Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ilia S. Durovic delivers a three-hour seminar examining how Western concepts of selfhood—rooted in the equation of God with being since the Greek translation of Exodus—have shaped receptivity to Buddhist teachings on non-self and emptiness. He traces Western philosophy from Parmenides through the Reformation, showing how theistic ontology collapsed into radical nihilism, leaving modern secular societies without a meaningful ground for ethics or freedom. Drawing on Dostoyevsky, Camus, and Hume, Durovic argues that Western atomized individualism falsely promises freedom yet generates profound isolation and suffering. He contrasts this with irrigation-based societies historically receptive to selflessness teachings, and concludes that Buddhist Madhyamaka philosophy uniquely resolves the Western impasse between being and nothingness by affirming both phenomenal existence and ultimate emptiness—offering a middle path neither eternalism nor nihilism. The second half addresses practical implications: authentic freedom arises through relationship and cherishing others, not isolated self-generation of meaning. The seminar is directed at serious practitioners navigating the tension between Western individualism and Buddhist transformation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Self, no self and Freedom.mp3
UUID: 59cbb536-e301-45db-b12a-65f498efc3bb
Teacher: Ilia S. Durovic
Collection: Ilia Seminars
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~11,875
Favorize or complicate the entry and the enculturation of Buddhism. So last time, as you remember, we addressed the issue of the place of desire in our societies. And this time, we’re gonna address a much more central issue, which is the image of the self and its consequences in our society and the degree to which this image of the self actually limits the transmission of the Buddhist message of selflessness. The first issue I would like to engage in is very generally at a sociological level, the issue of what type of society is receptive to the message of selflessness and what type of society sociologically is not receptive to the message of selflessness. This is very tentative and I will rely for much of my reflection here on the work of a great Chinese historian, Karl Wittfogel, who wrote a remarkable work, Oriental Despotism, in which he addressed the issue of why despotic autocratic regimes arose in certain societies instead of others.
Now the issue of autocratic regimes and despotism is not one we are terribly interested in. What we are interested in is what features in a society create low self societies with high degrees of collaboration and what features in a society create exactly the opposite, high self societies with low degrees of collaboration between the members of society. Now, which is hugely controversial but extremely interesting is that low self societies are systematically societies which historically are based on irrigation. The development of irrigation in a society entails a very high degree of cooperation between the members of society and entails early on the creation of very sophisticated state superstructure, which to a degree enforces this cooperation. This is largely proven historically.
He has given a series of examples, the Babylonian society, Inca society, and very interestingly for us, both the society of India in the Ganges Basin and Chinese society. Both Mauryan India, which is India circa the third or fourth century BC, and China at the time of Laozi, which is approximately the sixth century BC, were societies heavily dependent on irrigation. In both societies, religious messages which taught selflessness took root easily. In the case of Mauryan India, it is really in Mauryan India under the rule of emperor Ashoka in particular that Buddhism spread and became a dominant religious tradition. Taoism, although widely different from Buddhism, also is a religious tradition which is a low self religious tradition.
It also arose in China with the advent of large scale deforestation and irrigation. So I think I would not want to make a general statement about this, but I think it is it is quite interesting that societies which call for a very high degree of cooperation between their members, whether it be because of the development of irrigation or in the case of some nomadic societies because survival depends on cooperation will be low self societies. These low self societies for cultural reasons tend to be more open to a message of cooperation and from our perspective, a message of selflessness. Obviously, if you follow the gist of my reasoning, Western society until the twentieth century was a high self society. And much of the message of certain Western societies, especially American society, which are messages of the exaltation of the self, you know, the affirmation of the individual against the community and against society are messages which are going to be problematical and which are going to limit the reception of the Buddhist teachings in these societies.
So this was a general sociological background I wanted to to set. And then what I would like to cover with you are some very private reflections. These are just my own musings if you want. On the development of the concept of being in Western civilization, its conjunction with theism. In other words, it’s a belief in the existence of a personal god.
The split, the eventual split between theism and what is called ontology, which is a science of being, and how this has led us to our present predicament and the degree to which this can enable us to understand why there is such an interest in Buddhist thought in the West and to which degree Buddhist teachings on selflessness and timelessness can perhaps answer a core quandary in western thought. So last time, we mentioned that if we look broadly speaking at the history of Greek philosophy, the main nexus in Greek philosophy is the Parmenides Heraclitus nexus, where Greek philosophy chooses a philosophy of the permanence of being, which is a philosophy of Parmenides over and against a philosophy of flux and impermanent impermanence, which was a philosophy of Heraclitus. And we pointed out that had Greek philosophy followed the Heraclitian path, it would have followed a path which would have led western philosophy much closer to Buddhist thought than it has ever hoped to be. We followed a different road. There is however another nexus which is even more interesting for us.
Parmenides lived approximately in the early sixth to late fifth century BC. And as we said, it is with Parmenides that the path of ontology, the path of the philosophy of being is initiated. But in following nexus, which is fascinating from the standpoint of the history of thought, is the identification of theism with ontology. And this happens at a very specific period in time. It happens with the Greek translation of the Old Testament.
As you know, the Old Testament was composed in Hebrew and underlies much of Western thought. It’s the bedrock on which the New Testament is based, you know, much of what on which much of Western Christianity and philosophy is based. Now, in the old testament, specifically in Exodus three fourteen, Yahweh, the god of Israel, defines himself in a very famous sentence in Hebrew. Which if we were to translate it literally would be I am. I am.
Now, the verbal tense in Hebrew in this specific case is what’s called an imperfective. It indicates that God is in a process of becoming. So, God in the context of the Hebrew old testament defines himself in terms of an identity with himself and in terms of a process of becoming. A tremendous transition occurs when the Hebrew Old Testament is translated into Greek. The transition in Greek which is called the translation of the Seventy, the Septuagint, occurred in Alexandria under the rule of Ptolemy Philadelphus.
Now when the Hebrew was translated in Greek, Semitic concepts of the divinity were translated into Greek and ultimately into European concepts of the divinity. And this one verse, I am becoming what I am becoming was translated into Greek as I am being. This is the nexus, the point of junction between theism and ontology. It is at this point, it’s very specific point, the Greek translation of this one verse of Exodus three fourteen that God is identified with being. In other words, with the existence of all phenomena with inherently existing being.
This is going to be the ground rock of western philosophy until the reformation. And it still is a little bit like a ghost in the cupboard which periodically knocks and makes makes some noise, and one wonders what exactly is going on. So I would like at present to cover briefly with you the various types of theism in a western context and their relation with ontology because this is of considerable interest to us. Broadly speaking, we can say that there is two types of theism. The first, which we will call non ontological, and the second, which we will call ontological.
