Why Existential Buddhism?
Existential Buddhism makes traditional Buddhism easier to understand and to master. It does not add or take away anything from the traditional teachings. It does make it relevant to the modern mind.
When Siddhartha Gautama formulated the Noble Eightfold Path, he left detailed instructions on practicing mindfulness, concentration meditation, and wisdom. However, he never discussed what Enlightenment would be like. He left it implied that you would know it once got there. And there was a good reason for that, but it has caused much confusion.
If you have been training for many years and still find it difficult to let of your ego, or self, you are not alone. The problem is understanding what the self is.
Imagine I gave you a compass and pointed a direction to find a destination in a forest. Yet I did not tell you what the place would look like or where it was. Only that you would know it when you got there. It would take you a long time and much effort to find it, if ever.
The reason that the Buddha did not describe Enlightenment is that it would eclipse the very possibility of attaining it. But it makes all the difference to know why.
He did leave a clue, which has been well known, but generally misunderstood:
There is, monks, an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated. If there were not that unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, there would not be the case that escape from the born — become — made — fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, escape from the born — become — made — fabricated is discerned. (Ud 8.3)
Here he reveals that it is the Unconditioned that is realized with Enlightenment. The Buddha pointed to this Unconditioned with the Not-self Doctrine.
Correct understanding of the Not-self Doctrine is essential for proper understanding of Buddhism and achieving Enlightenment.
The problem is that the Not-self doctrine has been mostly misunderstood as a No-self doctrine. This makes Buddhism obscure and Enlightenment elusive.
Many interpret the Not-self doctrine to mean that there is no real individual being that exists. That a human being is only an aggregate of phenomena with an illusion of a person. This No-self doctrine leads at best to Nihilism.
A No-self doctrine is like saying that you must realize your own non-existence. This would be impossible because there has to be always an awareness to know that something does not exist.
This is where Existentialism comes in to clear the path.
Existentialism has been widely known for addressing the absurdity of existence. But it mostly deals with the study of consciousness. It is about how we know what we know, and how this shapes who we are.
The Existential philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, in his master work Being and Nothingness, explains that consciousness is a Nothingness. But it is a nothingness because it is not anything that we can know to exist. It is an absolute subjectivity. In this sense, it is the same as the Not-self doctrine.
As Sartre (b.1905, d.1980) not so clearly explains:
The knower is not; he is not apprehensible. He is nothing other than that which brings it about that there is being-there on the part of the known, a presence. (Being and Nothingness)
The conditioned is everything that that we can experience (physical and mental) as an object of consciousness. The Unconditioned is the one who experiences the objects of the mind. It is the One who knows (the meaning of the word Buddha). Human consciousness is a pure knowing that cannot know itself as an object.
With Existential Buddhism we can understand what it is that we are looking to find. Enlightenment is the realization of your pure awareness. Essentially, you are an individual pure awareness of exiting. This is what some Buddhist schools call Original Mind.
Awareness becomes pure when it is not identified with anything that it knows. It is the realization that everything that you know to exist is not your true Self. Your pure awareness becomes troubled, or not pure, when you believe you are the mundane self.
The mundane self is made of ideas, experiences. This is the self that is impermanent, a cause of suffering, and not the true Self.
Still, the path through the forest of the mind is not easy. It requires training, patience, and dedication to fully a lifetime of mental habits. Enlightenment, the purification of the mind, is an experience, not a thought. Nevertheless, with Existential Buddhism, you have a direction and some idea of the destination.
Buddhism is a powerful psychology which can bring about incomparable peace of mind and authentic happiness. But it should not take half a lifetime of extreme effort to do this.
We will visit the above themes in detail in other posts. You will see how Buddhism and Existentialism come together to clarify each other. You will see how Existential Buddhism helps to better understand traditional Buddhism.