Владислав Педдер – Processual Pessimism. On the Nature of Cosmic Suffering and Human Nothingness (страница 2)

Stoics maintain that one can control the expression of emotions through self-discipline and a rational justification of the significance of events. But that presupposes that the brain makes decisions after we have “decided” them. Modern neuroscience shows the opposite. Decisions are made at an unconscious level fractions of a second before we “become aware” of them. Instead of genuine “control” we only observe how they unfold and rationalize them post factum. The illusion of control offered by Stoicism is precisely what Zapffe called the anchoring mechanism – the artificial creation of a foothold in the chaos of determined existence.

Moreover, the historical context of Stoicism exposes its true function. The philosophy emerged as a technique of submission to circumstances that were genuinely uncontrollable in the ancient world – disease, war, slavery, the arbitrariness of tyrants. It is no accident that Stoicism is recalled chiefly when needed, for example in times of war and uncertainty. Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, praised apatheia not as an absolute good in itself but as a survival mechanism under conditions of total vulnerability. Epictetus, a former slave, developed the doctrine of distinguishing what is within our power and what is not precisely from the experience of complete powerlessness. It is a philosophy of necessity presenting itself as a philosophy of freedom.

David Hume, in his essays, subjected Stoicism to crushing criticism. Stoics preach impassivity, yet behave as ordinary humans, subject to the same affects. Socrates disliked the Stoics precisely because they produced nothing but demagoguery – elegant words about virtue and self-control unbacked by real practice. Contemporary neo-Stoicism, Eastern practices, and their analogues repeat the same mistake, packaging ancient techniques of psychological defence in an attractive wrapper of “rationality” and “mindfulness” for the purpose of selling courses, guided meditations, books, scented candles, and shiny pendants.

Now turn to Buddhism, which is often presented as a deeper alternative to Western rationality. The Four Noble Truths proclaim that suffering arises from desire, and that the cessation of desire leads to liberation. Yet here lies a fundamental paradox that Buddhism has not resolved: the striving for liberation from desires is itself a desire. The striving for nirvana is another attachment, another form of the very clinging from which Buddhism calls us to free ourselves. Chan Buddhism recognized this problem and formulated it in the form of a kōan: “One who seeks enlightenment will never attain it.” But this recognition does not solve the problem; it merely relocates it to the plane of mystical paradox. The problem does not lie in paradoxes, however, but in Buddhism’s original turn of position in its separation from Hinduism through the denial of ātman and Brahman (anatta/ anatman), to which I will return in detail at the end of the book.

Peter Wessel Zapffe, whose philosophical legacy was central to my inquiry, demonstrated that many, if not all, religious and philosophical systems function as mechanisms of distraction from the fundamental tragedy of consciousness. It is more accurate, however, to shift this idea toward ontological distraction, where the distraction itself is dictated by the incessant renewal of experience – yet this does not remove the very tragedy of consciousness that Zapffe revealed. The Buddhist doctrine of anattā (anatman), denying the existence of a permanent, substantial “self,” at first glance appears to be a close ally of philosophical currents that regard the subject as an illusion or a by-product of processes. Indeed, in The Experience of the Tragic the development of the idea of the illusoriness of the subject begins. Nevertheless, a critical, worldview-defining chasm lies between these positions. Buddhism offers a path to liberation (nirvana) through the apprehension of non-self, whereas in the pessimistic and tragic perspective the recognition of this illusoriness does not lead to salvation but only deepens the existential catastrophe. We cannot “exit” the illusion because there is no one to exit – the very structure of experience is inextricably bound up with that illusion. Anyone who has endured states of profound depersonalization or dissociation can easily rebut the concept of anatman: feeling oneself as “not-I,” one nonetheless persists; one’s inward gaze remains, fundamentally it does not dissolve but recedes to the background, which in the philosophical dispute between Buddhists and Hindus exposes and again confirms that the most complete ontological models remain those that postulate some basic subjectivity, such as Atman and Brahman, rather than its total absence.

