I’m personally struggling to understand how Buddhism deals with deep existential anxiety, the kind Heidegger described with Geworfenheit: being “thrown” into the world without security. In Christianity, Jesus illustrates his teaching with the example of the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap, yet God provides for them. The lesson is that there is no need for worry when your examine things, because a benevolent divine care sustains you. Similarly, even events that seem negative for us may serve a higher purpose we do not yet understand, which can be reassuring.
In Buddhism, simply being aware of anicca (impermanence) and the uncertain conditions of existence does not, on its own, provide this kind of reassurance. At least not for me, unless I am missing something. So how does Buddhist practice help one cope with deep existential anxiety: not just ordinary stress, but the fundamental, radical uncertainty of being, while still cultivating equanimity and a sense of ease and confidence in the face of impermanence?
It seems like you really engaging with the Buddha’s teachings. That’s wonderful. If you don’t mind me asking, I’m curious what Suttas you are studying at the moment. It’s not entirely clear to me where you are getting your ideas about Buddhism from. But you obviously care a lot about this.
It’s usually the basis for people getting fired up and practicing harder than before.
It’s easy — Nirvana is freedom from such conditions.
In brief, Nirvana implies the extingishment of Greed, Aversion and Delusion. When you are no longer deluded about your experience, when you’re no longer greedy for accumulation, when you no longer harbor averaion or hatred, nothing can shake you.
And yes, simply being aware of it isn’t enough to bring freedom (SN 12.68 being a good example for it). It’s kind of like being a drug addict, who knows the drug is harmful but still uses and harms themselves.
“I have truly seen clearly with right wisdom that the cessation of continued existence is extinguishment. Yet I am not a perfected one. Suppose there was a well on a desert road that had neither rope nor bucket. Then along comes a person struggling in the oppressive heat, weary, thirsty, and parched. They’d know that there was water, but they couldn’t physically touch it.”
Freedom comes from practice, and specifically, Sense Restraint.
An 6.63 is a great sutta that elaborates on this:
Greedy intention is a person’s sensual pleasure.
The world’s pretty things aren’t sensual pleasures.
Greedy intention is a person’s sensual pleasure.
The world’s pretty things stay just as they are,
but the attentive remove desire for them.
And the sutta goes on to explain in no uncertain terms:
And what is the cessation of suffering? When craving ceases, suffering ceases. The practice that leads to the cessation of suffering is simply this noble eightfold path, that is: right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right immersion.
So, yeah; intellectual knowledge, faith or such things are not enough. It’s a practice, a habit, a path.
In Buddhist thought, such events are usually not attributed to some divine benevolence we can’t understand, but they’re the very problem of existence to begin with. They are precisely the examples of why we seek shelter from the torrent of existence.
Yes, you are missing something. Impermanence isn’t seen by average Buddhist at all. But when it is seen, it is indeed cure from mental anxiety:
Khandha Samy. 43: iii,43:
Having seen, monks, the impermanence, changeability, absence of lust for and ceasing of matter (feeling, perception, determinations, consciousness), and that matter (…consciousness) was formerly as it is now, thus seeing with right understanding as it actually is that all matter (…consciousness) is impermanent, unpleasurable, of a nature to change, then whatever is the arising of sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair, those are eliminated. These being eliminated, there is no anxiety. Not having anxiety he dwells at ease. Dwelling at ease, this monk is called ‘extinguished to that extent’.
Pascal:
When I consider the brief span of my life absorbed into the eternity which comes before and after – as the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day1 – the small space I occupy and which I see swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me, I take fright and am amazed to see myself here rather than there: there is no reason for me to be here rather than there, now rather than then. Who put me here? By whose command and act were this time and place allotted to me?
Understanding impermanence and understanding anatta are synonyms. Since body is seen as not-self, idea of external world in which some person lives also is abandoned. Of course as long one considers himself to be the person living in the world, anxiety is inevitable. The cure of it lies in re-examining experience and see that there is nothing to be anxious about.
Thank you for your kind words. I’m not studying the suttas in a very systematic way at the moment, but I’m currently focusing on DN2 which I find fascinating, and also instructive because it discusses the perspectives of other ascetic and philosophical movements of the Buddha’s time.
That said, my questions about existential anxiety really come more from personal experience. During the holidays I had some meditation practice, and sometimes I felt very happy. I’m not sure I was doing it “correctly” but it was as if I were like an onion, where the outer layers of my body became numb as if they had gone to sleep, while my awareness went inside especially to my breath, which became very smooth and pleasant to watch. At those moments and for a while afterward I felt a deep joy, but then, when the meditation effect subsided, I would also experience the kind of anxiety I tried to describe in my original question.
It’s this contrast, between moments of heightened joy and the return of existential anxiety, which perhaps has become more vivid because I have been more generally aware, that prompted my question.