So theism obviously is, you know, the science of the existence of a personal god and ontology as we said is the science of being. The non ontological theism is first the dawn of theism. In other words, this is theism as it was understood by the Hebrews in the context of the Hebraic old testament, what’s called the Masoretic text. And it’s specifically the self under understanding of the Hebrew God elicited in Exodus three fourteen in Hebrew. This is god as a person, but god as a person who is beyond the concept of being and non being without the concepts ever being explicitly formulated.
This is a case of theism which is pre ontological. The second category of non ontological theism is what I would call post ontological theism. Post ontological theism is that vision of the divine which arises in western society after the reformation and after the rejection of this identification of god was being which marked western society from the translation of the Seventy all the way up to the Reformation. And it starts obviously with the great reformers, but the most famous figures of this post ontological theism are Pascal, the great French philosopher, Kierkegaard, the great Danish philosopher, and one Russian philosopher I will talk about somewhat later, Lev Shestov. Now this movement is also called in philosophy the irrationalistic movement.
It is a movement which opposes faith and reason systematically. This is very much a tendency which is in harmony with the root thought of the Old Testament for which God is ultimate transcendence. Now the second category of theism is ontological theism. And I’m afraid I’m going to torment you with some more Greek words here, but it helps to have these terms to clarify the concepts. Ontological theism is in which theism in which god is understood as being, as inherently existing being, can in turn be divided into two broad categories.
What we can call cataphatic and apophatic ontological theism. Cataphatic ontological theism is ontology which proceeds by affirmation. It is the theology of Aquinas in which god is being and has qualities and can be understood through reasoning. It is totally opposite to the other main trend which has marked eastern Christian philosophy, apophatic theology in which god can only be understood through negation. He is absolute transcendence and does not let himself lend himself to a description except by a description of what he is not.
Now, the great milestones of apophatic theology, the famous pseudo Dionysius, who is the author of the mystical theology, which is the famous pseudo-Dionysius, Dionysius the Areopagite, author of the mystical theology in which for the first time in a Christian context, God is described negatively using what’s called the via negativa. He is described in terms of what he is not. And this has been a subterranean movement in western theology from Dionysius through John Scotus Eriugena, who was one of the great translators of Dionysius from Greek into Latin in the ninth century of our our era onwards to Meister Eckhart, some of you have certainly heard about, the great Dominican theologian who merely adapted to the late thirteenth, early fourteenth century, the thought of Dionysius, through to Nicholas of Cusa. And it is a particular school of thought which we as Buddhists must be aware of because there is a steady confusion in the Buddhist community between apophatic theology in the western context and the Buddhist presentation of emptiness. And it’s almost a leitmotif that when one talks to Western Buddhist, eventually, they talk of Meister Eckhart and that’s when all the confusion starts, you know.
Now, that is the main reason for which we went to the trouble of understanding and explaining these modalities of theism because it is capital to understand that apophatic theology in the western context is ontological. It aims at a description of being of what we would call in Buddhist terms inherently existing being. It just asserts that that being cannot be understood positively, but can only be understood negatively. The only Buddhist school which is fairly close to this vision is a highly heterodox Tibetan school called the Jonangpa school, which developed the notion of the emptiness of other. Otherwise, we can broadly say that there is not a single Buddhist tradition which comes even close to the descriptions of apophatic theology.
So this was the reason I wished to enter somewhat into this topic. And to return at present to what has been this leitmotif of western philosophy which is the equation of god and being. As we said, this is not something minor in western philosophy. It has been dominant and has influenced not just theology and philosophy, but has influenced art in all its forms. In many respects, we can see philosophy as the ground from which the other manifestations of a culture are born.
And if we look for instance at music, much of Bach’s music for instance, a great German composer can be understood in terms of ontological theology. The music of Bach and specifically the very concept of the fugue which Bach led to its highest level is a concept which really has a lot in common with the notion of the process of emanation of creation from the monad, from the primordial unity. Those of you who enjoy Baroque music can for instance think of the Goldberg variations, you know, where one small theme is elaborated again and again and again. This is obviously an artistic technique. It’s an artistic technique which is born in a philosophical and theological context.
And Bach certainly was the most theological of all German composers, you know, since some of you may know from his the account of his life by his wife, Anna Magdalena Bach, he said that the great hope of his life was to see the uncreated light at the end of life. So, obviously, this is the the uncreated light at the end of life after death. So obviously, these are not the wishes of an ordinary musician. These are the wishes of someone whose art is profoundly infused with theology, therefore with a world view. And as we said then, basically, this thrust of western theology where
God is identified with being. The science of God is a science of being, which is a foundation on which the equation of much of Christian theology and Greek philosophy has occurred via Aquinas. This broadly speaking starts to unravel at the reformation for historical reasons because of the introduction in the West for the first time of the original text, the Greek texts, and direct access to the Hebrew of the Old Testament for the first time. This unraveling of the connection between ontology and theism is a very far reaching consequence for western civilization. It heralds in the Christian age the dawn for the first time of philosophy as an autonomous discipline.
It is only when philosophy broke the fetters which connected it to theology that philosophy could stand on its own and eventually evolve into what we now know as modern academic philosophy. It also heralded for theology a return broadly speaking to semitic roots. Since the reformation thinkers read the old testament in Hebrew and turned away from the ideal of the compatibility of faith and reason which had broadly been a dominant ideal from the integration of Greek philosophy and Christianity and return to a certain irrationalism. So this is very characteristic of the work especially of Lev Shestov whom we will try to talk about a little bit later. This equation of theism and ontology has also far reaching consequences in terms of the very structuration of society and the state.
Through the equation of theism and ontology and the affirmation of god as the ground of being, legitimation was provided for autocratic state and for the very notion of monarchy through divine rulership. This is a notion which to us seems quite alien because we are part of a if you forgive me for the term post revolutionary era. We do not realize however the degree to which it underlined western civilization. At the theological and at the ontological level, the pyramid of being from being through the emanations of being all the way down to the multiplicity of phenomena corresponded to at the political level, the hierarchy of authority from the monarch whose authority derived from the god being through the manifestations of the monarch, his counselors, all the way down to the subjects. Now these two hierarchical relations justified each other, but broadly speaking, we can say that the political hierarchy derived its legitimacy from the philosophical system.
