Existential-bio-Buddhism

What is that?
Is it really possible to combine existentialism with biology and Buddhism.

David Barash, professor at the University of Washington, anyway tries it in his book "Buddhist biology: Ancient eastern wisdom meets modern western science".

He means that the three subjects are comparable, though not the same.
By combining them it will take away the fundamental parts in each of them.

For example the worship of Buddha as a God.

From existentialism he takes the example from the essay "The myth of Sisyphus" by  Albert Camus.
Sisyphus is is condemned to forever push a boulder up a mountain. But when the boulder comes to the top it rolls down again. And Sisyphus has to start it all over again. It's an absurd task that Camus means is our destiny. To act without a meaning and a real goal. We will all die and there is no God or eternal truth to save us.



Buddha had about the same view of life, at least if we are completely driven by our desires.
If we can contemplate on our desires, we may not immediately follow them.
Buddha also showed an eightfold path to to a more happy life.

As a biologist Barash also sees that evolution has put these desires in our mind; flee or fight, make children and feed them and ourselves and so on.

Maybe those desires was working when we were hunter/gatherers.
But nowadays they lead to war, to too much food and to adultery and so on. For instance, more people on the planet nowadays  suffer from overeating than from starvation.

The climate effect may also have its roots in overconsumption. We compete with each other to have the fanciest  cars and houses. And it have it cause in desires that is programmed by evolution and society.
Meditation is a tool for seeing this programmes in our brain. We cannot get rid of them, but we don't have to follow them. Though it can be hard if we don't have the right environment.

Existentialism give us much freedom, we are actually deemed to freedom according to Sartre. We have no essence so we can choose our destiny. We don't  have to act like other people.

According to modern biology and to Buddhism it's true that we have no essence, but our freedom is limited.

My experience is that mindfulness can give us some freedom. We don't have to implement our desires.They will still shatter in our heads but we can look at them as "thoughts" or "feelings" not "my thoughts and feelings". We don't have to identify with them.
And if its combined with a life in a friendly environment; green nature and with people that you trust in can be really helpful.

In his essay Camus didn't mention that Sisyphus had betrayed the greatest God; Zeus, and therefore he had to do this absurd work, actually in Hades.
Camus writes that "one must imagine Sisyphus happy" as the struggle itself is meaningful and fills Sisyphus heart.
But I wonder if that so...

If we equals Zeus with nature or the Earth, we can say that we have betrayed nature way of life and the Earth is now going to hit back on us. That's really Karma or cause and effect.

We can still stop the disaster. But we are really in a hurry.
Otherwise we may end up like Sisyphus.


Here you can see and hear the very sympathetic Barsher speak about his ideas;







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