I’m reading through some essays by Sartre because my friend is having me read Man and Superman by Shaw. I always get really interested in background material every-time I start reading any book that includes the development of these kind of ideas. I suppose it might also be my way of putting off completing anything. While I am enjoying the play, I did find myself again in the debate between Zen and Existentialism. Reading Sartre again has been kind of enlightening though. In his first essay he is rebutting some arguments placed against him by Marxists among others. He looks to the example of morality as preceding existence, and the absence of this to cause what he terms anguish. The way of phrasing this is not too unfamiliar in the context of Zen, based on the idea of universal suffering.
It was more just a feeling that I got as reading through it, and I wanted to journal a little bit of that process to have a developmental log as I went. Existence precedes essence is a fundamental concept to Sartre. This is opposed to the a priori methods of earlier moral systems. (Tangential to this, I love that everything always seems to come down to the moral system, the very literal how should we act, what ought we to do.) Sartre laments the absence of God, the anguish that this causes because there is no good to look to. No esscence that is given, man is free, completely. It did get me to think about the main objection to God in this moral development, the lack of choice that God would represent.
I read through a good deal of the Oxford Handbook of Free Will, which was lent me by a friend, and of course is out of print. (I don’t particularly like used books in certain genres.) Universally thought; in order for an action to be free it must be unknown, even by some extra system being. If I know what you are going to do, the future is determined, and you are therefore not free to act of your own will, but by the predetermined course that I know of. (Bear with this for a moment, I will hopefully return to the original inquest shortly.) What always strikes me is the use of dogma as truth in religion, especially whenever refuting it. Shaw helped me to see that most clearly, in that Don Juan points clearly to the lack of evidence to support the truth that Ana supposes in her arguments. The concept of God foreordaining things is not truly stated to my knowledge, in that I can’t recall a specific reference to God stating that he knows the outcome of a particular persons actions. Job, the oldest source for biblical narrative, is actually fraught with quite the opposite. God and Satan discuss what Job is capable of doing, not what he will do. It seems clearer that God has faith in Job, then that he knows what Job will do. Essentially, I wonder at the very start of what we know to be contemporary “human nature,” which began with the apple.
It was the representation of the fruit of knowledge, the knowledge of good and evil. That phrase has always bothered me, as defiance of God - either in the form of commandment breaking or renunciation - is the definition of evil. If Adam and Eve did not know evil until they bit the apple, how was it that they could commit it, and even more, that they could be punished for doing so. Rather, it has been my suspicion that it was not simple knowledge that they gained, but that they gained the possibility of will, choice. In defying the ordinance against the fruit of that tree, they chose will over determination. (Which also allows me to better reconcile the concept of predetermination, or more accurately in my sense the problem of evil.) Thus, I do not hold to the idea that God knows the fate of man to the extent that he limits our will in the determination of it.
All of which is a side inquiry to the original topic I started with. The intersection of Existential anguish and Zen universal suffering. (I realize that the concept is perhaps better preserved in Tibetan Buddhism, but I identify most readily with Zen, including its lack of emphasis on metaphysics.) The anguish over freedom is not necessarily found in the absence of God, but in the absence of a determined existence by God. Thus I find that the discussion that Sartre makes is to absolve ourselves of the dogma posited by the church, and not disillusionment of the deity. (I realize that until now I have done a horrible job at gender inclusive language, and were this a formal paper such a wanton display of reckless male domination would be corrected. However, for the moment I am more lazy than correct.)Now for the intersection of the two concepts. In Zen the role of Karma is less applicable from my study of it. (And I will readily admit greater ignorance here than in my biblical studies, and council is more than welcomed.) In many koans I see rather that action produces satori, or at least the visible evidence of it. The other day I had trouble seeing the connection between the two concepts - existential authenticity and Zen - yet now find them nearly synonymous. For even should our actions have a metaphysical outcome, or even a metaphysical moral ought, it is only through action that the truth of them is realized. So where the Existentialist begs we act to show our authenticity rather than choosing to disregard our freedom in lieu of a verisimilitude, Zen would also urge us to act rather than contemplate the Buddha in inaction. I am perhaps heretically referring to killing the Buddha should you meet him.
I find for the moment that the greater crisis is the idea of heaven; more appropriately the idea of eternal reward for subjugation to an ought foreordained by the deity. In such a case it is most appropriate to question, as Sartre does, the veracity of our claim to this ought. In what way may we claim that it has truth beyond our own interpretation of it. Such a thing is nearly impossible to prove without a prior belief that such a thing is possible to prove. To she who refuses such an assumption, no amount of argument will provide agreement. Actions done in search of heaven are not authentic, and are not Zen (again in my current understanding.)
Giving up our choice to pursue what others have determined we ought to do is our choice not to choose. Do not seek the Buddha. An ought that is not determined by our own will is not authentic to our will. If I move in the direction that an ought tells me I should, then it must be done of my own will or it is meaningless. Sartre seems to be saying as much, that the action is the definition of the truth. That we make truth for ourselves in each action. Zen seems to also focus on this matter of action. How can one contemplate the way and yet lie in his heart.
For the moment, there is no real conclusion to this meditation. Merely the continuing development of this crisis I find myself in, between the mind and the spirit, both of which pursue their own paths, but a faith seems to well up within me that both are not separate, and that in them there is a truth to be found, and a convergence to be made.
