunderstandings about Buddhist thought is precisely the idea that emptiness would be a form of absence.

The Buddhist concept of śūnyatā — usually translated as emptiness — does not refer to meaninglessness. It refers to the absence of a fixed, independent, unchanging essence.

That is something entirely different. A tree exists. A human being exists. A river exists. A memory exists. But not as completely self-contained, unchanging entities.

Everything arises in relation. Through causes. Through circumstances. Through dependencies. Through continuous change.

In that sense, emptiness does not mean: “there is nothing.” But rather: “nothing exists completely on its own.”

That may seem subtle. But the consequences are enormous.

For where many Western traditions of thought — even when they lose religious certainties — still assume a relatively stable individual who makes choices, Buddhism asks a more radical question: who is that stable decision-maker, exactly?

That is not a semantic game. It touches directly on our daily experience.

We speak as if the self were a fixed object. “I am simply like this.” “That belongs to my character.” “This is my identity.” “This is how I think.”

But anyone who honestly looks at themselves knows how changeable all of that is.

The person you were at twenty no longer exists. The person you were yesterday has already changed. Your body renews itself. Your convictions shift. Your relationships change you. Loss changes you. Love changes you. Trauma changes you.

Even memories prove to be less stable than we think.

And yet we speak as if somewhere inside there is a hard core that is permanently “I.” Buddhism places a question mark there.

Not to deny human experience. But to make visible our attachment to fixed definitions.

That is an uncomfortable thought. Perhaps even more uncomfortable than Sartre.

For Sartre leaves the human being with radical freedom. But Buddhism asks: who exactly is that human being who would be so radically free?

That feels destabilising. And it is. But unlike some Western responses, this destabilisation does not necessarily lead to despair.

Why not? Because emptiness does not only take away. It also opens.

If nothing is completely fixed, change becomes possible. If identity is not a closed stone, growth can take place. If suffering is not permanent, liberation can become conceivable. If the other is not an absolutely separate being, compassion becomes more understandable.

That last point is essential.

For in Buddhism, emptiness is not a cold abstraction. It has moral consequences.

When I do not exist completely apart from others, their suffering becomes less easily “their problem.” When my existence is relational, responsibility becomes more complicated — but perhaps also richer.

This is an essential difference from certain popular interpretations of individualism. Not: “I am completely autonomous.” But: “I exist in dependence.”

That may sound limiting. But it can also be liberating.

For complete autonomy is a heavy burden. The idea that you must entirely construct your own identity, meaning, and future without any relational grounding is scarcely bearable for many people.

There, Buddhist thought touches something that is often forgotten in modern societies: the human being is not a closed project. The human being is process. Relationship. Change. Influence. Continuation.

That does not mean that individual responsibility disappears. That would be a misunderstanding.

Buddhism is not an excuse to say: “I am merely a product of circumstances.” On the contrary.

Actions have consequences. Intentions carry weight. Habits shape character. But the subject that acts is understood differently.

Less as a closed island. More as a node in a living network of causes and consequences.

That begins to come strikingly close to the questions that will return later in this book around karma and the fractal.

But let us not move too quickly ahead. First, we must avoid another misunderstanding.

Emptiness does not mean passivity. Not indifference. Not the disappearance of morality. Not the abandonment of human seriousness.

In fact, one could say that emptiness deepens human seriousness. For if nothing is fixed, choices matter. Not less. But differently.

Not as the expression of an eternal essence. But as participation in an ongoing relational process.

That is why Buddhism feels both strange and familiar at the same time.

Strange, because it undermines fixed certainties. Familiar, because every human being intuitively knows how changeable life is.

Perhaps that is why some experiences can be so powerful.

Moments in which reality does not change — but our perception does. A sudden insight. A loss that rearranges everything. An experience in which old categories fall away.

The Korean Buddhist tradition has a beautiful example of this. Not as abstract doctrine. But as a human story. The story of Wonhyo.

