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Black Nihilism is a “demythifying” practice, in the Nietzschean vein, that un- covers the subjugating strategies of political hope and de-idealizes its fantastical ob-ject. Once we denude political hope of its axiological and ethical veneer, we see that it operates through certain strategies: 1) positing itself as the only alternative to the problem of anti-blackness 2) shielding this alternative from rigorous historical/

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The fact of antiblack racism, today, is less in need of demonstration than it is in need of enumeration and illumination. Antiblack racism remains the hue of mundane reality, at least in the United States, and its tentacles are well documented as having gripped the globe. How do ideals generated by peoples centuries ago continue to color our reality? Black people have always been able to see the contradictions of antiblack racist logics, but, today, are able to socially respond and make known in a variety of publicly discursive ways the contradictory nature of the illusions supporting the phenomenon. I do not find it difficult to ascertain the philosophical and moral illegitimacy of antiblack racism; however, there is difficulty in explaining a preponderance of fallacies from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries and their legitimacy in the twenty-first. How does antiblack racism, which has been laid bare, dramatized, and satirized in plain view of the public, continue to dominate contemporary cultural realities? Veils have fallen, it seems, and yet antiblack racism persists; how can that be? Another way of asking this question is, “Why do antiblack racists insist upon the veil of white supremacist values so desperately?

I have come to exist within a world enshrouded by veils of modern European thoughts, philosophies, and perspectives, which smother my humanity in ideals of whiteness. These veils are so cold, so thin; yet I cannot breathe through them. I cannot believe these veils are sought, by some, in their quest for life, and warmth. I imagine that whatever the constructors of these veils were facing, they found it to be absolutely frigid, horrifying, and for them, ought to be avoided at all cost. What is that which antiblack racist ideals of whiteness seeks to cloak itself from? Pessimism and nihilism. Underneath antiblack racist veils of whiteness stands a nihilistic human being, responding to the fundamental existential conditions of Humanity, with weakness. Life beyond antiblack racism involves facing nihilism. “Nihilism” references the process of attempting to construct newer values in the place of fallen ones. I aim to show it is also a constitutive feature of antiblack racism. As a subject of European philosophical reflection, “nihilism” is genealogically akin to the historical emergence of antiblack racism in Western life; both proceed from the cultivation of existential categories pertaining to Enlightenment forms of imperial reasoning and colonization, or the construction of (European) “Man.”2 (European) “Man” has historically imposed himself upon the world by colonially establishing systems of white supremacist social, political, and cultural values, alongside antiblack racist institutions, structuring those realities. The result has been an attempt to make the ideals of (European) “Man” function like the primordial will of the universe, out of which black life might, perhaps, construct alternative realities in order to make this tragic fact of black existence bearable.3

Black nihilism involves conflict between the strength of black wills versus the weakness of white wills in the same way that human existence requires tension between phenomenal willing and the givenness of the cosmos; insisting on black will means going against the entirety of the (white) metaphysical world. There is a Manichean relationship between these two competing forms of humanism. White people in antiblack racist worlds neither need nor desire black participation and recognition for their “truth.” For them, “truth” depends upon avoiding our gaze; they depend on denying our points of view in order to make their world valuable. They do not seek to make themselves known to black people; rather, they work to keep themselves concealed from black people. As Fanon put it, “What [the master] wants from the slave is not recognition but work.”27 It is from this space that black humanity confronts the master, who is bewildered, violently, abrasively, and suddenly removed. Any form of black liberation that does not aim to obliterate the philosophical conditions enabling black invisibility, to kill the white nihilism on which antiblack racists depend, misses the mark. White nihilism and antiblack racism do not admit of any mutual recognition between whites and blacks because of their paradigmatic dependence upon assaults, erasures, and denials of black consciousness. There is no middle ground for respect and dignity under these circumstances; there are no calm conversational working out of issues to be had. As Oladipo Fashina demonstrates, in “Frantz Fanon and the Ethical Justification of Anti-Colonial Violence,” for black people, “respect and dignity do not come from freedom unless freedom also results from conflict and risk of one’s life. Thus, in order to win genuine respect and dignity, the colonized must force the settler’s recognition through physical violence.”28 He went on to explain, for example, we shouldn’t misunderstand what Fanon meant when writing in Black Skin; White Mask as follows:

