Where Buddhism/existentialism overlap

[Dan Rowden]

who can make the sun rise?

The Candy Man.

Still don't geddit.

The Candy Man makes everything he makes satisfying and delicious.

Actually, it's "everything he bakes", but I'm not being pedantic or anything ...

[Pye]

And finally in the category of existential angst, Sartre refutes many bummer interpretations of the philosophy
but accepts that anguish, abandonment and despair are fundamental experiential qualities.

Anguish as in: responsibility - at the most abject level - for what we choose/affect and no flipping anything to base it on.
Consequences to every choice, consciously created or otherwise.
Anguish in the face of the nothingness from which we continuously become something:
us becoming conscious-of ourselves.
Anguish, as in Kierkegaard with Adam facing his original freedom not as guilt, but as dread.
Dreading our abject freedom-to-make-ourselves out of nothing
along with the existential incumbency to do so
Adam wasn't guilty in eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil when he was told not to do so
(prohibition; negatively defined)
because he had not yet any knowledge of the good or evilness of his deed.
No, what the original [hu]man felt (original human condition this story is supposed to be telling-of)
was dread in the face of one's own abject freedom (i.e. nothingness).
Adam had to pluck it out of prohibition (no. not-that-thing).
That's what Kirkegaard figures the story of Adam is meant to tell.

In the beginning was the Word, bible says.
Faust says: In the beginning was the Deed!


Abandonment as in: no theistically active god to blame
no uber-criteria upon which to measure values
as well no abject determinism (god) to plead our final case of choosing to be
after finding ourselves here in being.
(That's how we find ourselves - in/as being).
Sartre resolves the free will vs. determinism thing by folding it back on itself:
we're forced to choose at every moment our lives, and under a set of given conditions.
Just because there's a set of certain conditions
doesn't mean we aren't abjectly abandoned to ourselves to maneuver within them.
Have to. Have to maneuver within them.
ambiguity.


Despair as in: apposite to 'hope' - hope being seen as a flaccid arrest of reality-only-being-in-action.
Hope makes for nothing; is retreat. This is despairing.

[Pye]

Diebert writes: But I'd prefer any cardboard cutting over the pouring of scream of consciousness milk into the little mouths of school kids :-)

Your urbanity, Diebert, sometimes has a way of belying
just how self-corrosive is the taste of this humor
in the mouth that delivers it.


just-saying, you know. just reporting

[SeekerOfWisdom]

And any metaphysic that seeks to place the essence of the world Apart, Beyond, Outside, Above permits him to ask the question if a poor relationship with one's existence is going on, tossed beyond it this way. Essence does not precede existence; it's the other way around. (What essence to anything except the lack we're working it out of? this nothing-ness?) This also means - paradoxically(ambiguously) - the material (existence) is the spiritual - that from which all experience of spirit is grounded. Existence before essence.

So you do get it. I was under the impression existentialism thought in terms of body/"fleshy constraints" and death being an end, guess my impression was wrong? Not so different to Buddhism then?

So what would you do in 'eternity'? Hopefully not get too attached to anything:


"Which do you think is the more: the flood of tears, which weeping
and wailing you have shed upon this long way-hurrying and hastening
through this round of rebirths, united with the undesired, separated
from the desired this, or the waters of the four oceans?
Long time have you suffered the death of father and mother, of sons,
daughters, brothers, and sisters. And whilst you were thus
suffering, you have, verily, shed more tears upon this long way than
there is water in the four oceans."
-Buddha


"Attached as you have been to
kingdoms, sons, wives, bodies, pleasures—
life after life—
still they are now lost forever."
-Ashtavakra

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Diebert writes: But I'd prefer any cardboard cutting over the pouring of scream of consciousness milk into the little mouths of school kids :-)

Your urbanity, Diebert, sometimes has a way of belying
just how self-corrosive is the taste of this humor
in the mouth that delivers it.

Passive aggressive bullshit Pye. Where did you get that style from one wonders. You were suggesting my words were cut out of a box of existential cereal flakes. But you don't like it when someone criticizes your nihilist leaning stream of consciousness style of writing. You're entirely muddling the topic and call it, what, wisdom? What you are doing is drowning the topic, all over the place, hardly structured and not enhancing anything. That's my opinion and I don't mind attacks on my own style or opinion. What I do mind is when people "report" the negative they "sense" while delivering some of pinching and hair pulling themselves without being conscious of it. It's a sign of bigger trouble and deeper waters one is drowning in. Just saying...

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Anyway, here's how Camus would do the existential angst thing that I kierkegaarded above:

There is only one question the human being faces with its existence, and that-is whether to exist or not; to be or not to be.
If you say yes to it, you then have another question: how shall I exist?

