The Three Basic Facts of Existence II: Suffering (Dukkha) - Buddhist ...

same awareness of lack—choice implies lack, and as intrinsically lack we are condemned tochoose. This choice also implies another facet of our being—as contingent: “In anguish we donot simply apprehend the fact that the possibles which we project are perpetually eaten awayby our freedom-to-come; in addition we apprehend our choice—i.e., ourselves—asunjustifiable.” 30 Dukkha, that is existence experienced, thus gives us its final definition—thatwhich gives us the possibility of its negation: “The essential thing is contingency. I mean that bydefinition existence is not necessity.” 31 thus in dukkha we have the “absurd”—it has nonecessity to be and we are Sartre’s term “too-much” (de trop)—superfluous, for we are existedtowards an unattainable goal that of filling lack. Sartre’s famous conclusion might have beenspoken by the Buddha—“man is a useless passion.”We usually try to avoid the anguish of our freedom by the self-deceit of “bad-faith” (mauvaisefoi) or the spirit of “seriousness”—both an escape to the role, an attempt to assume a static andthus “complete” being; or the myth of destiny or other evasion of free choice. This playing ofroles gives us the alienated (or in Camus term “estranged”) individual—alienated that is fromreality, from authentic being. The alienated individual is not a now concept, this was spoken inthe 6th Century B.C.: “Man is estranged from that with which he is most familiar” 32 —but todayit is our norm. Individuals are too isolated—there is always that gulf that cannot be bridged:“The heart knoweth his own bitterness; and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy.” 33And there is no better image of isolation, significance and meaninglessness than this line: “Menand bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind.” 34 Modern poetry often expresses very clearly thisterrible emptiness and the tedium of alienated existence: “I have known the inexorable sadnessof pencils, neat in their boxes, dolour of pad and paper-weight, all the misery of manilla foldersand mucilage, desolation in immaculate public places … Endless duplication of lives andobjects…” 35 And that this sickness not only eats away life but becomes pathological as neurosisis seen from C.G. Jung’s observation: “About one-third of my patients are suffering from noclinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives.” 36It is this senselessness that is our tragedy—the superficial round, we endlessly repeat thesame silly tasks because we see them as necessary. Great suffering can be endured—it has ameaning, tragedy has a “moral,” a reason; our suffering has no saving reason, it teaches usnothing. “Great men have great suffering” Nietzsche wrote, their suffering has a meaning: itwas the mark of their greatness. This is why he too saw a repetition, a round of “eternalrecurrence,” and gloried in it—only the “overman” would joyously grasp a majestic sufferingrepeated for ever, the defining of his existence. But we are all trapped in eternal recurrence butwith a load far more crushing than Nietzsche’s heroes—our suffering has no necessity and nopurpose. We are not Promethean heroes crushed by suffering but still defying heaven and thefates—suffering is negated by such defiance, such scorn: “There is no fate that cannot besurmounted by scorn.” 37 We are rather Dostoevsky’s “Underground Man,” puny, insignificant,—we are not warrior heroes but court jesters. We are not crushed by adversity but smothered inthe futility and pettiness of our drab existence. We are not destroyed in a blaze of glory but fadeout in commonplace insignificance. We have no terrible destiny to lament, no cruel fate to railagainst, we have only our own freedom to take part in the drab and dreary comedy of life,where stale jokes are repeated for ever. We are in Kierkegaard’s phrase “mocked by existence.”30Sartre. ibid., p. 440.31Sartre: Nausee.32Heraclitus: Fragment.33Proverbs.34T. S Eliot: Burnt Norton.35Theodore Roethke: Dolour.36C.G. Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections.37Camus: Myth de Sisyphe.17