Man is human only to the extent to which he tries to impose his existence on another man in order to be recognized by him. As long as he has not been affectively recognized by the other, that other will remain the theme of his actions. It is on that being, on recognition by that other being, that his own human worth and reality depend.29

Strong black nihilism imposes a confrontation with white nihilistic values and forces recognition of blackness as a source of values. Upon emancipation, in America, black people were not necessarily regarded as equal to their former masters. White nihilism and antiblack racism remain the case. Phenomenal consciousness implicit to human existence continues to be treated as secondary qualities benevolently bestowed from some whites onto blacks. The “freedom” so accorded to black people entails a form of humanity whereby blacks are simply allowed to be as weak nihilistically situated as traditional whites. In this way, antiblack racism continues to situate blackness outside the self-other dialectic by essentially locking black people into a reality where we function as beings without perspectives, or original points of departure from which to insist upon and fight for. What does the requirement of fighting for one’s humanity mean under such circumstances? How does one accomplish one’s humanity? There is no legitimate form of inclusion on this view. One cannot go from (black) chattel slave to free (black) subject without theoretically questioning the conditions of (white) Humanity that demand enslavement in the first place.

Black existential freedom requires nihilistic struggles against traditional (white) human values. It requires producing languages, meanings, traditions, ways of being that push beyond traditional boundaries defining the antiblack world. The experiences of human freedom, those fleeting series of seemingly infinite moments experienced within the vicissitudes of each phenomenal spirit, for many black people, remain a tragic tight rope balanced between felt potential and the foreboding facts of antiblackness. Fanon encouraged producing an “authentic upheaval.” He described the effects of what I call, white nihilism, constructing the spaces of black existential invisibility, creating the situation of what I call black nihilism, which, in Fanon’s terms, amounts to a “zone of nonbeing,” or, an “utterly naked declivity,” where, nevertheless, “an authentic upheaval can be born.”41 On this view, black upheavals against antiblack racism entail rejecting white nihilistic valuations of humanity. For instance, once, when a white woman remarked of how handsome Fanon, “the negro,” was, he retorted, “Then come and fuck the handsome Negro, Madame!”42 Strong black attitudes can and do emerge through the lived fact of blackness, and they often cause even the most liberal white racists to flush with the embarrassment of having been recognized.

Black nihilism undertakes the project of value creation through the additive experience of black existential invisibility. Black invisibility is the phenomenon of experiencing one’s being through a reality that coalesces around presumptions of one’s nonexistence. “A feeling of inferiority; no, a feeling of nonexistence.”6 The black nihilistic situation involves valuing against value structures of whiteness which render black values inherently meaningless. Black pessimistic devaluation of white nihilistic values is a first step toward producing strong black values. Black pessimism creates an opportunity for strong black nihilistic value projections, by rejecting not only white nihilism but all metaphysically affirmed ideals in public and political affairs. Seeking to establish political realities based upon values justified solely in terms of each human’s freedom and responsibility for constructing Human reality is the goal. The Promethean endeavor to transvalue white nihilistic humanity from the existential space of black invisibility is an utterly nihilistic task, and, indeed, the weak perish of it.7

Frantz Fanon’s work provides a descriptive account of black consciousness living through invisibility, experienced as a denial of human freedom, against people who refuse responsibility for the values they produce. Fanon’s thought deepened Sartre’s elucidation of human existentialism by analyzing the additive absurdity of the lived situation of blackness within an antiblack racist world. Fanon advocated for what I call a “strong nihilistic” response to antiblack racism. He announced the nihilistic strength of his position when he proclaimed, “I do not come with timeless truths. My consciousness is not illuminated with ultimate radiances. Nevertheless, in complete composure, I think it would be good if certain things were said.”8

Most people consider “racism,” in terms of what critical race theorists call, “racial essentialism,” which is an assertion of there being essential traits, essences, or ways of being, necessarily inhering in people, due to their race.3 Racial essentialism is the imagining of what races of people really are. They employ Aristotle’s conception of essence, where certain properties are deemed inherent to the meaning of an object, in this case, the “raced” person.4 From this perspective, “antiblack racism” merely suggests a qualifying of the object of reference. However, according to black existentialist approaches, the prefix, “antiblack,” adds more than a specification for a type of racism. “Antiblack racism” is an existentially descriptive term that designates the phenomenon of racism itself.5 In particular, “antiblack” connotes denials of one’s subjective capacities. “Black,” here, assumes an ontologically descriptive meaning, denoting situations of existential invisibility, where one is seen as a nonexistence in relation to normative conceptions of humanity, that is, “white.” Thus, terms such as “black existential life” resists charges of essentialism, because whether or not one exists as “black” is not, in an existential sense, a matter of personal identity formation. There are subjective dimensions of personal identity formation, or what one might call, phenomenal activity, involved in living blackness; there are also objective existential dimensions of blackness in spite of which one lives. Frantz Fanon illuminated the philosophical uniqueness of phenomenal perspectives developed from spaces of black existential invisibility, where critical dimensions of subjective capacities develop in relation to objective, lived, experiences of blackness.6

