万物与虚无

What is space? Does space only exist when there's stuff in it? Does space only have a meaning when it's enclosed by walls? Think of the distance between two objects. Does that gap still exist if you take the objects away? What meaning can we give to distance if it doesn't have a start and end point? Ultimately the question is this: Does space in itself have form? Does it have structure or shape? or Is it just the place where things happen? Since Newton's time, gravity was thought to be a force that pulls all objects together. But Einstein's general theory of relativity gives us a completely different picture and a totally new perspective. Although gravity appears to be a force --- it's nothing more than the curvature of space itself. When an object falls it isn't really being pulled by gravity --- it's just following the simplest path through bent space. The equations of general relativity revealed that it was the presence of mass that caused space to curve and distort. The reason we have gravity on earth is because the earth is actually bending the space around it. In Einsteinium theory of the universe, space becomes a dynamic entity that reacts to its contents. Space knows about the presence of gravitating bodies, and responds to their presence by changing its geometry. observable universe cosmic web it shows massive clusters of galaxies linked together in vast filaments, each one containing trillions of stars; its scale is sometimes difficult to appreciate, but it would take light almost ten billion years to across the distance in this image. Far into the future, some hundred billion years from now, if intelligent life form still exists in our galaxy, they'll look out into space and see only the stars in our own milky way. All the other galaxies will have disappeared, and we'll be alone in a vast dark empty expanse. To Aristotle, the concept of nothingness was deeply disturbing --- it seemed to present all sorts of problems and paradoxes. He came to believe that nature would forever fight against the creation of true nothingness --- as he put it, 'Nature abhors a vacuum'. 'We live at the bottom of an ocean of air.' The earth is cocooned in an atmosphere that rapidly thins out the higher you go --- eventually becoming the cold silent expanse of space. They believed there had to be a medium carrying the lightwaves. 'luminiferous aether' This is the classical world. Action and reaction. Cause and effect. It's sensible, certain, and knowable. Heisenberg's uncertainty principal： The more I know about where something is, the less I know about how it's moving. In truly tiny amounts of time and space, something could come from nothing. You could borrow energy from nothing, so long as you pay it back quickly enough. (the vacuum is alive) the Dirac equation If things and anti-things ever met each other, they would instantly annihilate, turning all their mass into energy. Disappear completely. Whenever you try to remove everything you can from empty space, it's still always awash with all these fluctuations. Within nothingness there's a kind of fizzing, a dynamic dance as pairs of particles and anti-particles borrowing energy from the vacuum for brief moments before annihilating and paying it back again. The vacuum goes from being nothing to being a place absolutely teeming with matter, anti-matter creation. Nothingness is a seething mass of virtual particles appearing and disappearing trillions of times in the blink of an eye. Nothing really has shaped everything. (embryonic universe) We are simply the debris of huge annihilation of matter and anti-matter at the beginning of time. There's a profound connection between the nothingness from which we originated, and the infinite in which we are engulfed.

知乎上有人提问，“时不时会突然产生对死亡的恐惧，特别是在夜里，一想到几十年后就不在这个世界，哪怕是一百年以后的事也不得而知，就会有一种深深的恐惧。”

曾经有那么一段时间，我也有过和提问者相同的恐惧。那段时间，我很怕那个无法逃避的结局，害怕身体消失，害怕意识消失，无法想象自己不能运动、不能思考，感知不到周围的世界，心底涌出原始的深深的恐惧。于是我日夜思索应对之策，后来，似乎是想通了。

“我开始学着接受老去，接受死亡，虽然思想还在徘徊斗争中。经常想到人生的终点，这让我更懂得珍惜当下，珍惜身边的人，我们都是匆匆过客，从虚无中来，互相陪伴几十年后，又将重新回到虚无，这偶然的短暂的陪伴，是弥足珍贵的，是支撑我们在这个世界存在的巨大勇气。在我们逐渐衰老甚至行将消失的时候，有亲人在，我们会勇敢很多。生命的长度是无法改变的，但我们可以努力增加生命的广度和深度，去做更多喜欢做的值得做的事，去探索更多的未知世界，这样，才会不虚此行吧。”2017年，我写下了这么一段话。

