Nietzsche and Buddha

As always, whenever I start another project things quickly begin to overlap. In fact, if there's anything that I've observed more and more is the natural relationship between things.
Undoubtedly this has to do with the nature of observation itself - and to the mind that supports it so much.

During November I spent a good deal of my time contemplating on two different writing projects. One of them (The Lost Years - more info on my sequential scripts blog) focused on the 17 missing years of Jesus' life.
This was an idea that I had had on my first retreat at Panditarama Forest Monastery in Myanmar. The idea surfaced after a few "inner wanderings" about the social role of the Buddha in his day and age and, the spontaneous realisation that Jesus had had a quite similar role even if, in my opinion, a somewhat different scope. Not only because times were different (the Buddha's legacy had lived on for over 5 centuries by then) but also because, despite the many similarities, Jesus was a different man from the Buddha. He had been born in different times and in a different culture. And that, surely, must've influenced his journey.
This was what I was trying to clarify for myself as well as others throughout the writing of this book. The similarities and the differences between Buddhism and Jesus' teachings framed within that time and place.
It wasn't meant to be a study but rather more of a semi-intuitive fictionalised story, very much in the spirit of how the whole thing began to happen in my mind. The known pieces of the puzzle falling together in a configuration I had yet not seen.

Throughout that month things evolved rapidly and in unexpected directions.
As to be expected.
In searching and listening for connections, I started to remember the roots of this insight. In doing some research the name of Friederich Nietzsche came up once and once again, more out of a personal flavour than by the demands of the work itself.

I remembered the Anti-Christ of course. I read it many years ago. Barely out of my teens (quite possibly, i forget such things...) it made an incredible impression on me because it felt more true and honest than all that I had come across about Christianity before.
Christianity after all, had always been for me my father's lifelong hatred and my mother's superficial beliefs (share by most of my family, in fact, by most of the culture where I grew for the first 18 years of my life). A curiosity with too many holes for me to even bother to scrutinise it.
But life has it's ways and I've always been a sucker for curiosity.
So, here I was, aged 33 and looking left, right and centre, imbued with this firlm belief that Jesus was in fact a noble figure that should be set to rights.
Naive. Sure. And why not?
In the sense of child like innocence that is much of the Anti-Christ (that, from the German can also be translated as the Anti-Christian), I agree with both Nietzsche, Jesus and Buddha. It is something worthwhile pursuing and preserving.

In any case, i began to feel myself obsessed by Nietzsche once more and wanting to read his books more than knowing them relevant to this book of mine.

One of the chapters that was most difficult to write was the one about Zoroaster and his spiritual theory of opposites. And it was when I did some research that I found that Zoroaster could also be spelled as Zarathustra.
And thus came Nietzsche into my mind once again.

Eventually i decided to stop thinking about the relevance or irrelevance of Nietzsche to a book about Jesus, did some research on the various editions of his books and bought a copy of Zarathustra and The Anti-Christ (along with Twilight of the Idols, two in one edition).

Today I decided to read the intro to this double book.

As always I find the introductions more difficult than the actual books. Even though this one was an easier one, I still find that the second guessing of someone's words by people that have spent a great part of their lives over and over the same things to be hard to follow. There are too many connections and not always it is easier to communicate from within that huge mass of knowledge.
(and yes, you can say that I'm doing the same... and perhaps I am, I'm just hoping that I will be clear - because that is my intention, in parallel with the rest, rather than subject to it)

Anyway, amidst my meanderings through the introduction to the double book I not only became imbued of that love I had felt for Nietzsche but it also became apparent his own misunderstandings, as a reflection of his time.
The same way Jesus would easily oppose what has been done with his teachings, so Nietzsche would oppose much of what he said if he had been born in our day an age.
It is clear to see that at least part of all his intensity stems from a great rage at the world (the society) he saw around him. It is clear that writing and soul searching was his way to try and come to terms with it in a rational way. But it is also clear that the more he searched, the more he knew and saw, the more irrational it all seemed. The clearer the solution, the clearer the answers presented themselves, less hope there was to him.
I think Nietzsche was trying to change the world on a very fundamental level. And he genuinely believed that, through sheer clarity, that if the truth was told then people would be forced to listen and to recognise it. If it was crystal clear then how could anyone miss it?

But I think that seeing through transparencies is what we do the most. We spend all of our lives escaping the truth - because we believe we cannot deal with it - that ignoring Nietzsche's words was not only easy but also natural.

