Arthur Schopenhauer noticed that we know one thing from two sides: our own body, both as an object among objects and, from inside, as willing. Generalize: everything is, in itself, will. The Will has no goal; it only strives — hence endless suffering. Liberation comes only in art, compassion, and finally the will’s self-denial.
Friedrich Nietzsche took the Will and reversed its valuation: not a curse to be denied but the Will to Power, to be affirmed.
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related by shared connectionsThe World as Will and Representation
Schopenhauer’s single great work — the world is my representation; in itself it is Will; and the Will is the source of all suffering.
Samuel Beckett
Irish playwright, novelist and poet who wrote in English and French, the master of minimalism and the absurd — Waiting for Godot made a play in which “nothing happens, twice” into the defining drama of the twentieth century.
Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad
The “Great Forest” Upanishad, oldest and longest, home of Yājñavalkya’s debates, the teaching to Maitreyī, and “neti neti”.
Anattā (No-Self)
The Buddha’s teaching that there is no permanent, unchanging self — only a flowing stream of physical and mental processes.
Saṃsāra
“Wandering” — the beginningless cycle of birth, death and rebirth through which beings pass according to their karma, and from which every major Indian religion seeks release.
Gregor Samsa
The travelling salesman who wakes as a giant insect and remains, inside, more human than the family that comes to find him a burden.