zero ... again

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As a mind-bender, I have always liked "zero." Others may prefer to play the same game using "infinity," but that was always too big for me: "Zero" seemed more manageable somehow ... :)

I once asked a mathematician -- a fellow who had worked on the Manhattan Project that produced the first atomic bomb -- what "zero" was, what it meant, how to get a handle on it. And he was kind enough to give me a response ... of which I can remember precisely zero. I remember its being a serious mathematical response, but since it did not straighten out my mind-bent mind, I guess I let it fall away to the place where all such forgotten things fall away to.

Ramakrishna, the 19th century Hindu Vedanta exponent and a man sometimes referred to as an avatar, used to say that zero has no meaning until it is linked with some other number. No meaning: How can something thrown around as cavalierly as "zero" have no meaning when clearly it has some meaning ... else how could it be bandied about?

A mind-bender.


My now-departed friend and Zen monk Dokai Fukui once tried to assist me with my"zero" fuss-budgeting, suggesting with his calligraphy that it helps to understand "zero" as a verb rather than a noun ... that it is alive.

"Alive" has no meaning.

It is simply alive.

I am glad that all this once had an importance in my mind, that I wriggled and squirmed.

Wriggling and squirming have a nice way of wearing themselves out and of suggesting that wriggling a squirming is strictly a matter of choice.

Wriggle and squirm as much as anyone might, still there is the advertisement punchline that goes, "I coulda had a V-8."

V-8 juice is tasty.

Yum-yum-yum.
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