The Buddha’s Teaching and the Ambiguity of Existence

What makes this book so different from the general run of books written on the Buddha’s Teaching is that it sets out to solve a definite personal problem—a problem which, however, is personal to everyone. At the explicit level the problem is the presence of anxiety, fear, worry, agitation, doubt, etc. At the innermost reflexive level, which is also the implicit level, it is the persistence of what is termed the ambiguity of existence or the existential ambiguity.

That this existential ambiguity is the most disturbing thing about existence is well recognised by the existentialist thinkers—Heidegger, Husserl, Sartre, Kierkegaard and company. But try as they may, they can do no more than exposing the ambiguity. They cannot find a solution to it, or if they find a solution, it is just that there is no solution. Beyond this point of frustration self-reflexive thinking cannot go. Is then everything lost? Is there no hope? The answer, our author says, is: There is yet a hope. This hope lies in the pristine Teaching of the Buddha. And so at this point the Teaching takes over leading the thinker out of the morass of despair.

As the existentialist thinkers do, the author too rejects both rationalism and mysticism—rationalism for having no option but to evade the problem, and mysticism for contradicting the laws of thought. To solve the problem without contradicting the laws of thought is the author’s self-imposed task, and he goes on to indicate that it is only with the assistance of the unadulterated Buddha’s Teaching that this task can be satisfactorily performed.

The book proceeds at the innermost reflexive level of experience rather than at the obvious outward levels, and for this reason it demands a fair amount of self-penetrative thinking. But though the book may be less easy than it appears, the thoughtful reader will find it animating. It has the nature of ‘leading (him) on’.