With the collapse at the reformation of the connection between theism and ontology. The very ground for authoritarianism in our societies collapsed. And we can see this collapse historically in four events, four revolutions. That’s why I said we are post revolutionary in our sensitivity. The first is obviously the English revolution and the decapitation of Charles the first by Cromwell, Lord Protector in 1649.
The second is the French revolution in 1789 and the decapitation of Louis sixteenth, king of France by the convention. Actually, I should count the second the American Revolution, but I don’t like revolutions where the king isn’t decapitated. So I will count the American Revolution out of, you know, friendship for our American friends. So that would be the second event of 1776 and the creation of the American constitution. The third would be the French revolution, and the fourth would be the Russian revolution of nineteen seventeen.
Now, if we study these four revolutions, we can see them as a historical process of unfolding of nihilism in our societies. A movement away from ontology, from the equation of ontology and theism towards an ever greater affirmation of nihilism. The first, the English revolution is merely a revolution within Christendom. Oliver Cromwell defines himself as a purity, in other words, as a radical Protestant who is trying to purify from within Christianity in England. And the execution of Charles the first was largely a political necessity.
So this is a a rebellion if you want within the framework of theism. It is merely one Christian sect against another, and it was understood in this way at the period. If you read Pascal and Pascal’s understanding of the English revolution, there is shock in Europe that the king was executed, but it does not put the system in question. The American Revolution of seventeen seventy six goes much further even though it’s largely a revolution at the level of ideas. Clearly, the ideas of enlightenment have taken over.
There has been no regicide and it is understood in Europe as a rebellion of the colonies. It threatens of the colonies. It threatens the established order. It is understood as a harbinger of things to come, but it remains it remains minor in the overall sequence of things. It is however one step further down this path of rejection of absolute being In that explicitly in the constitution, the writers of the constitution consider that the state derives meaning from its citizens.
The state does not derive meaning from a transcendental ground. This is very much in keeping with the ideas of the enlightenment. This is however totally at odds with the traditional view of the state’s derivation of meaning. It is a French Revolution then which is the first big shock. It is a challenge to the ontological system in the name of deism.
Most of the French Revolution is described themselves as deists, you know, and cultivated the supreme being as he was called. And the execution of Louis the sixteenth is a regicide. In many senses, it is also a deicide. And it was understood as such as the period. We, in 2009, cannot even begin to understand the tremendous shock Europe experienced between 1789 and 1793 when first the king was overthrown by his people, which is a scandal.
People had no rights. People had duties. The kings had rights and duties. And not only did they overthrow their divinely chosen monarch, they actually laid their hands on him and executed him in the name of another ideology. And I found an account of the execution of Louis the sixteenth by an eyewitness who actually led him to the guillotine.
I would like to read you some parts of it because you will see how the challenge to the traditional equation of being and theism is formulated and how clearly it was understood even at the period. This is an account of the execution of Louis the sixteenth by Henry Edgeworth de Firmont who was an aristocrat who actually accompanied the king directly to the altar. The carriage arrived in the greatest silence at the place, and I skip as soon as the king descended from the carriage, three executioners surrounded him and attempted to tie his hands. What are you trying to do? Said the king, withdrawing his hands abruptly.
These are commoners laying their hand their hands on the monarch. Tie you, replied one of the executioners. Tie me, returned the king in an indignant tone. I will never consent. Do what you were ordered to do, but I will not be tied.
Renounce that idea. The executioners insisted. And this is Henry Edgeworth de Firmont speaking. Sire, I said to him with tears, in this new outrage, I see only a final resemblance between your majesty and the savior who is to reward you. So we have here a Christological drama which is being played out.
Louis the sixteenth is equated in the eyes of the French aristocracy as Christ suffering at the hands of the Romans. At these words, he lifted his eyes to heaven with a soaring look that I cannot describe and turning to the executioner said, do as you wish, I will drain the cup to the dregs. And then rising upon the scaffold, Louis sixteenth turns to the crowd and says, I die innocent of all the crimes imputed to me. I pardon the authors of my death and pray God that the blood you are about to shed will never fall upon France. Thus died at the age of thirty eight years, four months and twenty eight days, Louis XVI of his name, whose ancestors had reigned in France for more than eight centuries.
We have here a nexus of history. It is at this point that we can say that modernity begins. Modernity as an age of revolution, rebellion, and nihilism. The age of the radical rejection of being. And then it culminates obviously with the Russian revolution of nineteen seventeen.
The main difference I would say from our standpoint between the French and the Russian revolution is that for the French revolution was a revolution in the name of deism. In other words, in the name of an abstract god against theism, therefore, against monarchy by divine right. The Russian revolution is a revolution in the name of explicit nihilism. In other words, radical materialism and atheism against any type of meaning. So I would put it to you that these four dates, 1649, 1793, 1776, I keep forgetting the Americans for some reason.
1776, 1793, and 1917 are turning points in our history. They are capital for us to understand ourselves because we as westerners have systematically equated being and meaning. We have been unable to formulate any type of meaning out of the framework either of ontology or theism. As the joint framework of ontology and theism started collapsing, The very notion of meaning in western society started collapsing. And our societies then sank ever greater into the situation they are in now, which is a situation of radical nihilism where our Tibetan friends describe us as or in other words, as Indian nihilists.
And in this respect, I would like to read you a passage from Dostoyevsky’s work, the brothers Karamazov, which addresses this issue head on. This is a little bit later than the period we’re speaking of. Brothers Karamazov was written in 1880. But the issue of the possibility of meaning and ethics without God or being is addressed directly in Dostoyevsky’s work. And this makes it profoundly modern because this is an issue which I think concerns all Westerners.
The passage is the following. It’s God that’s worrying me. That’s the only thing that’s worrying me. What if he doesn’t exist? What if right that God is an idea made up by men?
Then if he doesn’t exist, man is chief of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent. Only how is he going to be good without God? That’s the question. I always come back to that.
For whom is man going to love then? To whom will he be thankful? To whom will he sing the hymn? Rakitin laughs. Rakitin says that one can love humanity without God, but only a sniveling idiot can maintain that.
Now this is a thrust of Dostoyevsky’s interrogation. Dostoyevsky was a man of his age. He assists to the twin collapse of theism at the religious level and the progressive collapse of ontology under this assault of Nietzschean philosophy. And then the great interrogation Dostoyevsky addresses us is fine. How do we however in a world in which there is no God allow or enable man to still be human?
And this is the reason for which Nāgārjuna in his in his Jewel Garland explicitly states that the two extremes of eternalism and nihilism are not symmetrical. They are not equal. It isn’t the two extremes are very different in their consequences. The extreme of eternalism is by far preferable to the extreme of nihilism because the extreme of eternalism enables the creation of an ethics. It enables the generation of meaning.