Wonhyo and the Nature of Experience

Some philosophical ideas are explained through abstract concepts. Others continue to live through stories. Buddhism knows both.

And sometimes a story turns out to contain more philosophical power than a library full of concepts.

Korean Buddhism preserves such a story. The story of Wonhyo.

For Korean readers, he scarcely needs an introduction. For Western readers, he usually does.

Wonhyo lived in the seventh century and is regarded as one of Korea’s most important Buddhist thinkers.

But to call him merely a “philosopher” would be too limited. He was a monk. A writer. A synthesizing thinker. A mystic.

And perhaps above all, someone who understood that truth is not always found in abstract systems of thought, but sometimes in a direct shift of experience.

The most famous story about him is simple. Precisely for that reason, it is so powerful.

According to tradition, Wonhyo was travelling with another monk to China to continue his studies. Along the way, they had to take shelter in a cave.

During the night, Wonhyo became intensely thirsty. In the darkness, he found a bowl of water. He drank greedily. The water tasted refreshing. Pure. Exactly what he needed.

The next morning, in daylight, he saw what had really happened. The “bowl” turned out to be a human skull. The “clear water” was stagnant rainwater.

The objective material was the same as the night before. But his experience had changed completely.

And precisely there, something happened.

According to tradition, Wonhyo broke open at that moment. Not because the world changed. But because he saw how fundamentally perception itself shapes meaning.

What had first seemed pure became repulsive. Not because the water changed. But because his mind changed.

For many Western readers, this may sound like an anecdote. But in Korean Buddhist thought, it is far more than that.

It touches the core of a fundamental insight: the reality as we experience it can never be fully separated from the way consciousness structures it.

That does not mean that the external world does not exist. That would be a caricature. But it does mean that human experience is never neutral.

It is woven in from the very beginning into what we call reality.

And here, Wonhyo unexpectedly touches modern sensibilities.

Not because he was a modern cognitive scientist. That would be absurd. But because his insight remains recognisable.

How often does this not happen in ordinary lives? A conversation that first seemed innocent and later feels like an insult. A memory that, decades later, is suddenly understood differently. A relationship in which you suddenly see what had always been visible.

An ideology that once offered certainty but later feels suffocating. A person who first seemed threatening and later turns out to be human. Or exactly the other way around.

The external world sometimes changes. But often it is primarily the interpretive lens that shifts.

That is what makes Wonhyo so important to me.

Not only as a historical Korean figure. But as a bridge-thinker.

For he embodies something rare. He was not a simplistic relativist. Not someone who said: “everything is just perspective.” That would be too easy.

And he was also not a dogmatic defender of one school against all others. On the contrary.

Wonhyo is known precisely for his attempts to bring different Buddhist traditions into conversation with one another. Not by erasing differences. But by seeking deeper coherence.

That makes him surprisingly modern. And also surprisingly relevant to what is emerging here.

For what I am writing here is, in a certain sense, an attempt at synthesis.

Not to artificially make Sartre and Buddhism identical. Not to retroactively declare Jung “essentially Buddhist.” Not to use Korea as decorative exoticism.

But to seriously investigate whether different traditions of thought sometimes circle around the same human experience, each in a different language.

Wonhyo teaches something important here. Insight does not arise only through doctrine. Not only through theory. Sometimes it arises because an experience breaks open the existing framework.

That is relevant for Sartre. Because there too, self-evident ground disappears.

That is relevant for Buddhist emptiness. Because there too, fixed constructions prove less stable than assumed.

And for me, this became an important starting point in a path of thought that would eventually lead to the Jijang Fractal.

For if human experience is shaped in part through patterns of interpretation, memory, relationships, and repetition, then meaning is never fully linear.

A small event can reverberate for decades. A moment of rejection can echo across generations. A gesture of compassion just as much.

That is not yet a fractal. But it does open the door.

There is something else.

Wonhyo ultimately did something that is at least equally meaningful. He did not continue his journey to China.

