Pause is an aspect of the nothing-to-something relation. Pause occurs in time and is of or about motion. It is like space in relation to matter.

Pause is also like something less in relation to something. Pause, being the annulment of motion, has in it the idea of nothing. Pause shows that nothing can do something.

Pause can be seen well in music. Two notes have silence between them, and the silence is part of the effect of the notes. A speaker will use a pause, not because he has nothing to say, but because not saying anything for a while adds to the effect of saying.

When we do anything, what has gone before can be seen as a pause before that thing. If we drink coffee at 12 P.M. and it is coffee that we choose wholly to think of, all that went before can be seen as a “pause” before the coffee. And the drinking of coffee can be seen as a pause before continuing to repair a shelf.

All action can be looked upon as made up of the action itself and the pauses before and after. If we choose, we can see the whole world as having paused a long time before it gave birth to us. That is the way somewhere we see it.

Pause is as lightness to heaviness. If there are three colors, one green, one light yellow, and one purple, the light yellow can be seen as a pause between the green and the purple.

I have said that pause is like space. If there are two houses and a space between, the space is like a pause. Pause, however, accents time, motion.

Action can be regarded as a pause before doing nothing. Rest, of course, can be regarded as a pause before action.

As these words are written, the spaces between them are pauses. When they are read aloud, these pauses are heard, or if one prefers, noticed. When the words are seen with the eye, the pauses are the spaces between the words. We can see pauses between the letters of the words, too, if we try hard.

Wherever in a thing the parts are thought of, pauses are felt between the parts. Pauses accompany differences in action.

If we change from washing a dish to drying it, since we know we have changed our activity, there is a pause of some kind. If we are rather solemn or formal about the change, the pause is more apparent.

We could not notice a change from one thing to another unless a pause also occurred. This pause is the interval of not that, or not-being, or nothing, which is with everything we do.

The heart-beat has this pause. As we give attention to anything, there is this pause. The unconscious to the conscious is as pause to activity. Sleep to waking is a form of the pause-activity relation, or the nothing-something relation.

Less to more is as pause to activity. So is softness to hardness. So is lightness to heaviness. So is white to black, and a light color to a dark color. The lessening of anything approaches nothing.

When, in a symphony, the crashing is merged with the delicate and faintly melodious, an aspect of the something-nothing relation I have pointed out between note and interval, is presented in another way. In painting, matter is used as to space, solidity as to airiness, and this, likewise, is a form of the something-nothing relation.

We ourselves are a relation of pause and activity. Before we came to know anything, there was a pause. Before we did anything, there was a pause.

In the flowingness of our lives, there is discontinuity, too; and pause can be seen in this discontinuity.

The relation of death and life, non-birth and birth, is likewise an aspect of the nothing-something relation. It is all because existence not only is, but isn’t. And wherever pause is felt, wherever pause is used for beauty, used well, the world as something which isn’t, is being used.

Nothingness as part of existence is decidedly useful. The feeling of nothing as being, as a strict spiritual commodity, and as a thing, is necessary before the present moment, or any moment, can be seen adequately or efficiently.

In the same way as the pauses in music, the stops in dancing, the delays in the dialogue of a play (let alone the spaces between the words), are parts of the music, the dancing, the play—so nothing is part of the effectiveness of existence. That is the way we should see nothing, or existence as unfelt pause.

When we think of history, we are confronted with pauses. When we think closely of our own lives, we shall find pauses. Pauses correspond to the spaces in things of matter; even to the space in an atom. Pauses are the lightness of the world.

When we think of the beginning of the world, and can’t just place it, we assume a pause. When we try to find an end to the world and do not find it, we assume a pause, too.

Pause is before and after and between. A playwright can use a pause with good effect before a happening. He can, by a pause, bring about tenseness in a person seeing his play. And he can put a pause after a happening, and likewise make for effect on the feelings of a person. And he can use pause in between happenings. And we can see, if we wish, a happening in a play, or elsewhere, as a pause between silences.

Space also is before or in front of matter, and behind it. It is also on this side of it and that side. Space, too, is between things of matter.

Quietness, stillness, rest, are sought by every person. When a person thinks of happiness, he thinks of peace—while he still thinks things are going to happen. The happenings are instances of the peace. Action is part of serenity.

This is why a desire for death and nothingness and complete calm, is in each person. How well he manages this desire is an indication of how well he’s getting along. The desire for nothingness, as such, is quite commendable. But it is bad to go after nothingness as opposed to somethingness. Reality, being an aesthetic oneness of nothing and something, pause and motion, won’t stand for a disjunction of nothing and something, pause and motion.

Consequently the management of our minds, like the making of a play, has much to do with the proper understanding of pause. Pause in its fulness has to be respected. We can be neatly pessimistic and say that the life of a man and the history of man as a whole is an interference between two pauses of non-existence. However, if we don’t place existence as something against or antagonistic to pause, nothingness will not seem so desolate. Existence and nothingness are beautifully, greatly representative of something which is both. The world is a warm play of existence and nothing.

What man wants most and what he fears most are akin. As he goes after peace—a consideration of the Buddhist Nirvana is proper here—he goes after nothingness. For complete peace is nothingness. Man desires peace and fears non-existence. He wants freedom. Yet where something is besides himself, he cannot have full freedom. A person, to have existence and freedom, too, must see nothing as also matter, himself as also something not himself, himself as existing even during the Great Pause before his birth. A person can get his desire only by seeing pause as activity. This is why a proper consideration of pause is incumbent on everyone.