☸ the empty throne

the empty throne — Buddhism, the cousin who refuses the throne: it crossed the Kabbalah's path TWICE and both crossings missed. Once by accident (the Buddha's own life, laundered through six languages into Saint Josaphat, and into HEBREW as Ibn Hasdai's Ben ha-Melekh ve-ha-Nazir — Barcelona, c. 1230, the exact city and generation that produced the first Kabbalists, and nobody knew whose story it was) and once on purpose (Dharamsala, 1990, when the Dalai Lama asked eight Jewish delegates for the secret of spiritual survival in exile). Three models in Buddhism's own geometry — the wheel of becoming (a ring with no first link, and you can CUT it: nirodha), the five heaps (processes circulating around a hollow where the owner should be — look for the one who looks), and Indra's net (every jewel reflecting every other, beside the Tree's own ten-within-ten). Named for the empty seat the earliest Buddhist art drew where the Buddha should be — set that beside the Merkavah's Throne of Glory with the One seated on it. Where the paths part: a self mended vs a self seen through, the fire put out vs the sparks gathered, desire as engine vs desire as fire — and the Buddha's refusal to answer the cosmogonic questions the whole Tree is an answer to. Reference throughout; nothing invoked.