From where I sit, it feels as if Nietzsche's madness was much of a curse as a blessing. He wanted a way out. And he more or less exhausted every possibility (as framed by his indomitable, all or nothing spirit) before madness overtook him.

The author of the intro mentions repeatedly that Nietzsche often contradicts himself throughout the text and that this might be already a symptom of his "impending doom" But, credit be given to him, he also says that this was also something that Nietzsche always had for trying to explore in every direction so intensely.

I agree with these two things but I would venture something more which I believe is as much what Nieztsche was looking for and failed to recognise as well as the reason why often introductions bore me rather than enlighten me.

If one reads a handful of spiritual texts from enlightened masters it becomes very clear that contradiction is a sign and a symptom of a mind that has managed to transcend itself.
Perhaps Nietzsche was trying to become child like. The same way he saw Jesus, with such clarity and intensity, this was perhaps something he wished for himself. So much so because he knew how different he was, and how utterly impossible it would be for him to reach that state of being.
Perhaps Nietzsche's mind was indeed collapsing. But I think it is no coincidence that he also wrote such powerful books and had planned the summation of his thought. He could see the goal. But, undoubtedly by then he had also realised how little it had changed things in his day and age. And, surely, this consumed him. This had been one of his major objectives after all.

In any case, that failure to reach non-duality (or at least, reaching it with a sane mind as a backup or with a mind that still cared to communicate it to the world in an intelligible way...) is from my perspective, one of the missing core ideas from his ideas. And something I would like to put to rights.

While reading this short intro and undoubtedly inspired by the Nietzsche's searing capabilities I had within me the grand wish to read all of his books and write a long letter to him telling him how that simple idea tied together many of the things that said.

Thus the title.
Nietzsche and Buddha.

Perhaps, when I read Twilight of The Idols, The Anti-Christ and Thus Spoke Zarathustra I will comment on them as well. It might prove a ongoing useful tool for The Lost Years.
Besides the objective of so many blogs is to make available much of the writing and thinking that will otherwise be kept private. Perhaps a greater sense of immediacy will be best.

For this reason, and for the sake of a better framing of the moment, I've been doing all of this thinking and writing while listening to Blonde Redhead, Sun Kil Moon and now The Cure (the early stuff). And there's something I like about this. Discussing Nietzsche to the sound of The Cure has something utterly romantic but also incredibly appropriate to it...

I shall now re-read that intro and make some further comments.

On Contradiction
How can "a relaxation, a sunspot, an escapade into the idle hours of a psychologist" be a "grand declaration of war"?
I think it's fair to affirm that the clarity of insight that Nietzsche must have experienced not only blurred but also defined the boundaries of language and the self. Like all philosophers, Nietzsche is very aware of the meaning of words. But, contrary to many philosophers, he uses them equally in their meaning and as effect. He is rational but also poetic, romantic.
By saying these two apparently opposing affirmations, Nietzsche is quite consciously bringing us closer to the nature of his being. Where the utmost repulse against the world we humans have built around us, stems from states of great inner peace and contemplation.
(not always surely, but it must've happened often and, perhaps, increasingly so in those days where the Anti-Christ was already forming in his heart and mind)
Also, from the vantage point of non-duality, both peaceful states and intensity are not necessarily opposed but merely expressions. Human complexity is such that one can feel opposing forces working simultaneously inside oneself. I believe that Nietzsche must have felt this many times. It is actually easy to experience. All one has to do is to pay attention. To pay an attention with such care and dedication that there is enough room inside ourselves to all the possibilities to manifest themselves and not just one or two.
The problem is that getting into these states without some sort of background (which was what Nietzsche did) can be conducive to insanity. This is why Buddhism is practiced for the most part with the support of a community around us. It helps stabilize what is known to be a difficult process.

To a certain extent one can say that it was Nietzsche's bigger than life desire to give to others what he felt the world needed the most that doomed him.
In my experience there has to be a point where one realises that, in order to take another step and to realise and recognise what one has felt, intuit and somehow known, one has to be able to let go of the words, of the thoughts, of every form in relation to that.
It's not an act of sacrifice (even though it is). It is simply the recognition that in order to experience reality in a different way one has to let go of the tools that have taken us to that threshold. There is no other way. That is our nature. And that is why it is difficult but also crucial to do so.
Now Nietzsche had been on this mindful threshold for many years. Growing closer with the passing of time, getting more desperate and more intense but perhaps unwilling or unknowing of how to take that final step. Perhaps he was afraid he would never come back. Perhaps he was afraid that even if he found it he could never communicate it.
Perhaps he couldn't let go of his desire to communicate. And was trying to strike an impossible balance between two very different states of being.

