Liberal, Libertario, Libertino

Estou lendo um livro fascinante e delicioso: Introduction to Emptiness, de Guy Newland. Alguns trechos:

WE SUFFER UNNECESSARILY because we do not know ourselves. Like addicts fiercely clinging to a drug, we cannot let go of the sense that we are substantial, solid, independent, and autonomous. We lay schemes large and small to acquire and to harm-all grounded in this false apprehension of how we exist, who we are as living beings. On behalf of this exaggerated self, with fear, anger, and pride, we harm others. To nurture and to satisfy each passing whim of this exaggerated self, we build up our greed.

Over and over again, moment after moment, we fall into this trap we have unwittingly built for ourselves. Like an addict's drug, the false notion of an independently existing self is the source of great misery for ourselves and others.

Of course, we do exist. We are living beings. We make choices and our choices make a difference, for ourselves and others. But at some level, for all of us, we cannot just leave it at that. To be real, to be alive, we feel that we must deep down somehow exist in a solid and independent way. Death tells us a very different story, but for that very reason we find a million ways to avoid hearing the message of death. That message is that we are impermanent.

And though we desperately wish to believe otherwise, the truth is that beneath our ever-changing minds and aging bodies there is no eternal and essential self. We have no natural existence, no independent way of existing.

[T]he ultimate truth is the sheer absence, the lack, of any such essence. This is emptiness (stong pa nyid, shunyata). While this may sound bleak, disappointing, or frightening, it is the very nature of reality. And it is reality-not fantasy-that is our final hope and our refuge. The path to freedom from needless misery, for ourselves and others, is through profound realization of this fundamental reality.

[Emptiness] is not a lack of meaning or hope or existence. It is the lack of the exaggerated and distorted kind of existence that we have projected onto things and onto ourselves. It is the absence of a false essential nature with which we have unconsciously invested everything.

We suffer greatly and unnecessarily because we are plagued by ignorant misconceptions of how the world exists. We tend to see ourselves and the things around us as solid, permanent, autonomous, discrete, and substantial, whereas in fact things are evanescent, composite, contingent, and in flux. So the path to freedom is the path of abandoning ignorance by refuting the reified nature, essence, or "self" that ignorance superimposes.

Happiness, in Buddhism, depends on seeing reality. We become free only by facing the truth, knowing things as they are. Clinging to mistaken expectations causes us vast and needless misery. In order to know the reality of impermanence and mortality, and to live our lives in the light of that reality, we first must recognize that there is a problem. While we acknowledge impermanence intellectually, we usually act as though we ourselves, along with our friends and possessions, are unchanging.

We can think of the Buddha's teaching, the middle way, as like a path along a narrow ridge from which we may easily fall into extremes of nihilism or eternalism. If we do not carefully limit the object of negation, we will misuse reason to refute too much, falling into nihilism. Ethical commitments to help other living beings break down when logic is misapplied so as to seem to refute the very existence of these beings or to refute any distinction between virtue and nonvirtue. We may come to believe that nothing exists or that our choices, our actions, do not matter.

[O]ur empty natures mean that there is no limit to what we can become. We are not blocked, obstructed, or tied down. Right now, our powers to help others may be limited, but emptiness is the lack of chains preventing us from becoming more wise and loving. It is the absence of bars on the door, the freedom from any built-in limit on what we can be. How wise can we become? How loving?

The path demands time and effort. But the obstacles are not insurmountable because they are not intrinsic to the structure of reality. Fundamentally, all things are empty-and so we are empty-of any intrinsic nature. This is why the reality of emptiness, properly understood, is a tremendous wellspring of hope and inspiration. Only because we are empty, the possibilities for what we can become are wide open. The sky is the limit.

Tudo o que me esforcei para articular na série das prisões aparentemente já foi dito pelo zen-budismo. Estou fascinado, mergulhando numa tradição filosófica e intelectual ao mesmo tempo totalmente nova mas também tão familiar.