The extreme of nihilism which is what Dostoyevsky understood very clearly, does not enable the creation of any ethics. It does not enable the creation of meaning. And the western tragedy, and this is a little bit the thrust of this talk. The western tragedy has been the West’s incapacity to understand how it was possible to conciliate being and nothingness and the radical polarization between the two. Western history is one where the West has passed from the cult of being and from ontology deified to the cult of non being without any middle ground.
My contention, and I hope it will become somewhat clear by the end of the talk, is that it is precisely because Buddhism teaches us a middle ground between being and nothingness that the Buddhist teachings are so relevant to us nowadays and attract so much attention. Then moving onwards in our history of this progressive decay of the concept of being, in western thought, I think we can, pinpoint the main challenge to ontology in Nietzsche’s thought, especially in his first major work, Apart from Birth of Tragedy, Human, All Too Human, in 1878. And Nietzsche’s direct challenge to ontology, to the notion of being, to the notion of meaning in any sense except self created meaning by Nietzsche’s Overman really ushers the dawn of modern radical nihilism of which all of us, whether we like it or not, are a product. So this led in Russia certainly to the development of a school of political nihilism, which some of you may have heard about radical thinkers such as Sergei Nechayev, Kropotkin, Bakunin, who believed in the cult of destruction for destruction’s sake, you know, and grounded themselves in this radical critique of all meaning which was not self created meaning.
And I would say that one of the foremost proponents, certainly the most articulate proponent of contemporary nihilism has to be Albert Camus, the great French philosopher. In what is perhaps his major work, the myth of Sisyphus. I would like to quote from it here because I think for this magnificently written. Secondly, it encapsulates the modern tragedy, the tragedy of modern man as he understands himself. And perhaps, it will give all of us a sense of why we may have come here in the first place.
Those of you who do not know the legendary account, Sisyphus was a Greek monarch who for his crime was condemned forever to roll a huge boulder up and down a cliff in Hades in the Greek Hells. So his was by definition the meaningless, the absurd task of rolling this huge boulder with great pain up to the top of a mountain just to see it, you know, roll down the other side. In the Myth of Sisyphus composed in 1942, Camus writes, it has already been understood that Sisyphus is the absurd hero. He is as much because of his passions as because of his torment. His disdain for the gods read here his disdain for being.
His hatred of death and his passion for life one
Him that unspeakable torture of exerting his whole being to achieve nothing. It is the price that we must pay for the passions of this earth. We are told nothing about Sisyphus in the underworld. Myths are created for the imagination to breathe life into them. And I will skip a little bit and this is the crux of Camus.
It’s very interesting for us. It is during his return, and that was when Sisyphus descends the slope. It is during his return, his pause there that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself. I imagine that man with a heavy yet even step walking down the slope to the torment of which he will never know the end.
That brief time, like breathing, which returns as regularly as certainly as his torment, that is the moment of consciousness. At each of these moments, Sisyphus is superior to his destiny. He is stronger than his rock. If the myth is tragic, it is because a hero is conscious. Proletarian of the gods, powerless and bearing inner revolt, he knows the full extent of his wretched condition or he walks down to meet this rock.
The lucidity that was supposed to be his torment by the very same token is the achievement of his victory. This encapsulates the modern tragedy. The modern tragedy of man bereft of meaning in a world which he sees as profoundly meaningless. Able to provide meaning to his life only through the mere consciousness of the absurdity of his condition. I think perhaps no one has ever written so eloquently about nihilism as Camus.
And I would put it to you that this is the modern worldview. This is the worldview which, whether it’s explicitated or not, is that of the society of which we are the products. Therefore, is a view which somewhere deep down is probably still a part of most of us. And then I would like to skip briefly to the reaction to this radical modern nihilism, which is a particular school of thought. We spoke about briefly the irrationalistic school of non ontological theism which is a school of Pascal, of Kierkegaard, and of Shestov which is a school which acknowledges the incapacity of reason to provide meaning on its own.
And asserts that the only possible source of meaning in an environment bereft of meaning is faith which is unjustified. And Pascal, the great French philosopher quoted frequently in this respect, a church father, Tertullian, who said famously, I believe because it is meaningless. This is the dogma of irrationalism. Faced with meaninglessness, faced with nihilism in its most extreme form. Pascal, Kierkegaard, and later Shestoff all assert that one must believe simply because belief is indispensable to survive.
And Shestov in two famous quotes gives us a sense of the predicament of man in a meaningless universe. In Athens and Jerusalem, published in 1937, he says, an hour will come when each of us will cry as did the most perfect of men which is Christ. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And then we shall leave the riches we have accumulated and set out on the road like miserable vagabonds or like Abraham who according to the word of the apostle departed without knowing where he was going. This is a poetic description of the end of life of the death process.
That at death bereft of everything we wander off like Abraham and that this and this alone is sufficient justification for faith. And Shestov says somewhat later in one of his minor works, the power of the keys, Potestas Clavium, Philosophy is an apprenticeship for and an anticipation of death, and that for the non initiate is a secret. So this understanding of the necessity of belief when faced with the radical meaninglessness of the world surrounding us is I think an issue for many who have come to Buddhism. All of us have to examine ourselves and ask ourselves whether our interest in Buddhism is an interest in Buddhism Buddhism or whether our interest in Buddhism is born out of fear of nothingness. It’s a difficult question.
My general impression is that in the tremendous sphere of meaninglessness, which is what much of western society is now, the quest for meaning has become so desperate that any meaning is preferable to no meaning. Now this obviously is not an attitude of discrimination nor can this lead to any solid foundations. It is not the quest for any meaning instead of no meaning. It is a quest of a very specific meaning which is what the eastern philosophy we are the devotees of Buddhist thought can offer. And I think that through becoming aware of the extraordinary meaninglessness of the world we come from, we will have to ask ourselves whether we ourselves are coming to the Buddhist teachings out of an interest for his message or whether we are coming out of despair.
These two very different things. So I would say perhaps we could take a short tea break now. And I’m sorry. This is pretty heavy going material, but I hope it is of some use. And we’ll get back together at 03:00.
So we will move onwards. The good news is, we’re gonna be looking at the practical implications. So there’ll be a little bit less here, is good news for you and good news for me too, to be frank with you. The good news is we’ll be looking at the practical applications. So it’s gonna be a little bit less heavy on the philosophical side, you know.