There is textual evidence of antiblack racism in European philosophy, dating back as far as the medieval period, through the “discovery” of the “new world,” and modern European colonization of Africa. There, one finds obsessions with the category of “Man,” understood as Humanity, but grossly reduced to the perspectives of (European) “Man,” understood as (white) Humanity. This reduction entails axiomatic conceptions of white-normative and antiblack racist ideals and is a consequence of (European) “Man’s” innermost existential struggles. I use a capital “H,” in Human being, and a capital “M,” in “Man,” to designate philosophies, descriptions, and thoughts developed and understood to be true of all Humankind. However, I use the parenthetical and quotations, in (European) “Man,” and (white) Humanity, to designate philosophies, descriptions, and thoughts developed and understood to only be true of European descended, racially white people. The results of those attempts are reflective of failures, and weaknesses, evident in the struggles and desires of (European) “Man,” which further resulted in European Enlightenment philosophies producing antiblack racist practices and institutions, all under the banner “civilized (white) Humanity.”

The wisdom of the Buddha is currently trapped within the religion of Buddhism. Even in the West, where scientists and Buddhist contemplatives now collaborate in studying the effects of meditation on the brain, Buddhism remains an utterly parochial concern. While it may be true enough to say (as many Buddhist practitioners allege) that “Buddhism is not a religion,” most Buddhists worldwide practice it as such, in many of the naive, petitionary, and superstitious ways in which all religions are practiced. Needless to say, all non-Buddhists believe Buddhism to be a religion—and, what is more, they are quite certain that it is the wrong religion. To talk about “Buddhism,” therefore, inevitably imparts a false sense of the Buddha’s teaching to others. So insofar as we maintain a discourse as “Buddhists,” we ensure that the wisdom of the Buddha will do little to inform the development of civilization in the twenty-first century.

Buddhism is a wonderful religion socially, participating as a principle player in all forms of global peace & stability movements, very environmentally aware and an intelligent force for good in world politics. Historically it has contributed much less inhumanity to the world than have all other religions of similar stature. But its greatness is limited by its own dogma and mythology, its psychology is too idealistic and assumptive and its self-development aspects are too specific. In the West Buddhism has become no more than the respectable elements of New Age, merely called "Buddhism" and missing all of its main elements, replacing them with commercialist and popularist gimmicks. The London Buddhist Society and other high-brow Buddhist institutions in the West are inactive, elitist gatherings of intelligent pseudo-Buddhists, genuine Buddhists in the West are very hard to find. The history of Buddhism is problematic. It has grown from the cultural practices and beliefs from particular parts of the East and there seems to be no evidence for Buddhist beliefs. Not only that, but the Buddha himself lacks any evidence for his existence, apart from the fact that many varied and contradictory stories were once passed on orally for hundreds of years before being written down. It is impossible to seperate fact from fable. Buddhist traditions all claim that through a long and accurate teacher-student lineage, their practices were those ordained by the Buddha. Yet major divisions exist between the branches of Buddhism as to what practices are good, what are bad, and what the beliefs of the religion are. It is clear that with so many contradictory claims, most Buddhists must therefore be wrong in their beliefs. In an age where the UN and many secular multinational organisations have more strength and much willpower, social Buddhism has passed its hey-day as a useful tool of humanitarianism and global welfare. Buddhist groups could be replaced with secular organisations with little real change in mentality. Overly mystical and too idealistic about human nature, only the world-wide social elements of Buddhism have genuine merit, the rest is yet-another self-fulfilling religion of superstition, assumptions and psuedopsychology.

Having gone through so many changes, Buddhism’s universal teachings have preserved their values in the civilization of mankind for more than 25 centuries. In the context of rapid changes and severe challenges, Buddhist ideologies continue to demonstrate their outstanding power. Our world faces serious problems such as wars, conflicts, terrorism, environmental pollution and inequality, of which the crisis of faith worsens human relationships. Thus, selfishness and irresponsibility stand out as the most alarming issues.

