Reading Varela* has made me more aware than ever of the yawning gulf at the heart of existence. The more I think about it the less I can think of being as static. To exist is to be rushing headlong, to be projecting oneself into the future, into relationships. Again the more I think about it relationships seem to be the very stuff of existence. The tiny bit of solitude of these last few days makes me realise once again that the essence of being human is in relating to other human beings. Simply to relate – to love, to converse, to be with, to help, to make bonds, links. Saint-Exupéry’s fox in The Little Prince knew all about it. We all know this in our heart of hearts but we are taken in too easily, men are anyway, by the ideology that life is for doing, consuming, spending.
The two of the most pernicious ideas today are the individualistic ethics of egoism and consumerism. These do not touch the essence of human existence. These lock a person into a solipsist modality and he ceases to grow; he becomes bored, empty, effete. A yawning gulf appears within and he knows neither what is its cause, nor what to do about it. All he can do is try to fill it with a ceaseless round of stimulation, sensation, pleasure, drugs, sex whatever will stifle the pangs, the angst, the fear.
It is so important not to be afraid of the emptiness, the gulf. The Buddhists, in this respect, are so much wiser than us. We want so much to cling to a foundation and, by definition, a foundation has to be static. Perhaps the Christian focus is wrong, wrong because it sets us in the wrong direction, to talk about faith, or Christ, as a rock. It is even more wrong to talk about eternal rest. Stasis is death, to cease to be alive. Ultimate reality is… We do not have words to describe it. There is no foundation. There is only to move, to love, to dance, to be; no substantives (in a sense), only verbs.
*Varela, F. J., Thompson, E, Rosch, E. The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience The MIT Press, 1993, p. 119