But it’s important to understand the underlying structure. So having sort of just sketched this broad outline, of what one could call the dialectics of being and non being in Western history and illustrated through the thought of Camus, a leading thinker and proponent, explicit proponent of nihilism. The issue I would like to address at present with you is the relation between the self viewed in these contexts and freedom. Western society, especially I would say, since the age of enlightenment, perhaps since the reformation, has erected as one of the dominant values of our society, freedom. First, the freedom to think.
It’s very clear with the reformers and the renaissance thinkers. Then, very rapidly, with the age of enlightenment, the freedom of political choice, and eventually, the freedom of all the variants of personal choices. Now these modalities of freedom are a direct reflection of our understanding of ourselves. Much of the modern contemporary understanding, western man has of himself is an understanding where he sees himself as an atomized being in himself or being in itself who has to generate meaning alone. And the solitary process of generation of meaning occurs within the framework of the consensus of other solitary beings in themselves, which is what we call the community and ultimately the state.
There is no, therefore, no extraneous source of meaning. There is no extraneous authority which can impose meaning from the outside, whether it be a revelation or a socially accepted consensus. There is instead this being in itself alone with his or her freedom generating his or her individual meaning or not generating it. Now my personal contention is that this, which is broadly speaking called freedom, is a false freedom. It is a false freedom first because it does not correspond to an underlying reality.
If we examine our situation, it is glaringly obvious that we are not isolated beings in themselves, which generate our own meaning in complete isolation of everything else. We are instead beings with others who generate meaning in a context with others. And therefore, the very idea of freedom of a being in itself which is a source of its own meaning is an illusory idea of freedom. To subscribe to such an idea of freedom is to condemn oneself to great suffering. It is to believe in something which has never existed and will never exist.
This is however it would seem the main view of freedom which has course in our society. And if you examine what people mean when they say I am free, you do not have the right to say this to me, you know. I have the right to, you know. These are very common expressions in our society. They always reflect the sense of a being in himself or herself who generates his own being, who’s own his own meaning.
And the only constraint of the generation of meaning therefore is the state. And I would put it to you that even though our societies are explicitly nihilistic, There has been an implicit transference of meaning of being and the divine to the state. The state has ended up being a source of meaning to a very large degree. To a degree which would actually have baffled our forefathers. And this is all the more paradoxical because as you remember last time we broached briefly Rousseau’s ideas of the constitution of the state in, of the social contract.
And Rousseau defines state as an entity which arises through the consensus of all the citizens regarding the need of structure and protection. Therefore, the state as far as Rousseau is concerned is an emanation of the citizens and exists in dependence on the citizens. Nowadays, we have moved towards a de facto, a situation of mutual dependence between citizens and state. We do pay lip service to the emanation of the state from the Are you talking about democratic state? I’m making no difference.
Any state. Any state. Communist states are very, forceful in their affirmations of democracy. And if you disagree with them if you do disagree with him, you’re democratized very forcefully too. I personally don’t believe there’s a we will cover this one later, but I don’t believe there’s a fundamental difference between communism and democracy in theory.
There’s a fundamental difference in practice, but both are born from the same wrong view of the relation of human beings with each other. People think they they have when they vote, they think that means something. Yes. Yes. Most definitely.
So it’s something we were addressing the issue of questions with pleasure. But what I wanted to bring up was the fact that, in our modern, I suppose we could qualify this by democratic societies, there seems to be a relation of mutual dependency between the state and the citizens. The state is seen as an emanation of the citizens. It is in many cases debatable whether this is a case or not. And the state in turn actually generates values which up to the age of enlightenment were values only generated by the spiritual traditions.
They were not generated by the state, you know. So the state has taken on part of the function which was attributed to the ground of being before the age of enlightenment. And, we are oblivious to the degree to which the state defines our common consensus of what is ethical or not, what is good or not, what is meaningful or not. And yet, it seems to underline much of what we do. So what we have ended up with is a very paradoxical situation.
Are the societies which are richer than ever before. They are societies where most of us have hundreds of times more leisure than we ever had at any time in history. They are also societies where interpersonal relations are at an absolute nadir. Perhaps never in history have human beings gotten along so poorly with each other, being so lonely, and oddly enough, being so unhappy as in the modern state. It’s quite astonishing when we look at the developmental statistics that there is so much mental suffering in countries where there is absolutely no rationale for mental suffering.
The main reason for this is precisely because in the collapse of interpersonal relations and in the collapse of all of the intermediate structures between the self or the individual and the state, which were the family, the parish, the country and so forth. The only ground of relationship between individuals has become the state. Individuals engage to each or towards each other through the medium of the state and the laws. The laws have invaded the private what used to be considered the private sphere of the person. The individual responsibility for charity which was widely accepted just as recently as my mother’s generation is something which is now totally mediated by the state.
It was taken for granted for instance in my mother’s generation that one would tithe or give 10% of one’s income to one’s church and one would help all the poor one met. Now, this individual responsibility of the subject to another subject has been completely eliminated. Instead, it is mediated through the state. One votes for welfare programs which then redistribute wealth according to abstract criteria. So a large part of the individual ethical responsibility has been transferred to an invisible abstract entity which is fulfilling much of the world which divine providence fulfilled up to the age of enlightenment.
And this in turn has led to this extraordinary dryness in human relations which one sees so much in the West. It is really an age of of man as a wolf to man, you know. The only limitation is those enforced by the police. It’s quite extraordinary to think the role the state has now take it taken in private relations, which would have been inconceivable a couple of generations ago. The role the state has taken in family relations.
And we see more and more a situation where all intermediary levels between individual and state have collapsed. And all that is left is a solitary atomized being in in itself and his relation to an abstract community. His freedom is then seen as the sum total of rights he has within that relationship. Such a freedom, I would put it to you, is a freedom to be alone with others. It’s not a freedom to be with others.
It is an inauthentic freedom. It is a freedom which can and only will be a source of suffering. This is what we refer to in Buddhist thought when we speak of self-cherishing. self-cherishing is nothing else, but the individuals resuming the totality of existence to his own self interest. Cherishing when we self-cherishing is nothing else but the individual assuming the totality of all phenomena to his own self interest.
Cherishing others, on the other hand, I would put it to you is authentic freedom. It is authentic freedom because it is a freedom of the individual in relation. Now, it is a characteristic of modern western thought that the individual in relation is seen by that very fact as being less free than the individual who is not in relation. And this leads in turn to this exacerbation of solitude which has characterized modernity. But the individual in relation to others is not less free than the individual who is who stands in and of himself.
The individual in relation to others is actually actualizing his authentic human nature. He’s actualizing authentic freedom. And it is quite striking in this respect that so many studies have come out to corroborate the fact that the network of human relations is the main determinant for happiness. It is not wealth, It is not health. It is not social status.