According to tradition, he understood that what he was seeking was not elsewhere. Not in further doctrinal accumulation. Not in a geographically more distant centre of truth. But in a direct confrontation with experience itself.

That is a radical step. Not anti-intellectual. But intellectually humble.

It suggests that knowledge sometimes does not grow by merely adding more systems, but by seeing more clearly what is already before us.

That attitude touches something deeply human. And perhaps also something that has become relevant again in our time.

We live in a world of almost unlimited information. More knowledge than any generation before us. More theories. More opinions. More data. More explanations. And yet clarity does not seem to grow automatically alongside them.

Perhaps because information is not the same as insight.

Wonhyo reminds us of that. Not by being anti-scientific. But by showing that human perception itself is part of the question.

That makes him not only historically interesting. It makes him a necessary guide.

For before we can ask what the Jijang Fractal is — we must first accept that human reality has always been more complex, more relational, and more sensitive to interpretation than simple linear models suggest.

And yet there is another layer. For even if perception shifts — the question remains: what lives in the human depths that makes such shifts possible?

There, another voice opens. Carl Jung.

Jung and the Depth Beneath Ourselves

If Sartre confronts us with freedom, and Wonhyo shows how perception helps shape reality, then Carl Gustav Jung opens another door. Not toward the outer world. But inward.

Or more precisely: toward the depth beneath what we usually call “ourselves.”

Jung is a fascinating and complex figure. Psychiatrist. Thinker. Student of Freud, later his intellectual counterpart. For some, a visionary. For others, speculative.

That last point must be stated honestly. Not everything in Jung’s work meets the standards of modern science as we would apply them today.

His theories on archetypes, synchronicity, and the collective unconscious are influential, but not easily empirically testable.

I therefore do not use Jung as a scientific authority in the strict sense. But as an interpretative guide.

For some thinkers remain relevant not because every part of their system is proven natural science, but because they give language to human experiences that would otherwise remain difficult to name.

For me, Jung belongs to that category.

His central intuition is simple enough to be widely recognisable: the human being is not transparent to itself.

What we consciously think ourselves to be is not the whole. Beneath the daily ego, something else lives. Not necessarily mystical. Not necessarily supernatural. But psychically deeper.

Many people recognize that intuitively. Everyone knows moments when a reaction feels disproportionate. A fear greater than the situation. An attraction that seems impossible to explain rationally. A repeating relational pattern. A dream that feels unexpectedly meaningful. A recurring inner conflict.

As if something within us is active that is not fully governed by our conscious self.

Jung gave language to that terrain.

One of his best-known concepts is the shadow.

Not in a melodramatic sense. Not as “the evil within us.” But as the parts of ourselves that we do not wish to see, acknowledge, or integrate.

That can be aggression. But also vulnerability. Need. Grief. Dependence. Even compassion, when our identity rewards hardness.

The shadow does not exist because people are evil. It exists because people are selective in what they allow themselves to see.

And precisely there, Jung touches something that Sartre also recognizes.

For what Sartre calls bad faith — the evasion of freedom and responsibility — has a clear psychological kinship with Jung’s insight that people often protect themselves against uncomfortable truth.

The language differs. The underlying human experience feels surprisingly related.

But Jung goes further.

He also speaks of archetypes.

Here we must be careful. Archetypes are not measurable objects. Not regions of the brain. Not chemical substances.

They are an interpretative model. A way of understanding recurring human images, stories, and psychic patterns.

For example: the wise old man, the mother, the trickster, the hero, the shadow, the guide.

Even those who have never read Jung recognize such figures immediately in myths, religions, films, and literature.

That is precisely why the idea has remained so culturally influential.

Not because it is hard-proven laboratory science. But because it names something that many people intuitively recognize.

And here it becomes important.

For what is a religious figure? What is a bodhisattva? What is a moral symbol? Are such images merely external objects of belief? Or do they also make inner human possibilities visible?

That is precisely the question that makes Jung interesting.