This is perhaps interesting. But isn't Buddhism saying a full no to the first question? It frames the "only one question" as to suffer or not. And it teaches cessation of suffering and the how of not becoming or trying to give existence. This is then offered as the best answer to any "how to live" as attachments and delusions will stop arising.

So we really have to make clear we understand the "one question" in both traditions before seeing how it could communicate. Perhaps some background material can be found in a post made last year. Recently I posted about a publication called The Self Beyond Itself which might be interesting in the light of the question "to be or not to be". Just to say that I do appreciate the effort of this thread as I'm working on the question for a while already.

[Dennis Mahar]

Passive aggressive bullshit Pye. Where did you get that style from one wonders. You were suggesting my words were cut out of a box of existential cereal flakes. But you don't like it when someone criticizes your nihilist leaning stream of consciousness style of writing. You're entirely muddling the topic and call it, what, wisdom? What you are doing is drowning the topic, all over the place, hardly structured and not enhancing anything. That's my opinion and I don't mind attacks on my own style or opinion. What I do mind is when people "report" the negative they "sense" while delivering some of pinching and hair pulling themselves without being conscious of it. It's a sign of bigger trouble and deeper waters one is drowning in. Just saying...

Aggressive.

Just to say that I do appreciate the effort of this thread as I'm working on the question for a while already.

Passive.

No justifiers please.

[Cahoot]

who can make the sun rise?

The Candy Man.

Still don't geddit.

The Candy Man makes everything he makes satisfying and delicious.

Actually, it's "everything he bakes", but I'm not being pedantic or anything ...

You’re right. CM bakin is distinct from all makin. Candy Man truth is makin bakin satisfying and delicious.

[Dennis Mahar]

Pam,
All you say is this:

I'm here and not there yet.
One fine day.

How long?
ETA?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

No justifiers please.

Being aggressive and then passive is not what "passive aggressive means", Dennis. But yeah, how would you know, mr. puppy zen shock collar.

[Kunga]

Whats the difference in using a shock collar and using mental/verbal hurting towards others ?

[Pye]

Diebert writes: But yeah, how would you know, mr. puppy zen shock collar.

like this. The acid of champions, esp. when Dennis came here in bareopen authenticity about what he learned/from us in the exchange, let this go no-ego right in front of everybody, but it's still fermenting in your store of personal parries.

Diebert writes: What you are doing is drowning the topic, all over the place, hardly structured and not enhancing anything.

Now this does frustrate understanding, Diebert, at bottom I've thought you of all the most alert of nuanced readers - tell me where anything about anything placed here is not touching everything else (i.e. existence - existential-ism, reality-ism)? Sorry if I'm too-muching too-fasting here, it's coming off the hoof (off-school for only a bit longer), but where you can apply your alacritous capacities which I think you can do everywhere, go where you see that it's hanging together, overlapping, like -

- do you see anything akin in these angsty parts of existentialism that is of the same timbre, flavour as the measures-against ego - ego-death - in buddhism? reminders reminders of nothing, out of that nothingness that must (ambiguously!) negatively-define any being at all? There cannot 'be' nothing; only something - and there does being exert itself as such.

Ambiguity is not a shoulder shrugging cast-off where one is saying "we can't get this figured out" (i.e. there's no truth/reality); it's not a swirling moment of confusion; nor a self-satisfying place to rest. For existentialists, ambiguity is the condition we find ourselves in at every turn. It's the what-is [truth].

It's not, well, this is just entirely unclear - it's: this is clearly the condition wherein we find ourselves (subject to self; object to others, the whole host of ways this manifests I point, etc. etc.) and to ignore, attempt to resolve, or otherwise be in flight from one's condition (reality) would be the practice, and cowardice, of delusion . . . .

[Pye]

Seeker asks: So you do get it. I was under the impression existentialism thought in terms of body/"fleshy constraints" and death being an end, guess my impression was wrong? Not so different to Buddhism then?

no, death is the end of any given locus-of-being, but does-not imply the end-of-everything
the everything from whence one is derived and returned anyway,
the passing of all things
Matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, and the like.
no "I'll then-be" to speak of being after bracketed demise
because no "I" to will,
but sure, the matter and energy of that being
uptaken, becoming other things . . . .
doesn't that seem to be the reality of things?

Another on-point of pointed ambiguity, yes?
death to things, but not the thing itself
(at least as far as we know!)

Ambi . . . oh, fuckit. You get it :)

[Pam Seeback]

Pam,
All you say is this:

I'm here and not there yet.
One fine day.

How long?
ETA?

