Ayin

Definition

The Hebrew word for nothingness, used in Kabbalistic cosmology to name the unmanifest source from which all being emerges. Ayin sits prior to Yesh (existence) and is the formless ground that the ten Sefirot articulate.

Literal meaning

Hebrew אַיִן, literally "there is not." In ordinary speech a simple negation; in Kabbalistic literature the technical name for the absolute that has no attributes and admits no description.

Esoteric meaning

Ayin is treated by the Zohar and by Cordovero as the highest of the three veils that precede the Sefirot, the others being Ain Soph (the limitless) and Ain Soph Aur (the limitless light). The Hasidic master Schneur Zalman of Liadi develops Ayin as the constant ground that creation is renewed from in every moment, the bittul (self-nullification) the practitioner aims at being a return to Ayin.

Extended meaning

The Kabbalistic claim that creation proceeds yesh me-ayin, being from nothingness, is not a teaching of creation from absence but of creation from the source that is no-thing because it is prior to thing. The Lurianic tzimtzum describes the contraction by which the infinite withdraws to make space for finite being; what remains in the contracted void is the trace through which Ayin holds the world.

Comparative tradition

Sanskrit śūnyatā, the emptiness of the Mahāyāna tradition, names a comparable absolute. Daoist wuji, the limitless before taiji, names the same ground. Christian apophatic theology of Pseudo-Dionysius and Meister Eckhart's Gottheit (Godhead beyond God) reaches the same point through different vocabulary.