Abstract
The article considers what role “meaning” plays in shaping the unintended suffering caused by human aspirations. The thing we call meaning in “the secular age” has replaced the transcendent to become the new religion we espouse. We fight for abstract ideas, principles, or ideology, predicated on the meanings we construct, and we are even willing to be martyred for them. Humans’ meaning production has catalyzed not only the massive extinction of nonhuman species but also our own civilizational demise. This article begins with the conviction that humanity has not become more nihilistic contrary to what Nietzsche predicted and most modern scholars of nihilism profess. To the contrary, it has become more antinihilistic and nihilphobic. From an ecological standpoint, nihilism is not and should not be a curse word. In fact, learning how to die requires nihility and nihilism. Only by going deeper into nothingness/nihility and nihilism can we deconstruct human-centered views and meaning construction. Only then can we come to terms with other ecolives and with our impermanence, which has been excluded from our meaning production. In this sense, the gong'an or kōan practice of Zen Buddhism is the therapeutic technology we need in the Anthropocene eschatology.