It’s not learning. It’s not respect. It is the network of social relations. So one of the challenges which we as societies are facing frontally, and this is a direct consequence of the collapse of the mercantile model of state which gave rise both to capitalism and to communism. These are two sides of the same coin.
One of the challenges we are facing is to redefine human happiness in terms other than monetary. Perhaps in broader terms, and this redefinition of human happiness must pass through human happiness with others. It must pass through the concept of a relationship to others and perhaps with the reduction in the presence of the state as a necessary intermediary between human beings. So as a byproduct of this situation, individual beings in themselves and themselves alone related to each other through an abstract state which defines a network of obligations, has arisen the contemporary culture of anxiety and fear. It is quite striking the degree to which our contemporaries are anxious, are searching for meaning.
And they are searching for meaning precisely because they are totally unable to fulfill the impossible task which is given to them, which is the auto generation of meaning. And yet, this is what is demanded from every single westerner. To make a caricature of it, it will be as if each one of us was expected to be an Einstein or Van Gogh, but we aren’t. Most don’t have the capacity. So a leading French sociologist I I’m trying to bring up one French scholar per session you’ll notice.
It’s to counteract the American influence. A leading French sociologist, Olivier Rey, published an extraordinary book just last year, which translated in English would be something like a terrifying solitude. How do we do this one? The fantasy of the order construction of the self. And starts with a very trivial observation.
He notices that up to 1960 approximately, all the prams, you know what a prams is for pushing babies in. Right? All the prams are designed in such a way that the mother is here and the baby and the pram is facing the mother. All the prams. It is taken for granted that an infant wants to face his mother.
Suddenly in 1966, the orientation of the pram changes. The baby is facing upwards. Now, Rey wonders. Well,
Fundamentally, an economic standpoint, as far as a mental factor is concerned, there’s actually no difference whether the baby is facing the mother or is facing outward. The pram cost is exactly the same to construct. As far as the mother is concerned, there are obvious advantages to having the baby face her because she know knows how the baby is doing. So why suddenly for no reason economic or social is the orientation of the baby changed? And this is the beginning for Olivier Rey’s reflection because he finds out through studying the advertising literature of the period that the key argument manufacturers advanced they were responding in this to the demand of the public was that they wanted the child to be open to the outside world.
In other words, we have passed according to with this single event as a sign from a world where the meaning of the child is constructed in relation to his mother. In other words, where the meaning is actually transmitted from the mother to the child, received and constructed. To a world in which the infant is supposed to construct his own meaning. And this is if you remember what we’re talking about two weeks ago, precisely the thrust of argument in the that a child should be allowed to construct his own meaning without any interference from his parent or from the education system or at least a minimum of interference. Now, this is not a minor change.
This is a change in the very notion of the transmission of knowledge, of wisdom, and this is something which underlies our relationship to for instance, the teachings which we receive. Clearly, as members of a world in which we are expected to construct our own meaning, we are in a very awkward position when we come to teachings in which meaning is imparted to us. And this is a source of great tension. So we attend the teachings in which meaning is imparted in the same way as a child in the pram facing his mother would receive from his mother meaning. But we are from a culture where as a child in the pram, we are turning our back to our mother.
And this creates a dichotomy in the relation to the teachings. Attention. Meaning is accepted verbally and intellectually, but it is not integrated. It’s not integrated because deep down there is this profound conviction that we should be as beings in themselves the source of our own meaning. We should not be passive and recipient of a meaning.
As a friend of mine put it, why should we bother to learn anything from, the ancient Buddhist tradition in India? Well, that is the question. From a modern standpoint, why, you say? So it really raises many questions regarding the enculturation of Buddhism in our societies. It raises some fundamental questions regarding our relation to the spiritual friend, the teacher.
How can we relate correctly to a spiritual friend as a source of meaning when we do not acknowledge our ordinary parents as a source of meaning? It’s far from obvious that it is possible. And I think it underlines very clearly the ultimate consequences of this state of radical disintegration of meaning and of utter alienation in which we live. So this is basically, broadly speaking, what I wanted to cover regarding our present predicament. And, I think there would be time to cover a small account of a Western critique of the self, which is specifically David Hume’s critique of the self and the treaties of human nature.
But, we covered that last year in the talk on Buddhism and Western philosophy. So it seems that there’s not a lot of point in going over it again. I’d be happy to do it then briefly just to show that, as in every culture, obviously, every culture is not monotone. So there are dissenting voices. And I would say, certainly in Western philosophy, the dissenting voice which is of interest to us is Hume.
I remember being absolutely fascinated by Hume when I was a young boy. Largely speaking because Hume is the most radical critique of the notion of an independently existing self in western thought. And yet, human human manages to strike a balance between criticizing the existence of an independent self and not falling at the same time what we would call the extreme of nihilism. So if I were to quote from Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, which is his major work. Two passages I would, bring up which, I think really encapsulate his thought are on on page one sixty two of my edition.
For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other of heat, of cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I can never catch myself at any time without a perception It never can observe anything but the perception. Now, this might sound trite to those of you who have been listening to Khensur Rinpoche’s teachings for for years on end, but in 1742, it wasn’t. In 1742, as far as western philosophy or most western philosophers were concerned, upon examination of the self, one found an irreducible nucleus which was the soul. To dare to assert that there was nothing else but perception, just a profoundly Buddhist viewpoint.
It’s an assertion that upon examining the aggregates, mere aggregates are found is revolutionary. And then this most extraordinary passage in the appendix to the treaties of human nature, which which really leads one to wonder who precisely who you may have been. Philosophers begin to be reconciled with the principle that we have no idea of external substance distinct from the idea of particular qualities. This must prepare the way for a like principle with regard to the mind that we have no distinction of it, distinct from the particular perceptions. We are just inches away from a understanding of phenomena.
Inches, you know. But in the work of someone who never had any contact whatsoever with the East, this is independently developed. It’s something which is quite humbling in in work of this stature. And you must excuse me with all of these papers. There was another quote I was going to give you.
No. He could not consider We have to put the context here. Hume was professor of rheumatology at Edinburgh. In other words, what was what was He’s not He was was a professor of philosophy at Edinburgh. He was denied He was denied the position.
But what was the situation at the period? How wise was it in Scotland to affirm at the period that you weren’t quite sure that there was a core of the self? Yes. Mean, I’m not quite sure. Hume was I don’t think he was disturbed by this.