Within the seemingly dark and stagnant picture of the world, the brightness of Buddhism creates a unique approach to relieve pain and suffering in a sustainable manner. This is the main theme of the 2019 Vesak Celebration, hosted by the Vietnamese Buddhist Sangha and the Government of Việt Nam for the third time, at the Tam Chúc Buddhist Culture Centre, Hà Nam Province, Việt Nam.

I’m surprised to have to write this post (which surely wiser heads would advise me not to), but I’ve come to see recently that the idea that “Buddhism is apolitical”/“Buddhism should stay apolitical” is deeper than I thought in the American Buddhist community. It’s also not true, and it’s not helpful, and I’d like to talk about why. First, let’s just be clear that Buddhist doctrine is about two things and only two things. The first let’s call Emptiness, and let’s say it like this: everything you think misses the point entirely, has zero traction, zero contact with anything like reality. Even the thought “reality.” Even the most basic of thoughts: “there is” or “there is not.” No concept reaches, and no thing anywhere at all can be grasped. The second let’s call Precepts. It’s a little more complicated, because there’s something to it, but we can say it simply too: there is a right way and a wrong way to live. There is wholesome action, and unwholesome action. The basic nature of things (underlying even this “Emptiness” notion) is interdependence or dependent co-arising, the total and complete depedence of each thing on each other thing, throughout space and time. The Buddhist life and path is to honor and celebrate this interdependence, to meet all things with respect and gratitude, and to act altruistically such that this basic interdependence is celebrated and revealed. Selfishness, violence, and contempt emerge from and further reinforce the delusion of individual separability, and as such are the root of all suffering. If there’s a third teaching, it’s just this: Emptiness needs Precepts and Precepts needs Emptiness. The bird with one wing doesn’t just fail to fly – it dies an awful writhing death in a pool of its own blood. I assume all of the above is clear to my dear readers. And if you disagree, I hope I’ll hear from you. Now to this “apolitical” business. In the last couple of days I’ve had roughly four versions of it thrown at me, and I’ll say more about each below. The short version though is that they’re all nonsense. They are most basically nonsense because “apolitical” isn’t a thing – “apolitical” doesn’t exist. To say that Buddhism should be “apolitical” is just to say “I prefer to see Buddhism not through the lens of its political operation.” But Buddhism still has people in it, doing things. It still has a culture, and a flavor, and a social impact. It still supports some political expressions and doesn’t [not] support others. Believing something is “apolitical” is like believing that “secular” or “science” is not a belief system. Secularity is just another belief system, just as “apolitical” is just another politics. Politics can’t be removed from the operation of humans together. More specifically, the politics of “apolitical” here and now, as we approach the inauguration of Donald Trump, is very clear. Expressing the value of “apolitical” is an active politics of complacency and complicity. Who does “apolitical” benefit? A friend shared Desmond Tutu’s words: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” My friends who advocate for apolitical Buddhism ask with such sincerity: “Why do you have to take sides? That just alienates people! Why not just love and accept everyone equally? goes the mouse. go its tiny bones. Anyway, here are the versions of “Buddism is apolitical,” helpfully annonated with how they are nonsense: 1) Emptiness The idea: Remember item #1 above, how no idea, no thought, even remotely touches “reality”? Being “apolitical” is closer to emptiness than is having a political view. Why? Having some political view is obviously one of those inherently false views. It’s actually worse – it’s a bunch of layers of views, starting from the most basic one of “there is something” and then adding lots of even further deluded layers of “there should be something else,” etc. These views from their most basic to their most elaborate are completely deluded, have no reference to any kind of actual world. So let it go, man! Buddhism doesn’t get into that stuff. In a more memorable quip, someone dismissed my political and social justice concerns as “Much ado about emptiness.” . Why it’s nonsense: A) The idea that no-view is closer to emptiness than a-view misses entirely the point of emptiness. “No view” is just another view – you can’t get off this train with any formulation. You don’t get closer to or farther from emptiness. In fact, sticking to emptiness – that no-view somehow gets it while a-view doesn’t get it – is not just wrong but is a deep Dharma sickness. As Yunmen says, it’s better to have a whole mountain of views of “existence” than just a particle of view of “nonexistence.” But more to the point, B), is just #2 above – Precepts. The bleeding dead bird of thinking Emptiness is a complete teaching. “Much ado about emptiness.” Easy to say about other people’s suffering. So it’s best not to say it. In fact, never say it like that. We know it, we know the deep ground, but the activity is compassion, relation, the relative deluded world of people living and dying. Of course it’s ok for beings to suffer and indeed the whole world to die. That’s the fearlessness of the emptiness side – I know completely that there never has been a “world” anything like what I thought, and even my views of “living and dying” don’t capture it in the least. But we act in the world anyway. We save beings in the dream. We give ourselves wholeheartedly to the welfare of others. That’s not “much ado about emptiness” – that’s actual Bodhisattva practice. That’s the bird, now flying off with some water in its beak to put out the forest fire. When someone is attacking our friends, or our family, or ourselves, we tell them to stop. Even if that means we’ve now had to let go of emptiness and descend into “politics.”

