The Nature of Sadness
Sadness is an inescapable fact of the human condition often resulting from or leading to existential anxiety. In our desperate search for relief, we often find ourselves caught between two extremes. Medical materialism tells us that sadness is merely a mechanical malfunction—a chemical glitch in the brain. On the other end, shallow spiritual movements and religious institutions often treat sadness as a moral failure. Modern mindfulness treatments often feel empty, pointing out the problem but not the solution.
Existential Buddhism offers a radical alternative. It does not pathologize your sadness, nor does it ask you to pretend it isn’t there. Instead, it uses the precise psychological diagnostics of Gautama Buddha paired with the existential realism of thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre to transform how you relate to emotional pain. Through this lens, sadness is not a sign that your life is broken. It is the natural friction that occurs when you mistake a temporary reflection for your ultimate reality. Sadness is also an integral part of the spiritual maturing process. It pushes you to look for and find true happiness.
Existential Buddhism can help you understand and treat sadness, but it is not a cure for depression. Depression is a deep sadness with psychological and physical factors which needs professional attention and treatment.
The Root of Emotional Suffering and Sadness
Sadness comes from loss, any kind of loss. When a loss occurs, the emotion of sadness naturally arises in the mind. It is the consequence of desire or affection. Affection is what keeps relationships together, what gives value to others. In this sense, sadness also helps to keep relationships together. Because if we did not care, we would not miss someone and not be sad.
However, sadness becomes a problem when it is egocentric. That is, “I want this person for myself,” or “I need this thing for my happiness.” It is the belief that who I am (ego) depends, or needs, something to exist or to be satisfied. Then we fight and struggle to get or keep what we want, or we retract into ourselves with mourning and solitude.
Stepping Into Pure Individual Awareness
Existential Buddhism heals sadness through understanding what the self is and what it is not. Instead of trying to destroy your thoughts or forcefully fix your neurochemistry, you learn to shift your perspective from the ego to pure awareness.
You sit quietly and realize a profound truth: You are not the sadness. You are the individual Awareness that notices the sadness.
- Sadness: Is a passing, physical, and mental phenomenon. It is made of ideas tide to physical emotions.
- Your Awareness: Is what knows the ideas and emotions. It is not limited by them.
By stepping back into transcendental awareness, you allow the sadness to exist without needing to own it, defend it, or explain it away. You give the emotion space to burn out and fade away. Because all physical phenomena are inherently interdependent and impermanent, an emotion that is allowed to just exist without being fed by the ego’s frantic narrative will naturally run its course and dissolve on its own. This is not a suppression but a letting go.
Thoughts, or ideas, are objects of the mind. They exist because we hold them in the mind, because we believe we need them. But the thoughts of sadness, like that of an apple or a tree, fade away when you lose interest. They are only objects of your awareness.
Going Beyond Desire and Existential Anxiety
We suffer because we believe that the things or people we want will bring us happiness. However, the Buddha went to great lengths to prove that nothing or no one can bring us lasting happiness, only temporary pleasures. When we truly realize this, you find a true and lasting happiness that is peace of mind. The great mystery is that human Awareness is by nature peaceful and content.
The practice of Buddhism helps create the space between the awareness and its objects (thoughts, emotions). Existential Buddhism helps you understand the mundane ego and the cause of desire so that it becomes possible to let go. Through this process you free your mind from unhealthy attachment and find the source of wholesome affection and caring.
The Fruit of Playful Freedom
When you use Existential Buddhism to cleanly detach your core identity from your emotional states, sadness loses its power to hurt you. You realize that your capacity for pure individual awareness remains completely unmoved and undamaged by whatever passing storms occur in the physical realm.
This realization unlocks a state of playful freedom and pure authenticity. You no longer fear sadness, nor do you crave artificial happiness.
The following articles will take you further on the road to peace of mind:
Unconditioned Happiness: Finding Freedom and Peace of Mind