PS Finally I should perhaps add that my understanding of Anicca also comes from some writings about Ajahn Chah and his followers. I think it’s perhaps from those that I got the idea that one should just acknowledge that everything is uncertain. If this is so I can understand how it might reflect truth but I cannot see how it can help reassure you because just being aware of a scary situation doesn’t really solve it.
Right. In a lot of non-sutta sources you will frequently see this “awareness solves everything” trope. Wisdom is what solves everything. Awareness is kind of a stop-gap measure that sometimes cools things down, but not usually for the big things. That’s why I was curious about your sources.
The forum is a place to ask questions and folks are happy to help. But I think you could get a lot further if you did a deeper study of more suttas. It takes time though. And if you ask folks on the forum about X said in Z sutta, then you are going to get really good answers, cause that’s our thing.
In the mean time, I don’t know if I have pointed out the CIPS but it might help you to dig deep into specific topics on your own.
a mendicant sees and contemplates any kind of feeling at all—past, future, or present; internal or external; coarse or fine; inferior or superior; near or far—examining it rationally, it appears to them as completely vacuous, hollow, and insubstantial. For what substance could there be in feeling?
~ SN 22.95
The key here is to see all feeling whatsoever as shallow. As soon as you label some feelings “deep” you’re attaching undue importance to them. Or, as Existential Comics put it:
Thank you for these insights. So if I understand correctly, in Buddhism no feeling is inherently “deeper”: all are contingent, arising and passing according to conditions. Since labeling some feelings as more profound attaches undue importance to them, the solution to overcome anxiety would then be not to consider it meaningful or important (in spite of the fact that it definitely seems so)? Sometimes however if you just don’t pay attention to a feeling or dismiss it as not important it may come back stronger a bit like when you don’t listen seriously to a person and they don’t feel listened to they become more loud
Btw I liked the comic though Schopenhauer’s mother probably didn’t make sandwiches herself in actual life, since she was a friend of Goethe and as intellectually distinguished as her son☺️
I think that’s the difference between repression and letting go — the first is an active feeling born of aversion, which we could call unskillful mindset, the other is born of skillful mindset.
The kind of difference between stressing yourself to relax, or just being able to relax.
With a continued practice, the experiences of joy and contentment increase and negative (unwholesome) mental states decrease. Pleasure, joy and contentment experienced during meditation intensifies and carries on even to the next day. There’s no room for existential anxiety then, and contemplation of impermanence becomes natural (meaning that such contemplation does not give rise to any distress).
I have also understood that practicing generosity, compassion and rejoicing for other beings’ happiness can serve as an antidote to existential distress while still trying to cope with the “radical uncertainty of being”.
In short, as I understand it, the Buddha says that this existential anxiety (dukkha) is the outcome/result of your own existential greediness or hunger or desire (taṇhā). Therefore, having removed the cause, having quenched the thirst, you will be at peace. The method to quench it is the Noble Eightfold Path. The method enables you to see clearly how this anxiety arises from your desire, how the mind constructs all that.
As the practice and understanding progress, you will feel more and more at peace and be able to see this constructing activity through.
Moreover, the very Buddhist practice, as some teachers teach it, is mindful abiding in ease and confidence…
I can’t see the problem with such labeling. It’s all relative. Are trees tall?
The practice in that sutta you quoted is certainly relevant and helpful, but we have to live with our unenlightened minds until we’re enlightened. And navigating that sometimes necessitates emphasizing the difference between the practice and the goal.
The goal is to develop the mind to see through the fleeting and hollow nature of feelings, among other phenomena. And we can inch our way towards that goal with practices the Buddha taught us. But until we get there, we won’t be there. And we will perceive according to our stage of development.
I think it’s important to stress to beginners that the tools the Buddha gave us are just that, tools. They work gradually and not every tool is suitable for every occasion. Metta is often spoken of as the anti-dote to anger, but how often does metta meditation work when you’re angry? It prevents the arising of anger, but rarely dissolves present anger unless you’re quite advanced. Or unless you’re really good at suppressing anger on command, letting it crystallize into a tumor somewhere later down the line…
Likewise, if we experience a particular feeling as deep or strong, then that’s where we’re at for now. I don’t see how simply not labeling your feelings the way you experience them would help. To each their own, but I find it more effective to acknowledge how I’m perceiving my experience first, and then investigate.
I wasn’t talking about this but rather the process of taking a feeling and then spinning a whole philosophy up around it. I meant “labeling as deep” to mean: taking certain feelings as being more “true” or “real” than others, etc.
If by “labeling” you mean e.g. Mahasi-style noting practice, that’s something else. Noting feelings as they are felt is a great practice precisely because it cuts off this papañca which wants to cook that feeling up into something more than it is.
I can see how the verb “label” might have been ambiguous there. Thanks for the clarification.