Take, for example, the figure of Christ. Even for someone who does not believe religiously, the question remains: why does this image speak so deeply to people? Not only theologically. But psychologically.

Or take Athena. Not as a literally existing goddess. But as a cultural symbol of wisdom. Why does such an image continue to resonate?

Jung would say: because symbols sometimes make visible something that lies deeper than individual preference. Not as a factual object. But as a psychic structure.

And then the question naturally arises: what is Jijang?

For a believing Buddhist, that is a real bodhisattva. For a sceptic, perhaps a religious cultural image.

But through Jung, a third possibility emerges. What if Jijang can also be read as an inner human possibility?

Not as projection. Not as demystification. But as a psychic form. An attitude. A possibility of presence. A capacity.

The willingness not to run away from suffering. To descend where things become difficult. To remain where something is not yet resolved.

That does not mean Jung “proves” that Jijang is an archetype. That would be too crude.

But he helps us ask a question that falls outside both religious orthodoxy and reductionist scepticism. A question that is fundamental for me.

With that, Jung opens yet another thought.

The ego is not the whole. That sounds simple. But the consequences are profound.

For many of our modern identities are ego-projects. What I believe. What I think. Who I am. What my position is. What my story is. What my rightness is.

Jung would say: that is only a fragment. Not unimportant. But not the whole.

Beneath that surface lies psychic depth. And sometimes life confronts us with it.

Not neatly. Not rationally. But through ruptures. Loss. Conflicts. Dreams. Love. Shame. Illness. Ageing. Religious experiences. Moral crises.

That is relevant because the Jijang Fractal ultimately does not seek to be only a social or philosophical model. It also touches inner patterns. Repetition. Avoidance. Responsibility. Return. Compassion. Shadow. Presence.

And perhaps something even more important.

Jung introduces here an idea that was later further developed in psychology and that matters greatly to me: containment.

The word sounds technical, but the idea is recognisably human.

Containment does not mean suppression. Not pushing feelings away. Not hardening yourself.

It means rather this: the capacity to hold difficult inner tension without immediately fleeing, denying, or discharging that tension destructively onto others.

For example: the ability to feel fear without immediately panicking. To experience grief without instantly hardening. To endure contradictory feelings without immediately forcing a simplistic answer. To allow doubt without immediately searching for a new dogma.

That is psychological holding capacity. Perhaps even a form of inner maturity.

For much human behaviour arises precisely from the inability to tolerate tension. Then we project. Then we accuse. Then we flee. Then we cling to ideology, identity, belief, or cynicism.

Containment does not mean that conflict disappears. It means that an inner space emerges in which conflict does not immediately have to dominate everything.

And precisely there, Jung unexpectedly begins to come close to something that will later receive another name. Not freedom alone. Not emptiness alone. Not insight alone.

But a sustaining presence in the midst of tension. A moral and psychological holding capacity. A capacity to remain.

And there, cautiously, a new figure begins to become visible. Not from European psychology. But from Korea. Jijang.

Encounter with Jijang

Some encounters do not begin with understanding. But with recognition.

Not the kind of recognition in which you know exactly what you are seeing. Rather the uneasy feeling that something touches you before you can explain it.

That was my first encounter with Jijang.

Not in a library. Not through a philosophical system. Not through a scientific hypothesis. But in Seoul.

In Insadong, the district where old and new Korea seem to touch each other constantly.

There, tourist shops stand beside galleries. Ritual objects beside kitsch. Tea houses beside modern cafés. History beside commerce.

As so often in Korea, opposites do not exist there in neatly separated categories. They live beside one another. Sometimes awkwardly. Sometimes beautifully.

I no longer remember the exact moment with absolute certainty. Memories rarely behave so neatly.

But I do remember a small copper figurine. Not imposing. Not a monument. Not a dramatic revelation. Simply an object among other objects.

And yet my gaze lingered on it. It was Ksitigarbha. Or rather: the Korean form I would later come to know as Jijang Bosal.