"They turn the tables… and they say, well, Buddhism is actually the scientific religion because we don't believe in a creator God. We don't believe in an immortal, unchanging, essential soul," Thompson tells IDEAS.

"We ground our ethical system on an understanding of cause and effect. We emphasize causality, that things are impermanent, that things are in flux. So they present Buddhism as either not a religion, or as the truly scientific religion."

Rose’s claim for a mutation in the relations of power is also substantiated by another path on which he shifts from second-order observations to observations of the first order. To be sure, he generally operates at the second-order level insofar as he observes how objects of government are made thinkable and actionable by means of governmental rationalities and technologies (Rose 1999, 35). Yet when he drifts to a more positive characterization of “our plural present” (195), Rose replicates some key claims offered by the stories of contemporary cultural theorists and sociologists about cultural differentiation, subpolitics, and aestheticized consumerism. While his approach does not rule out a critical perspective on postsocial, advanced liberal forms of governing, Rose nevertheless emphasizes their positive potentials with respect to social experimentation and alternative forms of political agency: “Within these spaces [of communities], it is possible for subjects to distance themselves from the cohesive discourse and strategies of the social state—schooling, public service broadcasting, municipal architecture, and the like. They can now access a whole range of resources and techniques of subject formation in order to invent themselves, individually and collectively, as new kinds of political actors” (179). This is the precise point in the argument at which Rose does not remain merely diagnostic but explicitly affirms a particular kind of self-inventing subject. The shift from detached second-order observation to affirmative first-order description is complemented by Rose’s invention of what he terms “ethico-politics” (188) to designate the emergent field of contestation and experimental self-creation opened up after the withering of the social perspective and the critique of the welfare state. What is at stake in the view that society as a knowable totality gives way to a form of a sociality constituted by multiple forms of expertise, networks, or communities? What are the costs for political analysis of privileging politics as the “active art of living” that opposes all obstacles to the vital self-assertion of the will to live through active self-creation? (Rose 1999, 283). First, there are of course political costs of what is conceived as no longer possible. They center on the difficulties, to say the least, of referring to the kind of knowledge of society or social structure that has been essential for public policy and provision as remedies against social inequality and its ills and as a condition of exercising civil, political, and social rights. There is a dual displacement occurring: of forms of social knowledge and of questions of the role of the state in resource allocation and the securing of minimum and universal standards. The emphasis on the identifications that form communities, or on aestheticized forms of “ self-creation through somatic individuality” and an “ethic of vitalism” (Rose 1999, 283; 2001, 18) appears to sideline, if not to rule out, the salience of this kind of knowledge and these political questions. In this respect the “birth of community” seems to manifest the long-noted affinities between postmodern discourses on cultural diversity and societal differentiation, on the one hand, and neoliberal strategies for dismantling and transforming welfare services and ossifying and exploiting differences (Taylor-Gooby 1994). Arguments for granting more space to the diversity of civil society, for instance in the shape of “ethico-political movements,” run the risk of ossifying differences of a social nature. While Rose would no doubt insist that differences are in part governmental artifacts and identity the result of active identifications, this still leaves open the wider political ramifications of the enthusiasm for a politics of plural communities beyond the state. There are also analytical costs, as pointed out by urban sociologists and geographers (Brenner, Peck, and Theodore 2010). It is simply very difficult to move from the local, the unique, the contingent, and the relatively unstructured to extralocal contexts, systems, and fundamental question of what kind of active, sovereign state power needs to be exercised for the potentially lethal conflicts of civil society to be kept in check and for individuals to gain the capacities to participate and engage in social and political life. We are left with only a fluid and experimental form of postsocial politics. In Rose’s more recent writings the bracketing of the state is sustained, although the concept of ethicopolitics seems to have receded. In their introduction to the collection Governing the Present, Rose and Miller (2008) make clear their initial ambitions with these studies. The republication of these works, they explain, aims “to counter some of the abstract forms that some of these ideas have taken, and to demonstrate how our conceptual tools were forged in the analysis of some very specific problem fields” (21). Hence, the emphasis on localized and empirical analysis is repeated and thereby underlined. Rose and Miller also state their ambition to avoid economic reductionism