This is all speculation of course but, when one looks at various influential figures throughout human history we see that they all struggled with similar ideas and aspirations.

I'm far from being an accomplished buddhist, but even the little that I have seen has shown me so much, clarified so many of the doubts and questions I had had. But this only happened when I was able - even if for only a few seconds at a time - to let go of that burning desire to know.
It is no surprise that the masters keep mentioning this "desire" over and over again. It is not a negative thing per se. What is sad is that, even without our knowledge, we always fall prey to it.

Nietzsche and Music
This was something that really caught my eye when I was reading the introduction. I had already forgotten all about Nietzsche's passion for music.
It took me to that natural exploration of the senses that one does whilst doing Vipassana meditation and their connection to our mind and to our world interpretative skills.
What follows is pure speculation but I'll say it anyway for it has surfaced many times before for me to dismiss it as pointless. Perhaps because I too have a passion for music. Because it is easy to recognise how important the role of music and sound plays in all of our lives. The Ipod being the most current summit.
Just consider how easy it was adopted on the market. How the image of people in the tube carrying thin white wires into their ears became. How powerful a symbol it is to the idea that you can be amidst everybody else and still be in your own world?

To me this is no coincidence.
I think this is why it is so important to observe this kind of details, they hint on things much much deeper.

As soon as I read those lines about Nietzsche and music the thoughts that entered my mind were about music as an expression of intensity, the most physical thing we can have with minimal body operation. In the sense that so little of the body is used for such an impact that it can have in us.
Then the age old idea of vibration and mantra.
Then the idea that perhaps hearing is naturally (and more directly? with less filters?) rigged to a more primitive area of our brain. perhaps an area not easily accessible in other ways but that through sound we can find some access to.

It is known that smell (and taste) are the older senses.
But we can also consider the following situation.
We are sleeping. A noise is heard. He wake up, instantly alert.
This tells me that, even though smell and taste are interfaced deeper with our brain, the sense of sound as long been recognised as being much more useful in survival terms. Therefore is it intimately connected to awareness. As such is becomes an vehicle and an expression of such. And, coming back to what was said in the previous paragraph, in rational and in more romantic and poetic ways.

Many people argue that sounds can be used to prompt certain brain states, or at the very least, to help us reach them. This is the key idea behind mantra. every sense is a doorway. and, as such, they can be used to allow us to reach deeper and more inside ourselves.

Undoubtedly music was also one of Nietzsche's few means of escape from the internal pressures of his own mind. I think it was a vehicle that he recognised and that he used, though probably one that disintegrated as well as soon as he realised his own addiction to it and the failures of wagner and such like. By realising the inadequacy of humanity, Nietzsche deprived and destroyed to him the things that he prized the most.

And it was clear that something like this would be the case. Everything must be destroyed in order for one to emerge with a new mind.
The problem was that Nietzsche perhaps intuited this rather literally.
yes, everything must be abandoned in order for us to reach that ultimate experience.
But we always return. The mind disappears. The mind dies.
But that's just how it feels from within the heart of that experience (though, in fact, the core of that experience is the absence of experience).

It's just like sleep. Our consciousness simply switches off, let's go, releases the unconscious.
And yet we go to sleep every night and we don't worry about our consciousness returning the next day.
We simply know that this is what will happen.
The same thing is with the experience of enlightenment. We plunge into non-duality whole-heartedly without worrying of consequences because, for better or for worse, our sense of self will return in due time.

The problem with Nietzsche was that he prized and valued his mind, his ideas too much. But I think he knew that even that had to be destroyed. With the building pressures and tensions generated by a life of intense searching, his mind collapsed under its own fires. An event of such magnitude and sheer exhaustion must've been impossible to recover from. So much so that the paralysis was both physical and mental.
(I'm assuming that the mental paralysis means that he stopped communicating, responding or reacting to external stimuli in a conscious and coherent way)

Anyway, I shall stop here for now. Nietzsche is a vast and incredibly interesting philosopher but my stomach presently commands other aspirations.

Peace