{"id":70350,"date":"2017-10-05T22:36:09","date_gmt":"2017-10-06T04:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=70350"},"modified":"2017-10-05T05:13:46","modified_gmt":"2017-10-05T12:13:46","slug":"the-broken-world-buddhism-and-existentialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/10\/05\/the-broken-world-buddhism-and-existentialism\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u00a0Broken World \u00a0–\u00a0 Buddhism and Existentialism."},"content":{"rendered":"

R Chandrasoma Koswatte\u00a0 Nawala\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

The renowned existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel used the memorable phrase \u2018The Broken World\u2019\u00a0 to denote what he believed to be the cause of the \u2018existential parlousness\u2019 \u00a0of mankind \u2013 the unremitting denial (or defeat) of\u00a0 the\u00a0 \u2018ontological exigencies\u2019 that irrevocably characterize his condition. Let us unpack the thinking behind this unsettling general proposition.\u00a0 Life \u2013 in its myriad forms \u2013 is a continuous struggle to beat off the forces that conspire to defeat it. Being alive is an \u2018attainment\u2019 wherein a continuously assailed organization struggles to keep going \u2013 even, briefly, to prosper \u2013 before defeat and death. The great 19th<\/sup> century physiologist Claude Bernard found the defining feature of life to be the \u2018constant adjustment of Internal Relations to External Relations\u2019 meaning that life lacks the stability and definability of a truly eternal presence. \u00a0The leading characteristic of life in its myriad forms is the battle \u2013 that which Darwin called \u2018the Struggle for Existence\u2019. \u00a0Before proceeding further it is important to distance ourselves from a common use of the expression \u2018broken\u2019 or \u2018ravaged\u2019 by concerned nature-lovers\u00a0 and others distressed at the planetary destruction going on due to man\u2019s greed and insensitivity. Such assaults on the biosphere are nothing new and the history of our planet is replete with instances of vast destruction.\u00a0 The Permian Extinctions and the Cretaceous-Oligocene\u00a0 disappearance \u00a0\u00a0of the Dinosaurs mark huge changes in the Biosphere due to a System-Breaking of some kind but our reference is to something radically different\u00a0 – an inescapable metaphysical \u2018breaking\u2019 involving human life in its essence and the challenges structurally rooted in the world-system we live in. \u00a0The \u2018brokenness\u2019 that we highlight is a feature of life in a world that spawns us in order to defeat and kill us. The writer and philosopher Albert Camus\u00a0 sees \u2018absurdity\u2019 as the best descriptive word to summarize our overall plight as hapless captives briefly nurtured and then pushed into decay and oblivion. Like Camus we must ask, what is the point of this tragi-comic farce? More pertinently, he asks \u2018What can we do – given our brief life and our impotence \u2013 to counter the overwhelming odds of defeat and despair in confronting the \u2018ontological exigencies\u2019 that bedevil our life as sentient beings? The devout will speak of God, his supreme rationality and his encompassing benevolence but \u2013 as famously stated by Kierkegaard – God is dead.<\/p>\n

It is this very problem – the most fundamental of all problems facing mankind \u2013 that The Buddha sought to illuminate and resolve more than twenty-five centuries ago. The word \u2018Problem\u2019 diminishes the deep and foundational metaphysics that triggers our questionings and reflections. \u00a0The Enlightened One realizing that the understanding of the very nature of life must be prior to prescriptions as to how life must be lived. He identified the cardinal attributes of the human condition \u2013Anichcha,\u00a0 Anatta and Dhukka. Orthodox Buddhist scholars and the devout translate these key words as \u2018Transience, Soullessness and Sorrow\u2019 and highlight them as \u2018barriers\u2019 that the human kind faces in \u2018overcoming the world\u2019.\u00a0 In contemporary\u00a0 jargon, the Arrow of Time, Decay and Impermanence make captive all that has being and bedevil all..\u00a0 Attaining a kind of transcendence that stifles these \u2018obstacles\u2019 is an option much favoured by those who believe that there is an \u2018awakening\u2019 of an inner spirit that redefines life and puts meaning and purpose into what we see and do in this doleful world.\u00a0 That this hope \u2013 of extracting goodness and meaning in a broken world \u2013 is radically unachievable \u2013 is the thesis of the \u2018absurdists\u2019 led by Camus. We must add parenthetically that The Buddha resolved the seemingly\u00a0 insuperable conundrum by seeing a veiled transcendence\u00a0 – a path to a true and higher vision by contemplating the festering \u00a0\u2018rottenness\u2019 of the world that nurtures us as a plaything.. In rejecting the Broken World, the Buddhist \u2018solution\u2019 is look beyond the world (through meditative insight) at the wellsprings of this misery and thereby re-define existence. This redefinition secures absolute release from a seemingly inescapable thralldom. This is attained through a vision (the Nirvanic Vision) that is vouchsafed to elite seekers of the truth.<\/p>\n

Notwithstanding the charge of making a mockery of religion, it must be stated there is another route to transcendence that exploits science and technology to radically cast off the shackles that enchain us to this broken world. Since we cannot change or \u2018repair\u2019 the world, we must change ourselves \u2013 but not through moral crusades or a lofty spirituality but through a re-invention of our biological being. This is called Transhumanism \u2013 the engineering a new version of our species through bioengineering and computer knowhow. This transformed human may find the \u2018slings and arrows of outrageous fortune \u2018 a challenge easily mastered and the \u2018existential exigencies\u2019 that plague us gone forever. Henceforth, life will be beautiful \u2013 so it is hoped.<\/p>\n

R Chandrasoma<\/p>\n

Koswatte\u00a0 Nawala<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

R Chandrasoma Koswatte\u00a0 Nawala\u00a0 The renowned existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel used the memorable phrase \u2018The Broken World\u2019\u00a0 to denote what he believed to be the cause of the \u2018existential parlousness\u2019 \u00a0of mankind \u2013 the unremitting denial (or defeat) of\u00a0 the\u00a0 \u2018ontological exigencies\u2019 that irrevocably characterize his condition. Let us unpack the thinking behind this unsettling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-r-chandrasoma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70350\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}