Existentialism and Buddhism

Existentialism questions the reasons for living, or for accomplishing things. Buddhism attempts to answer these questions, as do many other religions. Therefore, existentialism and Buddhism have an incredible amount in common. However, this connection doesn’t seem to have engaged anyone’s attention.

Existentialism became a named philosophy with the advent of the French philosophers, Sartre and Camus, of the previous century, and, of course there were many precedents for their thinking, stretching a bit further back, Nietzsche, Heidigger,…. None of them were particularly succinct. Perhaps it takes a tremendous number of words to convey some simple concepts if the concepts are particularly jarring or particularly out-of-resonance with the reader’s contexts and background.

To try to be succinct for those whose background already has this material embedded in it (and didn’t we all have to read these books in college?):
What’s the point of living if there is no eternity?
What’s the point of doing anything if nothing makes any difference in the long run?

Now, 99.9999+% of humanity could care less, as they have dogmatic answers to these questions, and it is certainly wonderful that they do, for that keeps the world running (unless, of course, the existence of the world doesn’t matter to you.) This expedient learning, about various forms of nirvana, gives people a goal to try for. When you have a goal, you can determine your actions and proceed toward it. It happens to be that these dogmas fit into a scheme that underlies society. It’s obvious why that came about.

Consider two city-states around the dawn of civilization. One has a theology that tells the folks, who are not thinkers as thinking about anything but the harvest and similar daily activities hadn’t been invented yet, that they will come back as a more well-off person if they work hard while alive. Another has a theology that tells the folks that life is life and death is death, and there isn’t any bridge. People in the first city-state will be much more likely to survive starvation, war, natural disasters, droughts, and what ever else nature throws at them. The second city-state has people who will give up earlier. Come back a couple of centuries later, and ask which city-state still exists, and which city-state has let to the foundation of other ones. It is simply trivial social evolution, not based on genes, but based on memes – little bits of dogmatic thought, that has led to the concept of nirvana and its competitors and variants.

So, it is obvious and trivial how the various supernatural answers to existentialism’s questions were answered in the many millennia before the French philosophy was invented. It doesn’t matter what the details are, just that there is a dogma that keeps people working on survival and growth. That’s why there are so many various belief-systems around. They all meet the sufficiency needs for continued social existence.

Finally, along comes the French school, and asks these questions explicitly, or in terms of novels with obvious philosophical content. SGI answers the questions in terms of individual happiness, and the spread of happiness through support and assistance. The answer is, of course, not on point, but it is a sufficient answer, and it doesn’t have to call on supernatural existences. The SGI answer is that people want to be happy, and practicing SGI and promoting it through kosen-rufu (conversion of others), and assisting others in achieving their own happiness leads to more individual happiness. Who doesn’t want to be happy? Rather than take on the French with their own deep thoughts, SGI has adopted the very Japanese philosophy that hard work is an end in itself, and directed it toward a non-national goal (unlike Japanese in history), individual happiness. It is almost as if Japan has absorbed the American consumer culture, abstracted it away from materialism, and fed it back to the world.

American consumer culture is all about exploiting natural resources to produce commercial products, and the acquisition of these products is supposed to translate into happiness for the recipient. Japanese thought seems to have, culminating in SGI’s philosophy, turned this into a non-material thing, that intangibles are the thing to go after, and if one does, one will be happy.

The existential question of what about eternity and the absolute lack of utility for an individual of anything in the long term (as there are no individuals in the long term), is buried. Don’t be thoughtful, be happy. Why waste time contemplating the future when there are things to be done right now. If you are unhappy about death, chant.

Sakyamuni faced the problem of death, along with the other three miseries of life. I think that he solved the problem in a way that was completely not appreciated for the last two and a half centuries. Sakyamuni may have been the most brilliant person ever. He used the concept of humility in a very interesting way. Because no one person is important, we should not attach any importance to our own life. This seemingly violates the natural survival instinct, but only seemingly.

We keep on trying to survive, but when our time comes, we pass on gently. Socrates was one of the wisest men of history, and he was quite calm, at least as recorded by his students, about being put to death. He had no philosophy about a soul that was going to outlast his body. When there is no chance for survival, the survival instinct may simply fade away.

Sakyamuni’s idea is that there are countless other beings as important as we are, and why should any person attach any special significance to his own life, as it is simply not much different than any others? The essence of life is that life goes on, with or without us, and because we are not very special, it makes no difference to anything whether we go on or not. This is almost an existentialist answer to the first question, about why live. If we care sufficiently about life, or about others, our own existence is not too consequential.

The second question, about why strive, is more a tad more difficult. Sakyamuni venerated life, global life, not individual life. Our individual lives should make global life better, and therefore we should strive. SGI talks about the same thing. We can make great causes such as universal peace by striving for individual peace in our own lives and in those lives of those we contact. The grand Buddhist concept of the venerability of life itself, maybe DNA life to be specific but they didn’t understand genetics 2500 years ago, overwhelms the existential questions.

This is, of course, Buddhist dogma, not scientific deduction, and it remains to be connected to more deep thinking of the scientific community. The evolution of dogmas is not highly competitive, so Buddhist dogma may not displace others through the same course of events over centuries that led to the development of so many different ones. It remains to be seen how science will treat Buddhist dogma, and whether it must transform itself further as more is learned about the universe, about genetics, about society, and anything else related.