He he was one of the most placid philosophers there ever was. I mean, what is very impressive with Hume and the whole generation of philosophers up to Hume and Kant maybe is that they lived their philosophy. Yes. Then after Kant, we have the disturbed philosopher. You know?
But Grossomotor Spinoza was, by all accounts, a wise man, so was Hume. So I don’t think he was disturbed by it. Question, really. I mean, if you were twentieth century philosopher, we could assume that he said what he thought. As an eighteenth century philosopher, I don’t know.
I mean, he was demonized in Scotland. He was ostracized. So this is basically what I wanted to cover briefly of Hume. And then I just wanted to read you some passages from the third sūtra which Buddha pronounced after reaching full enlightenment. The in the Pāli Canon, it’s called the Anattalakkhana Sutta, the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta.
Sūtra of the characteristic of non-self and use this as a gateway to a very brief attempt to understand how a conciliation of being and nothingness through a conciliation of appearance and non inherent existence is possible in the Buddhist context and how there is a beginning of suggestion in Buddhist thought of how to resolve quandary which has afflicted western philosophy. So thus I heard on one occasion the blessed one was living at Benares in the Deer Park at Isipatana. There he addressed the bhikkhus of the group of five. Keep in mind this is a Sūtra of the first turning of the wheel of the law and yet you will find the view is is Prāsaṇgika. Bhikkhus, form is not self. Were form self, then this form would not lead to affliction, and one could have it of form.
Then I skip. Bhikśu’s feeling is not self. Bhikśu’s perception is not self. Bhikśu’s determinations are not self. Bhikśu’s consciousness is not self.
Bhikśu’s. When a noble follower who has heard the truth sees thus, he finds estrangement in form, he finds estrangement in feeling, he finds estrangement in perception, he finds estrangement in determinations, he finds estrangement in consciousness. When he finds estrangement, passion fades out. With the fading of passion, he is liberated. Now, although the Prāsaṇgika view is not explicitly stated, as you know in the Tibetan tradition, it’s considered that some sutras of the first turning of the wheel or some sutras which are pronounced at the time of the first turning of the wheel of the law do teach the Prāsaṇgika view. I would personally feel that this Sūtra does teach the Prāsaṇgika view and that this Sūtra transcends or that the teachings of this Sūtra transcend the dialectics of being in nothingness which have marked western thought.
From the identification of theism with ontology at the time of the seventies through the long rule of theistic ontology until the reformation. Then the progressive decline both of theism and ontology with an attempt of ontology to survive independently in the form of philosophy which failed certainly by the end of the nineteenth century through to the reign of nihilism, in other words, exaltation of non-being. And throughout this cycle of history, the pattern has been the incapacity to conciliate these two extremes. One has either had in Western thought to opt for an inherently existing being, which was the preserve of ontology, or to opt for an inherently existing non being, which was a preserve of the teachings of the abyss, if you want, the works of Sartre, of Nietzsche, and all that. It has never been possible to opt for a middle way in which the existence of phenomena is affirmed, but the ultimate existence is not affirmed.
In which the non existence of certain phenomena is affirmed and the non ultimate non existence of others is not affirmed. So this middle ground I think is very much the preserve of Buddhist thought. Is very much specifically the preserve of Madhyamaka Prāsaṇgika. And this is perhaps the main contribution which Buddhist thought at this point in time can make to the West. The affirmation that, yes, radical being in itself does not exist, but no, this does not mean that phenomena in history are meaningless.
So I think that is why I wanted to cover today, and I am open to any questions you might have. It was a little bit harsh, I suppose. But that, I think, is the question because it felt to me when you said both of those things that they apply. It’s I think a search for meaning is is very good. That’s really what we should be cultivating.
The question is what is impelling the search for meaning? Is it a search for meaning or is it a fear of non meaning? There’s very different things. Similar is when you fall in love. Are you falling in love with somebody or are you falling in love because you’re terrified of being alone?
It’s two very different things. Motivation is different. So if it is a search for meaning, it is positive. You know, it is a search for something positive. Then one has to see whether the teachings correspond to the nature of reality to what one thinks the nature of reality is or not.
If it is a fear of non meaning, there is a tendency to gulp everything down indiscriminately. And that is the risk. That is the risk. So I I remember this last summer in Nantes, His Holiness was given a teaching on emptiness. I guess, has been much more explicit than in the past imposing the key points of Madhyamaka and the differences with non-Buddhist schools.
When I came to the teaching, there’s this very nice young Frenchman sitting to me who was Vedantic, you know, very bright. Like, he said, I came because I follow Shankara and I really feel that he’s always from the main exponents of the all is one, what is all, and there’s no difference between anything school. And I I didn’t say anything. And then the first day, His Holiness criticized Shankara explicitly and posed rather clearly the boundaries between Vedanta and Madhyamaka. And I didn’t say anything.
Second day, my friend came late. So I just went on the key points of Madhyamaka philosophy. And the third day, he didn’t show up. And this lady who was sitting a bit further down said to me, he asked me to tender you his apologies, but he feels what his voice is teaching is very destabilizing, and he really doesn’t want to come anymore. And that was a typical case, I think, of a search for meaning at any cost.
Not all meanings are identical. There’s a big difference. I I had a professor of Hinduism once, a professor at the University of Virginia, who always would start his classes by saying, all is one and is all in the Vedas. You know? All is not one.
And if it’s all in the Vedas, I don’t think so either, all is not one. So that is the problem. I think because there is such an anguish, such a fear such an anxiety faced with a meaningless life which has no clear source before, you know, conception, which as far as what our society tells us ends at death with no future, which is at best livable livable when we are young, healthy and easily distracted. And then which becomes a long process of painful decay, generally hidden. Then, faced with this, there’s tremendous fear and anxiety.
This fear leads one to adopt any meaning. And a symptom of this is a non critical approach. Meaning should be adopted critically, analytically. This is very much a thrust of the Buddhist teachings. The teachings
To be examined under many different angles because the goal of the teachings is transformation of our mind. Our mind is not affected by our spouting things. You know, I remember when I was in Sydney, I was reading with Sonam at Chenrezig. One of the attendants, a western lady, obviously a new convert, said to another western lady, well, we really have to keep our commitments because otherwise we’ll go to hell. And I thought to myself, well, this is obviously something which does not come from deep inside because Western culture does not lend itself to this.
So this is verbal. I hope it will last, but I doubt so. So meaning must be examined again and again and again and again. And then if it can be accepted because it is seem to fit with reality, it will transform our mind. Otherwise, it’s like this extra weight on top of our mind, you know.
