Dharma and "Life Affirmation"

In regards to a poster who describes himself as a “pagan”, and says summarily about the Buddha Dharma: “**Any man who bases his spirituality on the end of suffering will suffer for eternity, great men don’t fear a challenge.**”, among other strange and delusional comments, I have produced a small response which I will be posting here as well. In it, he posits the Nietzschean eternal return or archaic pagan cosmology of a cyclically returning universe with no possibility for enlightenment nor transcendence of materiality.

I was amused immensely by this. Principally because its a gross projection. Secondly, their ignorance of challenges themselves being imposed arbitrarily by oneself, and thirdly, that fruition in any material sense is marked by emptiness, unsatisfactoriness and impermanence. The ultimate challenge has nothing to do with enduring an infinite set of insubstantial and empty hurdle-posts, it has everything to do with not getting stuck in the race in the first place.

Dharma has nothing to do with escaping existence in some panicked, frustrated, and disaffected sense, but more or less preventing a diminished reality from appearing at all. It is the complete victory over these properties, not an escape from them.

For those individuals who describe themselves as “hungry” for life and all its miserable and unwholesome contents, or who simply believe that liberation from suffering is impossible, I must ask: Is this is a mere motto, or poetic trinket thats being employed for a dramatic or aesthetic purpose? As it is clearly not an authentic expression of your psychology. Unless of course you’re just deranged and accept this as so.

To succeed is to be free of antagonism in the most basic definition. A successful individual is one who does not live a disaffected life of anger, craving or delusion. No one who is successful in a true sense, ever abides in, loves or “embraces” hatred, greed, anger, resentment nor craving. The successful do not suffer. Life as we understand it, is consistent of values. A value is that which we seek to keep or hold, and contentment is the result of actualizing a value. Getting what one wants out of life brings contentment. All beings are disposed towards this path, yet there are inevitable hinderances or conditions which will make this difficult, or often times in many cases, impossible. Thus from anyone who possesses the slightest amount of discernment or intelligence would conclude that there must be some ultimate value, one that is not subject to, or conditioned by impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and emptiness. The truly successful do not suffer because they are already victorious, much like how a sage does not need to do philosophy because he has nothing more to know, and thus, to make suffering a value is to make incompetence spiritually economical.

To accept or otherwise acknowledge these conditions as necessary, existentially speaking, is to “affirm” life, but it is another thing to behave or dispose oneself psychologically to crave antagonism. To make virtue of predatory, delusional and reckless behaviors and attitudes.

It is completely delusional even outside of a Dharmic view to love something like suffering or struggle, even if its for some aestheticized reason, such as the idea that suffering produces great characters or individuals. What is really loved or valued isn’t the suffering but the outcome of suffering, which is usually some romanticized notion of an “ideal” man.

Do we really love our enemies?

Do we love threats to our wellbeing or lifestyles?

Our livelihood or physical health?

Is disease to be loved?

Death?

The separation from what is beloved?

Is that really true? Are we thankful for any of these things in an authentically true and real sense? I don’t think so.

Better yet, supposing that we crave challenges, do we crave them infinitely? Or is it more likely that we crave an infinitude of their fruits?

As, if there is no final destination or freedom from challenges, as in to say, there is no “ultimate challenge” to overcome(suffering), the point at which one challenge ends and another begins is arbitrary. No such overcoming of challenge is actually possible, as there is an unending set of them that each result in psychological emptiness, and craving for further struggle. It is struggling to struggle, not struggling towards any kind of substantial victory.

The mere idea of “samsara forever”, or endless eternal return as an actual proposal for a metaphysical ontology, is far more nihilistic and life denying than any kind of Dharmic understanding of the universe. To always be putting true spiritual gratification or victory so far from oneself is almost masochistic, and in some senses these types of people have a bizarre psychology which is obsessed with, and endeared by suffering.

Indeed, to love suffering in others is to love it in oneself, and interpreting yes-saying as such is quite a deranged slip-up. Almost Freudian.

In some ways I see this “philosophy” as disordered schizophrenic brain-mush, a rude, poetic interruption of a dramatist who is drunk on illusion. Usually out of an unwholesome motivation to cause suffering to other beings, to justify it rather. Those that moralize suffering are usually always ignoring their better consciousness, whether to trivialize it in others to excuse their duty to attend to it, or to excuse their inability to actually address it. Hence why I say its the commodification of incompetence.

It is strange how often this theme occurs, because even the proponents of such “life-affirmations” admit that the desire to cause suffering to others is a feature of a weak mind, one that is filled with resentment, that perpetuates cruelty and ignobility.