Dennis, your interpretation of what I am saying exposes how you say where you are at, not where I am at.

I cannot say how long, I am living the principle and patterns of being detached from my individual world of dependent origination (kamma). In other words, wisdom is in charge, not my human mind that believes it arrives somewhere at sometime.

[Pye]

the spiritual is the physical
the issue's in the tissue
of self and world.

this, in my estimation, is where the mountain
smacks you upside the head again
in its thereness
of the both-ness of it and you
in the seeing-thus.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

no, death is the end of any given locus-of-being, but does-not imply the end-of-everything
the everything from whence one is derived and returned anyway,
the passing of all things

no "I'll then-be" to speak of being after bracketed demise
because no "I" to will,

A sum up being clear in a question put to Buddha regarding death, will anything of my personality(or ego) remain?
NO, there are no qualities of 'you' that remain anyway.
Nothing to lose.

Matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed,

matter and energy of that being

Why use those words? Do you recognize that if I asked you 'what's matter', or 'what's energy' you'd be at a loss for any description save for trying to verbally point.

There cannot 'be' nothing; only something

Again, what does that 'add'?
Existence/non-existence, being/non-being, self/other,
right/wrong
you agree and admit you are 'making up' these things, yet act as if they have intrinsic meaning in reality.

Dennis refers to emptiness the theory of no-theory because no belief = no confusion, ie, 'it is what it is, it isn't what it isn't'


As I was posting I read your next comment!
'oh fuckit, you clearly get it' :)

[SeekerOfWisdom]

Pam,
All you say is this:

I'm here and not there yet.
One fine day.

How long?
ETA?

Dennis, your interpretation of what I am saying exposes how you say where you are at, not where I am at.

I cannot say how long, I am living the principle and patterns of being detached from my individual world of dependent origination (kamma). In other words, wisdom is in charge, not my human mind that believes it arrives somewhere at sometime.

Only proving the fact that has been brought up time and time again: there is widespread disagreement about this issue that no one has yet addressed, until now.

The disagreement is:
End of differentiation, preference/aversion as the way.

Pam's way(a 'more literal' or direct interpretation of the Buddha) as the way.

[Pye]

Seeker! you don't need to word-panic over things like 'matter' and 'energy'
This is one of the ways we have concretely come to apprehend and manipulate World
feel ourselves both-as
and in it rests this morphic ambiguity of both coming-to-be
and passing-away into each other whilst still being (existence).
We know them made of each and neither exclusively
they express a whole. We fuss around continuously in their
dialectical presence of being present to us this way.
of being this ourselves.

no need to push at every attempt to wrestle being
as it comes forth in words
or be suspect-of-all-of-it as a point upon which to immovably stand

this would take away all of your own speaking of it, too . . . .

[SeekerOfWisdom]

No worries, I guess I've just gotten used to the same kind of speech being used by them. ;)

What do you think of the distinction I made above regarding 2 views?

[Dennis Mahar]

It's always/already the Infinite.
Touch the sky with Pye.

You guys insist on categorical thinking on the matter.

The Buddha was an existential thinker.
He draws your focus to phenomenal existence.
A possibility 'situationally', 'existentially'.

Who are you Being.

You can't have love.
You can't do love.
You can think/act Contextually as a place to come from,
A place where the 'I' isn't 'I'-making.
'What's innit for me?'
One fine day.
When my boat gets in.

Surely we can share a laugh about that.

What is possible is generating loving kindness in all your conversations as a Context that calls forth that response in an unmistakeable astonishment.
It hits like a freight train. WTF?
Moved to tears.
That is emptiness.

It has to be real.
Not people pleasing.

A context isn't a topic or subject like 'buddhism' and a welter of doctrine/quotes'.

Thinking/acting Contextually is your disposedness toward.
What is generated.
8 fold path is a generator situationally, existentially.
Sets in train or generates, opens up, makes aware of, discloses Being.

Take it or leave it.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

Nevertheless, that's not how moving sees it.


A while ago, I entertained the possibility of such notions, now I'm fully aware how those notions went completely 'against' what I could see and was saying over and over.
Only bringing the distinction to light.

The final step, the worldly life isn't 'exhausted' due to having reached a goal, it's exhausted due to the end of " "... no word for it really... all that false 'expecting-a-change-to-the-absolute', is close enough.

[Dennis Mahar]

Right there just then, you're thinking 'winning formula'.
Recipe.
someone left the cake out in the rain.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

Pretty sure I just wrote, 'no boats'. But you can read it how you like.

[Dennis Mahar]

But you can read it how you like.

OK,
you're miffed.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

not-so madam. Expect that when you're discriminating you may sometimes be creating. Night Dennis.