看起来豁达了不少，但智性上的改变是不可靠的，在睡前认真思考这个问题时，还是会从迷糊中瞬间惊醒睡意全无。还是没有想通。

后来，一场突如其来——其实也是在劫难逃的变故，让我坠落到了人生的谷底，一度徘徊在死亡的边缘，却也让我彻底颠覆了对死亡的认知，不再恐惧死亡，更不再恐惧任何事。

那段时间暗无天日，我每日在阴霾中徘徊，对任何事物都失去了兴趣，包括最喜欢的电影。我吃不下饭，睡不着觉，一个月暴瘦二十斤。每天过的生不如死，如同一具行尸走肉，就差停止呼吸了。

幸运的是，我读到了克里希那穆提的书，接触了冥想，随之养成了时时觉察的习惯——觉察当下的自己，觉察当下的世界。

慢慢地我意识到，我们拥有的只有当下，我们只存在于当下，过去、未来，都只是脑中的幻象，包括你恐惧的死亡。

死亡是一定存在的，不能否认，那是个谁也无法控制、无法逃避的东西，就像你的出生、成长，就像天空的阴晴变幻，就像草木的荣枯，你要恐惧这些自然的东西吗？死亡是个将来会发生，但并不在当下的东西。

觉察你所处的当下。感受你的呼吸，指尖碰触物体的感受，皮肤接触衣物的感受，各个脏器的感觉，脚底的触觉，全身受重力吸引下坠的感觉；你听，敲击键盘的啪啪声，周围人们的话语声，窗外树叶的哗哗声，鸟鸣声，远处车辆驶过的声音，摊贩的叫卖声；你看，眼前这个多姿多彩的世界，电脑屏幕发出柔和的光，黑色的塑料键盘，方形的笔筒插满各式各样好看的笔，白色的台灯，橡木纹的桌面，巨大明亮的窗户，翠绿的树叶，蓝的像水洗的天空；觉察你脑中的念头，一个一个争先恐后地跳出来，随即又消失，如同观看视频时的弹幕，一队队地从你脑中飘过……慢慢地，你感觉和周围的世界，甚至和整个宇宙，融为一体，不分彼此。

如果此时“死亡”在你脑中出现，觉察它，觉察你对它的恐惧。你发现，它只是你脑中的一个念头，一个意象；这个念头造成的恐惧，只是身体某个部位的感受，觉察一会儿，感受就消失了。

当下的你，和宇宙是一体的，甚至在将来，在你死亡之后。死后我们会化为灰烬，化为分子、原子、基本粒子。而这个当下，我们又何尝不是一堆基本粒子呢？作为基本粒子，自宇宙大爆炸之后的很短一段时间产生后，我们又何曾消失过？

现代物理学告诉我们，基本粒子未必是电子、光子、中微子、夸克等等实体的东西，也许会是一段不停波动的能量“弦”，在波动之中，能量和物质相互转换，万物归根结底也只不过是一堆能量。

测不准原理和狄拉克方程告诉我们，真空之中是可以凭空产生能量和物质的。我们的宇宙便是在一片空寂之中，由量子涨落凭空产生的。我们生活的空间，每时每刻都在产生物质，随即又消失。如果不考虑时间的尺度，我们的宇宙，包括宇宙万物，都只是虚空之中的灵光一现，随即消失。我们都处在这个消失的过程中。

我们本来就是虚无，最终也会归于虚无。就像念头，本来就不存在，偶尔闪现一下，你就把这个偶然闪现的小东西当成宇宙真理了，就如同你把这个虚幻的世界过的无比真实。“死亡”，只是你灵光一现的小小念头罢了，何必太执着于此。

尝试觉察自己和周围的世界，活在当下，开放地接受万事万物，你将不再恐惧任何事。

退一步说，即使你做不到活在当下，仍旧执着于把脑中神经细胞闪现的电信号——你的念头，视作宇宙真相，那么，以你有限的智慧，又怎么能揣测生死的奥秘？你无从知道死亡之后会发生什么，又如何断定那是一个令人恐惧的归宿？只是你的意识在作怪罢了——是意识不想消失而已。你把意识当做了你，做了意识的奴隶。

你，由基本粒子组成的你，是万物，是你身处的宇宙。你将和宇宙同生，永远都不会消失。其实，我们又何曾存在过？

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