“**Absolute weakness corrupts absolutely.**”

“*Those who seek power will use any means to obtain it, but those who have it become choosy and noble in their tastes. People who lash out and hurt others are typically not doing so to inflict pain but to gain a consciousness of their own power. Those who are truly powerful have no need to demonstrate their power to others, as they act out of a fullness and an overflow.*”

Nietzsche associated power with qualities like truthfulness, restraint, and discipline, while weakness was linked to impulsive behavior, resentment, and self-hatred.”

Such questions or blatant contradictions seem to evade these types of people in introspection, and I am suspicious that it is due to the fact that such individuals have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. Equanimity or psychological wellbeing doesn’t arise from making suffering or diminished existence a passion, it’s quite the opposite actually. Dharma isn’t an aversive philosophy that is in quote: “*A coping mechanism of the unfortunate, those who were enslaved in ancient times*” as we see entire Greek empires that had adopted it for centuries. Dharma is an analysis of consciousness, and it culminates in the final victory over conditioned, fractionalized existence. An authentic and spiritually adept mind has no use for poetry of this kind, because he does not have any use for strictly functional or instrumental properties. It is not to say something like strength or good fortune are not “desirable” attributes, but they are ones that are marked by impermanence and thus could never be free of suffering. To see the capacity to endure endless fragmented existence as spiritually satisfying is frankly just sick, but even without this assessment, it is just not possible. Hence why Archaic philosophies like Stoicism are off the table entirely. Material and conditioned existence is the locality wherein the weak perish, and the strong become weaker. There will always be some factor or condition which breaks a materially interested will or personality, that will break ego, and any identifications with a self. It is not avoidable nor unseeable, just that which can be repressed with an infinite amount of belligerent refusal.

Without any existential intervention into the causes and conditions of this reality, inevitably, we witness the strong becoming weak, and the weak becoming strong. Usually, always at the hands of the minute and hour. Never do these properties endure or otherwise, have any independent existence from another.

They never sustain and are never works of which we can claim ownership.

To be satisfied with unsatisfactoriness, is losing sight of that which truly whole. That which is beyond strength and weakness both.

To love it is to tread with reckless abandon.

It is to be satisfied with mere existential chump-change. Quarters and dimes out of the junk drawer of God. These individuals typically speak highly of properties like greatness and magnitude, yet never place focus or awareness on their context or source. You might as well take the entirety of the deposit boxes and vault of the divine bank. Ones reflection is not possible in a shattered mirror of which only shards remain, it is a distortion of what is actually real. Unconditioned reality is free from such distortions and suffering, and is the only and ultimate reality. It is free of suffering because it is complete, it is already successful, affectively stable and pure beyond any defilement.

A psychology precedes a philosophy and is its context. An unwholesome psychology consistent of disaffected, insecure and insatiable attributes will produce a philosophy that embodies a similar theme, and when practiced, catastrophe is usually certain. The Dharma is that which arose from minds that were affectively stable, truthful, honest and restrained from outbursts, anecdotal or idiosyncratic interjection, and because of this they are universally and categorically efficacious. Wherein the champions of delusional depictions of this “life affirmation” are the disturbed, mad, and suicidal. Without resorting to a character attack or denoting anything harshly, it is quite compelling to me that the Nietzschean personality, and even the writings and musings of Robert E.Howard, were of suicidal, addicted personalities who in many ways, imposed great unnecessary suffering onto themselves. It is usually those who are the weakest, the most insecure and feeble, who speak so strongly about strength, endurance, power and success. It is reified in the minds of those who cannot live through these properties authentically.

It was not the Buddha who had said at his death, “Mother, I am stupid/Dumb”, but:

“**Reach consummation through heedfulness.**”

If one comes to the end of their existence, after all that one has said and done, experienced and suffered, and has concluded nothing beyond this fragmented, rigid, beginningless suffering, life cannot said to have had any real meaning. Nihilism, despair, anger, hatred, greed, lust and delusion were never defeated. Merely made virtue through unskillful acceptance or unwholesome psychological integration. Such understandings as these are truly “fake refuge”, and is a cowardly escape mechanism to evade or obfuscate the truth. Artifice is never satisfying, just as a substitute is always an alternative for authenticity. Imitation will never suffice.

The end of suffering is wherein spirit can interact with itself as such. Without condition, without perishability, without defilements, hinderances, entrapments or diminishment. If I had to describe it, I would call it, “great”. Life is a game that must be played, but to see the game in which you have everything to lose, and nothing to gain, as the only reality, is a sick delusion that derails innumerable spiritual explorers and scientists of consciousness. It is no coincidence that these psychologies and views are usually deeply entrenched in political interest or obsession, and in some senses, is a manufactured pep-talk or theatrical show to justify such interest. It is in the best interest of anyone who reads this to properly evaluate exactly what they have to gain from suffering but its abject ending. Anyone who makes suffering an object of craving, or as virtue, is clearly deluded and should be avoided or otherwise studied from afar.