The Tragic, the Comic and the Personal

The Tragic, the Comic and the Personal serves as an excellent introduction to the writings of Ven. Ñāṇavīra Thera. The letters in this collection draw on the author’s deep familiarity with both the Suttas and the works of a variety of Western thinkers, and they contain discussions of a wide range of topics related to the Dhamma. The author found that the attitudes and methods of the existentialist and phenomenological schools of Western philosophy had much value as a means of approaching the Dhamma, and in many of the letters, parallels are drawn between concepts from those schools of philosophy and corresponding concepts from the Suttas. More than simply making comparisons though, the author explains with lucidity not only where those schools of philosophy are beneficial in providing an approach to the Dhamma, but also where insurmountable limitations are encountered in their attempts to solve the problem of existence, as well as the ways in which the Dhamma overcomes those limitations.