Does that make sense? Are there any other questions? Yes. You know, the question was asked to his holiness directly. And his holiness said, I don’t know.
That was his answer. To be honest with you, I don’t really think it’s a question which we should ask. I don’t think Buddhism is going anywhere in the West, to be honest with you. I think it’s part of the wide range offer of spiritual traditions in the West. But Chögyam Trungpa criticized very acutely.
I don’t know, don’t have a lot of time for Chogyam Trungpa in general, but one of his books cutting through spiritual materialism is very good. And he criticized precisely this. The West is not gonna become Buddhist. That’s never gonna happen. Buddhism has already a place in the religious offer in the West.
I don’t believe it’s gonna move beyond that. I don’t think so because I think Buddhism is a very demanding tradition to start with. We see even the centers at the moment the teachings are presented in the way they would be traditionally presented where actually the three activities of hearing, thinking, meditation are required. You know, nobody’s there anymore. I mean, as long as it’s learning how to offer water bowls, you know, we can fill the the temple.
The moment when it’s the the teachings actually enter into what is Buddhism. Actual teachings on emptiness, development of wisdom. There’s very little interest. You know? And that is not gonna change anytime soon.
That’s not gonna change. I think the most important thing for us is not to succumb to the tragedy, let’s say, Christianity, which tried and succeeded in becoming a state religion and destroyed itself in the process. Our goal must not be to focus on becoming a society wide religion, but instead to present the teachings in a very, very pure form. And then people come and they take because that’s of benefit. And if it’s not of benefit, they don’t come and they don’t take.
Does that go towards answering your question? That’s my personal feeling. You know? Let me be the devil’s advocate. Let me be the devil’s advocate.
You say we are society of research. As far as in my short lifetime, I’m 47. As far as I have seen, we have passed from a society in which people read to a society in which nobody reads anymore. We’ve passed from a society in which at least we knew our own culture and literature to a society of quasi total illiteracy. We’ve passed from a society where there was a critical distance from social fans to one where popular culture has subsumed everything.
And we’ve passed from a society where indeed science played a role to a society where science has become the new religion. All we have to do to gain endorsement is to say, there’s been a recent study which says that. And then it is accepted non critically. Just as in the thirteenth century, all Aquinas had to do was to say, the church father said that, you know. It’s the same attitude.
Then with this society of to put things bluntly of stupidity and of laziness, you know, It’s very difficult to see how the teachings are going to have an impact. Very difficult. I saw in my own life. I remember just thirty years ago, it was much easier to direct people towards studies in Buddhism than now. Now, it’s it’s like pushing Sisyphus’ rock uphill.
It it doesn’t happen. It’s like you push, you push, you push, nobody wants. So all the societies of leisure, of comfort, there are also societies of desire as we said last time. We have integrated desire in our mind stream to quite a degree. Then teachings which teach the progressive rejection of desire are gonna be very difficult to integrate in such a society.
No. My personal feeling, this is just my private opinion, is as in every major societal change, we have to drink the cup to the dregs, which means this model which really is a model of society which was adopted at the reformation of the Renaissance and which was fine tuned during the age of enlightenment and the industrial revolution. The society of the consuming eye has to go to its logical conclusion. It has to crash in a wall. Once it’s crashed in a wall, then maybe there will be an openness.
But we have to reach first that point of complete failure. We’re not there yet. Just there. Yeah. Complete failure.
Complete failure. You know? I mean, a lot of things which for instance we are talking about now are things I could never talk about twenty five years ago. There’s a big difference just in twenty five years. 20 in twenty five years, much of what we’re talking about here is mainstream.
Mainstream members of our society acknowledge that something is badly wrong. You know, that the sociological statistics of, you know, criminality, of insanity, and drug use, you name it, are statistics we should not have in societies which are this rich. So the the premise of our civilization is that prosperity leads to happiness. Well, the historical evidence is that prosperity is not leading to greater happiness. Little Bhutan is according to the happiness criteria they have adopted, much happier than our societies.
Little Bhutan is very poor. You see. So this is something we as societies are going to have to face. But I think it’ll only be accepted when it’s hammered down our thoughts. Are there any other questions?
The big difference between critical engagement of nothing and critical engagement of a tradition. So when you are just facing outwards and you’re critically engaging all the sense input, the chances of your constructing anything halfway meaningful of that are very limited. When one is engaging a tradition and critically engaging that tradition, this is what the Buddha refers to. Then one is able to construct meaning. It seems to me.
Buddhist philosophy does acknowledge the existence of Pratyekabuddha who are supposed to construct meaning directly, but then it always qualifies us by saying that they were taught in past lives, you know, because it seems difficult otherwise. You know? Does that does that go towards answering your question? Kant and nineteenth century fascination for the wild child. You know?
Absolutely. The children were century for our twentieth century. No. But the night the nineteenth century was a thrust of it. The child was abandoned in the forest young.
And the whole question was, does he construct meaning alone or not? Well, the answer based on the cases is he doesn’t construct any meaning whatsoever. I mean, he cannot construct a language. I see. And there was actually, as you know, damage, permanent damage to the brain.
The acquisition of language later on was limited, very limited indeed. So what this proves is that being, as far as human beings are concerned, being in itself does not lead to civilization. Does not lead to civilization. And we construct meaning in relation. Now when it comes to spiritual meaning, I would put it to you that we construct meanings meaning in relation to a tradition.
That doesn’t mean we have to accept the tradition. That means we have to engage it critically. Engaging it critically means this process of study and reflection to assess the tradition. This is what certainly in the Buddhist context is all that is asked from us. And that is cause for effort.
Yes. No cause suffering. People come here when they’re old, when they’re sick, when they’re poor, you know. When you eliminate cause suffering, you eliminate the main needle towards spiritual quest. That’s Excellent one.
I think we finished with today. But Since you’re calling Pascal, I record Pascal before we leave. Somebody was telling me something about the tragedy of countries like Australia. And Pascal in the seventeenth century said, the tragedy of man is that he cannot stay alone in a room without distraction. That’s very profound.
Man alone in a room without distraction is face to face with his existential predicament. So then we throw in the television, the radio, etcetera. You see, there’s this whole whole approach in French sociology, which is very interesting, which is to start with something very small, which is, you know, symptomatic of society and try to decrypt the underlying philosophy at work there. Now you see how something as small as this is is far reaching, You know? But since we’re speaking of prams, but this would have to be my parting statement on Yeah.
The symbology of prams. Let us wonder what exactly is meant when you have prams carrying a baby weighing one and a half kilos, which are built like American assault tanks. This pram is this big. Is this again is not value neutral. Thank you very