The problem with the concepts of Atman and Brahman is not their existence but their naïve theistic interpretation. They are mistakenly construed as a personal God or a “higher” consciousness, sometimes as a form of panpsychism, whereas in reality they describe an impersonal, unfolding process in which our local “I” arises as a transient form that, strictly speaking, does not truly persist. Depersonalization, for example, as with any psychedelic experience, reflects to us the capitalized “Self” – the Atman – which likewise is not there. Atman is often described as the “fundamental, higher Self,” but this is only a conceptual device for describing the manifestation of impersonal Brahman in the most limited form.

This internal contradiction of Buddhism reaches its climax in the concept of śūnyatā, or universal emptiness. Śūnyatā proves to be a self-negating notion that requires the mind to perform a logically impossible act: to disappear while at the same time continuing to witness its own disappearance. It is an endless movement toward a goal that annihilates the very agent that moves toward it, thereby rendering any genuine attainment paradoxical and inexpressible. Any experience of “emptiness,” any mystical experience, immediately becomes the content of consciousness – a new object for a subject that has not been abolished. Thus Buddhism, while rightly rejecting a substantial “self,” substitutes it with a phantom chain of conditioned dharmas, yet cannot satisfactorily answer the question: for whom does this chain unfold as a coherent, lived experience?

Not to mention that “nirvana” remains an unclear construct lacking a precise description, and that by his silence regarding the avyākṛta (the unaskable or “fruitless” questions) the Buddha only exacerbates the situation. Silence in itself could be a position, but not for him. Why begin this whole teaching if, in the end, the world is presented with only a “great” revelation about the essence of which one can say absolutely nothing? Having apprehended the true nature of all things, would one busy oneself explaining it to those who are not enlightened?

The Buddha’s active proselytizing and his strategic abstention from judgments on ultimate ontological questions call into question the very possibility of a substantive transmission of “enlightenment.” Moreover, Buddhism tends to absolutize the role of meditation. Undoubtedly meditation exists in Hinduism as well, but there it remains rather a useful instrument among others. Followers of the Buddha may claim that, in their tradition, meditation is not an end in itself. However, to an outside observer Buddhism has firmly established itself as the principal ideologue and promoter of meditative practice as the route to liberation.

All meditative experiences to which liberatory significance is ascribed can be readily explained physiologically – by hyperventilation or altered respiratory patterns. Holotropic breathing and the Buteyko method4 demonstrate this plainly, without Eastern mystification. Indeed, one may feel a “dissolution” of the boundaries of the self, a change in perception of body and space, but it is impossible to remove anything, for there is nothing to remove except egocentrism that is born within a multiplicity of processes. A completely “pure” system does not function; without a minimal center of experience the experience simply will not arise It is like an attempt to remove the operating system on which the user himself runs – at the moment of deletion not only the interface disappears, but also the very possibility of perceiving anything. Therefore any “dissolution” remains a temporary aberration, a protection against overload, but not a genuine disappearance of the subject. To me these Buddhist “truths” appear as a challenge to Hindu monopoly, much like Lutheranism challenged Catholicism for minds, power, and resources. History knows many such schisms. Mahāyāna, in turn, challenged the “orthodox” Theravāda, denouncing it as the “small vehicle” and thereby extending the potential audience of salvation to all sentient beings. Schopenhauer, inspired by Buddhism, proposed asceticism as a way of denying the will to live. Yet this solution too proves illusory. Ascetic negation is itself a manifestation of will – the desire not to desire. It is not an exit from the cycle of suffering. Philipp Mainländer went further, proclaiming suicide as the logical conclusion of Schopenhauerian philosophy. There we confront a paradox: suicide is an active act that requires will, motivation, a desire to change one’s state. It is not liberation from experience but its radical form – the final experience before non-being, which cannot be perceived as relief because there is no one there to feel relief. I described all this in the second part, but not everyone took notice.