THERE IS NEVER NOTHING

What comes first, the chicken or the egg? They both come first. They arise mutually. You can't have one without the other.  In the same way, you can't have day without night, hot without cold, or life without death.

This mutual arising, or as it is known more fully in Zen, the mutual arising of opposites, has an unexpected implication.  There is this manifested world, the world of form, so there must also be an unmanifested world, the world of no form. 

This is, at first blush, an instance of presence versus absence.  But it's not presence versus absence.  It is the difference between something being present and its not being present, which is to say when I leave the room, it does not mean that I no longer exist.  It only means that I'm not in the room any longer.

When a person dies, it doesn't mean that he is gone without a trace, but just that he is not here anymore.  Even the Buddha who insisted that nothing survives after death, qualified this in his view of reincarnation.  Something does continue on, namely an impression, an inclination, a tendency to be a certain way, which then becomes the character of the reincarnated new person.  There is never nothing.