“Which means that suffering doesn’t exist,” Janet said. “Not on an ultimate level. Neither does happiness, of course.” Serena laid her head on Janet’s shoulder, and Janet kissed it. Laurel dropped her head into Janet’s lap. They glowed in the late afternoon sun.

“The more we realize our own emptiness, the lighter we will become,” Serena said. “Until eventually—pop.” She smiled and pointed at the sky.

They were so sure. They believed without question. Serena sounded just like my father. I wanted nothing more than to believe along with them. And sometimes I felt that I did. Sometimes, buoyed by Serena’s depth of knowledge, Laurel’s easy acceptance, Janet’s utter contempt for everything else, I did. But no matter how much we meditated, or how much we talked, my mother’s voice never entirely left my head.

From the Heart Sutra: Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Emptiness is not separate from form, form is not separate from emptiness. Whatever is form is emptiness, whatever is emptiness is form.

Or you know, as Schrödinger said: we’re all just atoms in the void. Not that it helps.

His trapped cat, too, seems relevant here. Or not, as it were.

Anyway, we may all just be atoms in the void, but according to quantum mechanics, no objects objectively exist at all, in the void or otherwise. Particles have no inherent values, only probabilities, and they only materialize when they are measured—which means that on a quantum level, reality simply isn’t there unless we’re looking directly at it. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, there is no tree, and no forest. (Is it any different if that tree was once a girl? I think it is not.) The world does not exist independently of us, theoretical physicists say. All perception relies on our own subjective consciousness. We call the world into being with our attention. Or put it this way: we are continually hallucinating our own realities, including the realities of our selves. Quantum physics, as you can see, is extremely Buddhist. Again, not that it helps.

“Emptiness is what makes levitation possible,” Serena said. “When you understand the illusory nature of phenomenal experience, you can easily manipulate it.” Milarepa, it is said, could climb inside a conch shell without making his body any smaller or the conch shell any bigger.

“So why can’t we do it?” Janet said. “We all understand that consciousness is an illusion.”

“There’s a difference between intellectual comprehension and true understanding,” Serena said. “That’s why we need Luke.”

“Speaking of Luke,” Laurel said, raising her arms in the air.

Janet had begun to dig a little trench in the ground with her heel. Laurel looked at the trench, and then at Janet, and then dropped her arms to her sides as if in exhaustion.