Existentialism and Buddhism: Where The Line Falls Short

"It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe."  - Camus, 'The Stranger'

Man's most awful curse, which of all things keeps him bound to the intolerable cycle of being, is the terrible thirsting for meaning; the need to attribute a logical, rational reasoning to all things that make up his little universe. One of the most brilliant philosophical minds of the near past, Albert Camus, articulated this beautifully in the following words: "This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment it is all that links them together." Following his argument, the inherent state known as 'absurdity' which Camus describes as fundamental to all human existence results from our confrontation with a world that refuses to surrender meaning; a world that is hence indifferent, immovable and absolute in its lack of sympathy or empathy. Hence the 'benign indifference' of the universe that Camus so sparsely describes.

This unquenchable need for meaning, then, is at its very roots nothing but an innate attempt at rationalizing the self. My hypothesis that existentialism as a philosophy is one that has come closest to touching the fundamentals of Buddhist teachings is built on the roots of many interesting theories brought forward by thinkers such as Camus, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre included. "Existence is illusory, and it is eternal," writes Camus in his extraordinary Myth of Sisyphus. What, then, is our great, hungering need to define a meaning to who we are, what we do and why we do them? Hannah Arendt in her essay interestingly points out that,“The need of reason is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest for meaning. And truth and meaning are not the same." Safe to say then, that the disparity lies in the fact that while existentialism, as all other Western philosophies, looks in its quest for meaning, while the Buddhist philosophy engages in a quest for truth. Can the two be reconciled? Most likely not, as two pathways that would lead together in an almost parallel direction up to a certain point, after which they are bound to diverge into wholly disparate roads.

Camus: "Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born out of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world." Unreasonable silence, because the world has no answers to give. The answers lie in the natural state of things, the condition of impermanence; and are not to be found through the universe by providing one with a reason to live. Herein is where existential thought falls short of finding the answers that Buddhist philosophy provides, because it looks in the wrong place for answers. If truth be told, there is no real 'reason' to live excepting that we have been given this 'human' life- and therefore have to make the utmost use out of it.

Andrew Hidas points out that philosophers over the span of time have made much of self-consciousness, emphasizing the fact that human beings are the only species with the self-reflective tools "to torture ourselves psychologically with questions of meaning and eternity." Due to this very absence of intellectual thought, all lesser creatures, he interestingly points out, exist in the eternal now, centered in the moment of the present- engrossed with the few fundamental goals of finding food, a mate or simply evading death at the hands of the next predator. Camus' treatise on suicide spurs an interesting speculation in this line of thought- human beings then, are also the only creatures capable of subjecting themselves to suicide, because less 'intellectual' creatures (living in the moment) would not need to go so far. Ironic. Yet however, understandable when considering how many times we have pondered whether intelligence itself is not a curse, from the burden it casts upon the individual himself. Remember wondering on occasion why for some reason stupider people in general somehow seem more happier with themselves, and their lives? :P Or the reason why most thinkers, philosophers and artists end up with clinical depression or ultimately take their own lives? 

Interestingly, precisely the reason why suicide is considered such a powerful form of sinning in Buddhism is due to the very fact that having been granted the rare gift of a form of being where one possesses the faculties to process intellectual thought, cutting short that human existence is considered an act of terrible consequences. Anyone delving into the surface of Buddhist teachings would encounter the described rarity of acquiring a human birth amidst the hundreds of thousands of other forms of life within the universe; a human birth which not only can acquire merits for itself but has a rational intellect to critically understand truth based on its own reasoning. Thus, suicide- the way out of an unseemly world for Existentials such as Camus, on whose writings this post (at a very surface level) focuses, fails to provide a means of escape for the Buddhist follower. Where then, do we turn? :(

How close Albert Camus' existential thought comes to Buddhist philosophy is truly an intriguing aspect for study. In his Myth of Sisyphus where he articulates a treatise on suicide, certain points stand out which illuminate the extraordinary clarity of a mind that has its own process of autonomous thought. In one quote, Camus posits that "There is no longer a single idea explaining everything, but an infinite number of essences giving birth to an infinite number of objects. The world comes to a stop, but also lights up." Replace essences with 'thoughts' and you have at hand a Western philosopher- almost- touching upon an Eastern philosophy. For what else but our infinite and constantly changing thoughts give birth to the objects and objectives that we grasp and try to claim for our own? Yet again, in a 1956 letter to a hospitalized friend, Camus theorizes: "..The solidarity of bodies, unity at the center of the mortal and suffering flesh. This is what we are and nothing else. We are this plus human genius in all its forms, from the child to Einstein... Physical suffering is sometimes humiliating, but the suffering of being cannot be, it is life." This realization of the 'suffering of being', I would suggest, is the closest Western thinking has arrived at touching upon Buddhism. Yet, the line falls short and the hook remains uncaught, dangling empty: the fish is just missed, and slips through the hands yet again, retreating back into the unfathomable blue sea.

"These two certainities- my appetite for the absolute and for unity, and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle- I know that I cannot reconcile them.

This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to  me. Between the certainity I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled. Forever I shall be a stranger to myself."

― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

To be continued.