Does 'nothing' exist? Is't 'something' in 'nothing'?

[JohnAvg]

Is it just a wordplay or if 'you are doing nothing' you actually do something..What do you think?

[maraki16]

well, it is something....you let time go by without taking advantage of it and do things. but the act of doing nothing certainly is something. as a state there is something in it. it acquires meaning.

[weltanschauung]

this is actually an interesting mind puzzle because generally we use the word nothing to describe the absence of something... however, frequently in phylosophy, the word nothing is used to describe "everything". for example, in sartre's being and nothingness, being is a part conditioned to be limited and relative, and nothingness would be all that which is infinite and absolute. this also happens in occultist and esoteric texts as a rule... "hold the key to the mental door, where nothing is everything, and everything is nothing..."

[billyjack]

nothing is basically no-thing, no particular, no piece. its the whole, everything

[Mathor]

i think nothing exist, but i don't think anyone has ever seen it. lol.

[Richyb42]

I am not sure if nothing is something, but i do know that doing nothing is great. Not having to think and drift off into vast nothingness. Also, if you have to DO nothing than you are DOING something.

[blazeofglory]

This is really an idea that has plenty of logicality, and of course this is something that demands of us a great amount of thinking. When we do nothing does not mean we are doing nothing. Karma is still there and we are not un-Karmic. Karma always happens. When you do not respond or not do any thing you are doing an act of not responding or doing an act of doing nothing.

[Mathor]

i was joking in my response and didn't explain myself. My view is that nothing exists, but when a person sees nothing, that is when nothing becomes something, because it becomes a thing. I think nothing is an unfathomable idea, but I think it exists. Nothing is something if a human being were to see it it would be nothing. But the whole idea of nothing exists in the concept "if no one is around to hear it does it make a sound" i say humans cannot concieve the idea of nothing cause visualizing nothing makes it something. something is the same as the idea of infinity. It's an impossible number but yet it exists. it is just not measurable by science or human conscience.

[mono]

Does 'nothing' exist? Is't 'something' in 'nothing'?
Definitely mere word-play. If indeed we call nothing nothing, we cannot even call it nothing, because by giving 'it' a word, we acknowledge its existence, yet nothing has no existence; therefore, as Parmenides argued, 'ex nihilo nihil fit' (out of nothing, nothing comes), a word cannot come out of nothing. The metaphor we have created out of nothing disproves Parmenides ideas, but instead we have dumbed down something (. . . or not even 'something') to human understanding, when, in fact, there not only seems nothing to understand, there seems nothing to acknowledge nor give a word to in human speech. We cannot discuss nothing; even if we regard nothing in silence, then we still falsify it, because we can recognize silence sometimes better than human words.
This reminds me of a Sufi parable:

In one of the great court banquets, everyone was seated according to rank, waiting the entry of the King. In came a plain, shabby man and took a seat above everyone else. His boldness angered the prime minister who ordered the newcomer to identify himself. Was he a minister? No. More. Was he the King? No. More. "Are you then God?" asked the prime minister. "I am above that also," replied the poor man. "There is nothing beyond God," retorted the prime minister. "That nothing," came the response, "is me."