World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

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understanding of its intent, as we intuit the profound relation between enjoyment and transience. This relationship was brought to the forefront and exploited powerfully by the Buddha. The philosophy of the Buddha stems from the notion that the root of suffering is transience. In the Isha Upanishad the fact of transience is highlighted in the second half of the first line, after the assertion of the inhabitation and pervasion of the Divine; in Buddhism, the fact of suffering resulting from the phenomenal experience of transience forms the very first of its Four Noble Truths: This world is one of suffering because it is a world of transience. This phenomenon of suffering as related to transience is profoundly analyzed in Buddhism. Suffering is related to transience in three ways - first, all things are born, all things change, all things die. Like it or not, old age, illness and death will visit our home, our habitation : suffering is ours from the very beginning, it's written into one's book, one's text. Second, we desire something, but we may never achieve what we desire, and hence we suffer due to not having. Or, we achieve our desire, but by the time of achievement, we are no longer the person who initiated the desire. The mutations of time have transfigured our subjectivity. This transfigured subjectivity has changed our experience of what we desired. Moreover, time dulls our capacities of enjoyment. Again, what we desired has mutated in time, and is no longer what initiated our desire. In having, we find a second-hand enjoyment, no longer what we wanted. Third, at the inception of desire, the object of desire shines with the light of wonder. It is full of an infinite richness and potential. But as soon as we grasp it, it turns to ashes in our hand, because we mark it with our own finitude. As soon as we have what we desired, it turns boring, because finitude is boring. One sought "the Other" because one is bored with oneself, but in finding it, it loses its otherness and becomes "possessed" within one's own boring limits.
This profound reality of transience and finitude also connects with the preamble of the Isha Upanishad, its meditation on wholeness, purnam. To truly enjoy, one must be infinite oneself, one must first know oneself as infinite. Then one will continue to see everything as infinite. It is only the infinite that is real, everything is truly full of infinite content. This is why the phenomenal experience of transience, the sense of discreteness and finiteness of time, is so powerful in bringing us our basic perception of this world as a world of suffering. But the Isha Upanishad attacks this perception at its roots pushing us to recognize the One Eternal in all transient things, nityo'nityanam. This One Eternal is shown to be none other than one's Self and the same in all things in this universe, the Isha, Lord, for whose habitation all exists and becomes. With this as the basis of one's enjoyment, one is secure and free of suffering, because one is identified with the Enjoyer of the universe. The Lord resides in the heart of all things in the universe so as to enjoy them. This again is among the central tenets of the Upanishads, repeated variously in many of its texts. The Katha Upanishad refers to this Enjoyer as the eater of honey, madhvadaha. In uniting with That, we unite
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