Create A Religion

If we weren’t suffering to get closer to God, what was the point of life? From whom now would we draw the strength to endure life’s difficulty?

While nihilism is often discussed in terms of extreme skepticism and relativism, for most of the 20th century it has been associated with the belief that life is meaningless. Existential nihilism begins with the notion that the world is without meaning or purpose. Given this circumstance, existence itself–all action, suffering, and feeling–is ultimately senseless and empty.

In The Dark Side: Thoughts on the Futility of Life (1994), Alan Pratt demonstrates that existential nihilism, in one form or another, has been a part of the Western intellectual tradition from the beginning. The Skeptic Empedocles’ observation that “the life of mortals is so mean a thing as to be virtually un-life,” for instance, embodies the same kind of extreme pessimism associated with existential nihilism. In antiquity, such profound pessimism may have reached its apex with Hegesias of Cyrene. Because miseries vastly outnumber pleasures, happiness is impossible, the philosopher argues, and subsequently advocates suicide. Centuries later during the Renaissance, William Shakespeare eloquently summarized the existential nihilist’s perspective when, in this famous passage near the end of Macbeth, he has Macbeth pour out his disgust for life:

Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more; it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

An athlete, such as a bodybuilder, is the epitome of this idea. A bodybuilder subjects his body to the pain and suffering of training in order to create a physique that is aesthetically pleasing. The weightlifting adage, “No pain, no gain,” is an echo of Nietzsche’s ideas.

Nietzsche sharply criticizes those people who wish to abolish suffering. According to him, suffering is the only thing that bestows value upon the world. Without pain and misery, life would be absurd and worthless.

You want, if possible – and there is no more insane “if possible” – to abolish suffering. And we? It really seems that we would rather have it higher and worse than ever. Well-being as you understand it – that is no goal, that seems to us an end, a state that soon makes man ridiculous and contemptible – that makes his destruction desirable. The discipline of suffering, of great suffering – do you not know that only this discipline has created all enhancements of man so far?

To Nietzsche, suffering provides the only test by which a person’s worth can be determined. In other words, the person who can endure the greatest suffering is the greatest of men.

To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities – I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not – that one endures.

Finally, Nietzsche asserts that pain is sacred, and that mankind ought to revere pain as religious followers revere their gods. He explains that the ancient Greeks were the first and perhaps only people to realize this.

For the Greeks the sexual symbol was the venerable symbol par excellence, the real profundity in the whole of ancient piety. Every single element in the act of procreation, of pregnancy, and of birth aroused the highest and most solemn feelings. In the doctrine of the mysteries, pain is pronounced holy; the pangs of the woman giving birth hallow all pain; all becoming and growing – all that guarantees a future – involves pain.

To conclude, many philosophers, theologians, and people in general regard suffering as something undesirable and as something to be abolished. Nietzsche, on the other hand, asserts that life without pain is meaningless. Pain is the source of all value in the world; it is the test of one’s true worth; and it is as sacred as the gods.

We begin with the first harmony within our own mind. We

practice by cultivating harmony or peace within ourselves so that

we can eventually be free of the suffering originating in fear, anger,

and selfishness. Then we are prepared to spread harmony from self

to another person, progressing to our family, our community, our

society, and the rest of the world.

Of course, you can’t purify the mind of another.  The Buddha is very clear about that. But it’s also true that if we’re not skillful our contribution can further devolve the circumstance into more delusion and more suffering.  

There can’t really be social harmony if there is not widespread basic morality. Ethical conduct is key in that it reduces actions which harm and which invite retaliation.

There’s a certain way in which I see the Buddha’s teachings as allowing us to move into a recognition that many of these deep forms of suffering are causally conditioned and arising in the present in an impersonal way.  Without taking on shame or blame in response to these circumstances, there’s still the possibility of acting with wisdom and compassion and hopefully some skillfulness. Why? Because this is what’s happening, this is the suffering that’s present.  It needs to be met for the conditions for healing and reconciliation to occur.

Weakness comes from the spirit, liberated by the death of the body

n The Dark Side: Thoughts on the Futility of Life (1994), Alan Pratt demonstrates that existential nihilism, in one form or another, has been a part of the Western intellectual tradition from the beginning. The Skeptic Empedocles’ observation that “the life of mortals is so mean a thing as to be virtually un-life,” for instance, embodies the same kind of extreme pessimism associated with existential nihilism. In antiquity, such profound pessimism may have reached its apex with Hegesias of Cyrene. Because miseries vastly outnumber pleasures, happiness is impossible, the philosopher argues, and subsequently advocates suicide.

it’s the atheistic existentialist movement, popularized in France in the 1940s and 50s, that is responsible for the currency of existential nihilism in the popular consciousness. Jean-Paul Sartre’s (1905-1980) defining preposition for the movement, “existence precedes essence,” rules out any ground or foundation for establishing an essential self or a human nature. When we abandon illusions, life is revealed as nothing; and for the existentialists, nothingness is the source of not only absolute freedom but also existential horror and emotional anguish. Nothingness reveals each individual as an isolated being “thrown” into an alien and unresponsive universe, barred forever from knowing why yet required to invent meaning. It’s a situation that’s nothing short of absurd. Writing from the enlightened perspective of the absurd, Albert Camus (1913-1960) observed that Sisyphus’ plight, condemned to eternal, useless struggle, was a superb metaphor for human existence (The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942).

Weakness comes from the spirit, liberated by the death of the body