and all-embracing, epochal descriptions, and their desire to develop a non—state centered perspective on power. In the place of structural analysis (derived from Louis Althusser) and its tendency to reduce social relations and subjectivities to their function in reproducing economic relations, they claim that they wished to open up more sophisticated ways of addressing “the multiplicity and variability of modes of subject formation” (4) and the specificity and irreducibility of programs of governance operating within various domains. One way of doing this is by concentrating on “minor figures” and their specific activities since it is “only through their activities that states, as they were termed by those who seemed untroubled by the meaning of this term, could govern at all” (Rose and Miller 2008, 5). Rather than the state apparatus as point of origin, the focus should be on “a power without a center, or rather with multiple centers” (9). While such an approach could be read as a fruitful way of supplementing or extending the analysis of state politics and policy, it becomes a substitute for it or alternative to it. Under the aegis of this approach studies of governmentality mistake the analysis of regimes of governing—with their rationalities, technologies, modes of subjectification, and different aspirations and ends—for a study of the state itself. Vital Politics and the Art of Living Rose’s subsequent work (2001; 2007) becomes more focused on life and the neurosciences. He first shifts from govemmentality to biopolitics in its several contemporary manifestations, instanced by genetics and genomics, risk screening and pharmacology, and all the way to aesthetic interventions on the body. There he finds that the days of state-administered biopolitics, exemplified by the eugenic drive for biological and moral perfection, are over, succeeded by alliances between, for instance, self-creating consumers and pharmaceutical companies, and a biomedicine that offers products for voluntary bodily improvements and services for risk minimization. Rose is at pains to avoid a purely negative view of this novel “somatic individuality” and its ethics and recognizes the expanded possibilities for autonomy and self-formation offered by biotechnology that “enables us to intervene upon ourselves in new ways” (Rose 2007, 8). The passage from “the social state” to “advanced liberalism” thus holds the promise of more diversified experimentation and contestation of truth claims about biological normality: “Our somatic individuality has become opened up to choice, prudence and responsibility, to experimentation, to contestation—and so to a ‘vital politics’” (Rose 2001, 20). The phrase “art of living” is here given a more substantive anchorage in the very materiality of the body, and the concept of ethicopolitics has been transmuted into “ethopolitics”: “By ethopolitics I mean to characterize ways in which the ethos of human existence . . . have come to provide the ‘medium’ within which the self-government of the autonomous individual can be connected up with the imperatives of good government. . . . While ethopolitical concerns range from those of lifestyle to those of community, they coalesce around a kind of vitalism. . . . In this highly contested domain, somatic individuals are the key actors” (Rose 2001, 18). None of this escapes the earlier dilemmas we have raised. If we follow Rose and regard a politics of “life itself” as a fundamental form of contemporary agency and contestation, then it is difficult to understand how active choices of self-creation can be available without raising the question of the role of the state in ensuring access to a health-care system that includes the innovations of biomedicine, surgery, and the pharmaceutical industries and in ensuring a set of universal standards so that life can be lived in this self-governing way. Otherwise, ethopolitics becomes the preserve of a privileged caste (on either national or global scales) or, at best, highly unevenly distributed. If we admit this, then the conventional character of politics has not been displaced by the discovery of the ever new forms of biopolitics but will be played out in those old appropriation and allocation struggles, which have been at the core of the territorial state’s quest for civil peace and the welfare state’s establishment of social rights. Without the conventional domain of social politics, typically framed in terms of questions of access and equality, ethopolitics is confined to its vitalist, consumerist, technological, and lifestyle elements. It simply amplifies a kind of narcissistic lifestyle concern with the self’s corporeal perfectibility and vital capacities. It is at these intersections that Rose sees the emergence of a new kind of ethical subjectivity in terms of active self-creation in relation to the plasticity of life and corporeality. At such moments the Foucauldian project reminds us of nothing as much as mainstream sociological assertions of “life as a planning project” and of the self-creation of identity in late modern life-politics advanced some years ago by theorists such as Ulrich Beck (1992) and Anthony Giddens (1991; Beck-Gernsheim 1996)—with the added stratum of a plastic biological materiality. Paradoxically, the demise of the social state leaves us not with the positive conception of power advanced by Foucault but with resistance to a highly negative or repressive power, as “all that which blocks or subverts the capacity of others asserting for themselves their own vitalism” (Rose 1999, 283).

