The way has always existed, it was born of nothingness.

(Before we get started, I'd like to apologize for the long post. Fortunately, most of it was written by people far more talented at writing than I am, so I'm hoping it's not too bad. There was no copypasta involved, so if there are any errors in the italicized text, they are mine and not the authors/publishers. To anyone reading this not in my philosophy class, this post is about Albert Camus' "The Stranger")

For those that don't mind watching, I'd like to start my post off with another Alan Watts video (I can't help it, I'm obsessed!). I found it apropos and thought it might help set the mood. So to speak. Perhaps you could play it as you read through my post. 

As someone that is a little more interested in eastern philosophy than western, I am very much interested in concepts like samsara, the continuous flow of life and death, satori, a type of enlightenment, and nirvana, which is the end of suffering, and is also an enlightenment. 

During my research of The Stranger (brief as it may have been), I read that some feel that Meursault had experienced a kind of enlightenment in his cell at the end of the novel:

“It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I’d been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.”

After carefully reading over this passage, and considering it within the context of the novel, I think I would have to agree that Meursault experienced a kind of enlightenment; though not all kinds of enlightenment are the same, at least not conceptually. Satori and nirvana are both a kind of enlightenment, however satori is the first step towards nirvana, which is the ultimate liberation and a release from suffering. 

Satori, in contrast, is considered to be what happens when you see/understand/experience/become aware of your self-nature. I think this is what happened to Meursault: “I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I’d been happy, and that I was happy still.” That passage specifically matches up fairly well with the definition of satori as I understand it. He realized that the absurdity and meaninglessness he felt all of his life was simply a manifestation of the true nature of the universe, and he was at peace with it. Sounds like enlightenment to me. 

To better explain this, it might be a good idea (rather than listen to me prattle on) to examine a passage within Siddhartha, a novel written by Hermann Hesse, a german author living around the same time as Camus. It is about one man’s spiritual journey to “find” nirvana. In this particular passage, the protaganist, Siddhartha, is discussing nirvana with an old friend, Govinda. It can be found in the last chapter, also named Govinda. 

Govinda asks Siddhartha if he could tell him any certain realizations that might help him on his own path:

Siddhartha said: “Yes, I have had ideas and realizations, from time to time. On occasions, for an hour or for a day, I have felt knowledge in myself, just as a man feels life in his heart. Those were numerous, but it would be hard for me to communicate them to you. Look, my dear Govinda, here is one of the thoughts I have discovered: Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness.” 

Govinda asks if he is joking.

“I am not joking. I am telling you what I discovered. Knowledge can be imparted, but not wisdom. You can discover it, it can guide your life, it can bear you up, you can do miracles with it, but you cannot tell it or teach it. This was what I had several premonitions of, even as a youngster; it was this that drove me away from teachers. I have discovered an idea Govinda, which you will once again consider to be a joke or foolishness, but which is my best idea. Namely: the opposite of every truth is equally true! What I mean is: without fail, a truth can only be uttered and clothed in words if it is one-sided. Everything is one-sided if the mind can conceive it and words can express it; all of that is one-sided, all of that is a half-truth, all of that lacks completeness, roundedness, oneness. Whenever the sublime Gotama spoke about the world in his sermons, he had to divide it into samsara and nirvana, into illusion and truth, into suffering and salvation. You have no alternative, there is no other method for a man who wants to teach. But the world itself, which exists around us and inside us, is never one-sided. A person or an action is never totally samsara or totally nirvana; a person is never totally saintly or totally sinful. Because we are subject to illusion, it does actually look as if time were something real. Time is not real, Govinda; I have learned that over and over again. And, if time is not real, the span that seems to exist between world and eternity, between sorrow and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.”

(Please stay with me, here is where it gets really good...)

“How so?” Govinda asks nervously. 

“Pay close attention, dear friend, pay close attention! A sinner, such as you and I are, is a sinner, but some day he will be Brahma again, some day he will attain nirvana, he will be Buddha -- and now see: that ‘some day’ is an illusion, it is only a metaphor! The sinner is not journeying toward Buddhahood, now and today he already is that Buddha; his future is already completely there; you must revere the becoming, the possible, the concealed Buddha in him, in yourself, in everyone. The world, friend Govinda, is not imperfect or on a slow journey toward perfection; no, it is perfect at every moment; all sin already bears its forgiveness within itself; every little boy already bears the old man within himself, every infant bears death, every dying man bears eternal life. No one is able to look at someone else and know how far along on his journey he is; in the highwayman and dice player lurks a Buddha, in the Brahman lurks the highwayman. In profound meditation there is the possibility of abolishing time, of seeing all past, present, and future life as being simultaneous; and there everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman. Therefore, whatever exists seems good to me; death is like life to me, sin like sanctity, cleverness like folly; everything must be as it is; everything needs only my consent, my willingness, my loving comprehension, and then it is good in my eyes, and can never harm me. I learned from my body and my soul that I was in great need of sin; I needed sensual pleasures, the ambition for possessions, vanity, and I needed the most humiliating despair in order to learn how to give up my resistance, in order to learn how to love the world, in order to cease comparing it with some world of my wishes or my imagination, with some type of perfection that I had concocted, but to leave it the way it is, to love it, and to be a part of it gladly. --These, O Govinda, are a few of the ideas that have come to my mind.”

For me, after rereading this passage (one I find very powerful and beautiful), it was difficult to discern much of a difference between what Meursault came to understand towards the end of his days in the prison cell, and what Siddhartha came to understand after a long life of spiritual seeking. While Meursault doesn’t have the same kind of peaceful aura that Siddhartha seems to carry, and they certainly didn’t follow a similar path, their realizations were strikingly similar. A little before the scene where he seems to find peace, when he is in midst of his outburst at the priest, you can see some of the seeds of realization sprouting: when he claims that (I'm paraphrasing here) whether x, y or z happens, it doesn’t really matter, that death will eventually embrace us all, and thus, all men are privileged, and none is any different from the other. It is all one and the same. 

These realizations are what led to his moment of satori, his enlightenment; his realization that he and the universe are inseparable and that the way he lived his life was justified, necessary even, because he was happy (and happy still) and that all that remained of it was to experience its end. (While listening to screams of execration.) So, everything was good, everything was perfect, everything was Brahman.

See everyone on Monday. :)