At that moment, I knew almost nothing. No extensive doctrinal knowledge. No in-depth study. No carefully constructed interpretation. Only an unexpected attraction.

That may sound suspicious to rational readers. As if intuition would automatically mean truth. That is not what I mean.

People are constantly drawn to things that later prove meaningless. But sometimes an intellectual journey does not begin with argument.

Sometimes such a journey begins with a persistent question. Why does this move me? Why this image? Why this figure?

Only later did I begin to understand whom I had encountered.

In the broader Buddhist tradition, Ksitigarbha is known as the bodhisattva associated with difficult transitions, suffering, the dead, unresolved states, and a radical vow of presence.

In Korea, he lives as Jijang Bosal. A figure who does not simply ascend toward exalted light, but remains connected precisely to the places where liberation is not yet complete.

That image struck me. Not because I was suddenly religiously converted. Not because I believed I had received supernatural proof. But because the symbolism made something human visible that I recognized immediately.

Many spiritual images revolve around transcendence. Ascent. Purification. Victory. Enlightenment as departure from darkness.

But here stood a figure who seemed to do something else. Not flee. Not escape. Not immediately resolve. But remain.

That difference matters.

For many human systems — religious, political, psychological — ultimately become escape machines. They seek to reduce tension. To explain guilt away. To simplify complexity. To neutralise fear. To restore certainty.

That is understandable. But not always truthful.

What began to fascinate me about Jijang was precisely the opposite. No quick solution. No triumphant purity. But presence within the unresolved.

Perhaps that is why this image continued to haunt me. Not as a religious claim. But as a moral question.

What does it mean to remain where suffering has not yet been resolved? What does it mean not to immediately distance oneself from human fracture? What does it mean not only to seek clarity, but also holding capacity?

What I did not yet know at the time was that in the Korean Buddhist imagination, presence rarely stands entirely on its own.

There is not only the one who remains. There is also the space in which that remaining becomes possible.

Only later would I encounter Heogongjang Bosal (허공장보살) — the bodhisattva of open space, sustaining emptiness, possibility.

At that time, I understood nothing of that symbolic coherence. But in retrospect, I see how fitting that thought is.

For perhaps presence does not require only courage. Perhaps it also requires space.

An inner field in which tension is not immediately resolved. An openness in which suffering does not need to disappear at once in order to be carried.

That insight would become important later.

But at that moment, I knew only the experience that here was something that did not run away.

Here, something began to come together that I could not yet fully name at the time.

Sartre’s seriousness. Buddhist emptiness. Jung’s psychic depth. Wonhyo’s insight that perception helps shape experience. And now this figure.

Not as proof. But as a point of concentration. A human possibility in symbolic form.

Perhaps that is an important distinction.

For modern readers often feel the need to choose immediately. Either religious literalism. Or sceptical reduction. Either the image is “real.” Or it is merely cultural fiction.

But human symbols often function more complexly than that.

Even if someone does not regard Jijang as an objectively existing bodhisattva, the question remains relevant: Why does this image exist? Why does a figure like this return in human culture? What psychological, moral, or spiritual possibility becomes visible here?

That is not a small distinction.

For from that moment, the question shifts from metaphysics to human experience.

Not: “Does Jijang really exist?” But: “What happens within a human being who needs such a figure?”

Or perhaps: “What becomes visible in such a figure that otherwise remains difficult to name?”

For me, that was the beginning of a slow process. Not one insight. Not one decisive conclusion. Rather a series of recurring encounters.

With Korea. With temples. With silence. With public space. With moral questions. With illness. With ageing. With responsibility. With people I love. With suffering that is not theoretical.

Only in retrospect do I see that that first encounter in Insadong was less an answer than a beginning. The beginning of a far more uncomfortable question.

Not: how do I escape suffering? But: how do I remain present without losing myself?

And precisely there, the next question becomes unavoidable. Is Jijang a religious reality? A cultural symbol? A psychic archetype? Or something else?

We cannot avoid that question. So we will not.