If you push any Buddhist in a corner and ask them "What is Buddhism, and what is the goal of Buddhism?" They will say something along the lines of "Nirvana. To alleviate suffering, to find a solution to it, and help the world overcome suffering."

Notice that the goal of Buddhism isn't Truth. It is to alleviate suffering.

In general most religions claim to do works of charity, to help people, to respect and love others, and even to love and protect animals. Christians in particular pay most attention to loving people; not only love those they like but also forgive their enemy. The origin of “love” should come from the Oneness of the most fundamental human nature, and can be traced out easily from Buddhism. Buddhism claims mercy or compassion, which differs from love only in depth and width involved. Love usually gets involved much deeper and wider than mercy or compassion. Love could become hatred but mercy or compassion never does so. Buddhists do works of charity not just for poor people, also for all sentient being of the six ways. That is, they have much broader mercy or compassion. The highest achievement of mercy or compassion would be like that of Kuan-yin Bodhisattva, who obtains the Oneness Compassion or the so-called Same-body Great Pity as described in section 2 above. Thus Oneness should be the ultimate cause for love and mercy or compassion. 7-2. Another kind of consistency between Quantum Physics and Buddhism Our theme is to discuss consistency between Modern Physics and Buddhism using Oneness as the chief subject of discussion. What we have stated is mainly that between Buddhism and Relativity Physics, which is an important branch of Modern Physics. Another important branch of Modern Physics is Quantum Physics. Let me briefly sketch the consistency between Quantum Physics and Buddhism using Emptiness as subject of discussion. Buddhist <Heart Sutra> says: “Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is form”. It means that all kinds of various forms such as mountains, rivers, etc. are of Emptiness in nature and Emptiness is the origin of forms.” In other words all the forms are created from emptiness. In Quantum Physics owing to the discovery of Particle-Wave Duality 23 there comes out the well-known “Uncertainty Principle”. 24 By that it means even in a vacuum state of zero energy (energy E=0) a physical system does have a non-zero uncertainty energy (ΔE≠0). This is the so-called “The Seething Vacuum”, 25 meaning that there must exist energy fluctuation even in vacuum. Also owing to the mass-energy relation (E=mc2 ) of Einstein, fluctuating energy may give rise to mass or matter. That a vacuum can yield matter from nothing is quite in consistency with Buddhist notion. Further the well-known Big Bang theory or “the no boundary condition” describing how our universe was formed claims “creation out of nothing”. 26 This is just as Buddhist statement: all the forms are created from emptiness. 7-3. Conclusion The well-established Modern Physics contains mainly Einstein’s Relativity Physics and Quantum Physics. Einstein’s Relativity deals with Macroscopic phenomena of large scale and large mass such as astronomy and cosmology problems. On the other hand, Quantum Physics treats Microscopic phenomena of small scale and small mass such as molecular and atomic problems. Thus we know from above statements that for either large scale Relativity or small scale Quantum Physics there exists consistency between Modern Physics and Buddhism. This year (2005 A.D.) is the 100 Anniversary year of Einstein’s Relativity. Many academic organizations in the world hold celebration for the Anniversary. Relativity helped Newtonian Physics to upgrade from pure Matter to Mind-Matter Dualism 100 years ago and provides at present the academic foundation for this paper to claim the consistency between Modern Physics and Buddhism. This Anniversary, methinks, is of great significance for the adaption and integration of science, philosophy and Buddhism in the 21th century.

Not all of the “truths” I list are Buddhist doctrines. Some are more like takeaways, clear implications of Buddhist thought. But all of them, I’m arguing, draw substantial corroboration from modern science, including modern neuroscience and psychology, with special emphasis on evolutionary psychology—that is, with special emphasis on the study of how natural selection shaped the human mind.

And speaking of substantial corroboration from modern science: it’s important to understand that, strictly speaking, that’s all science ever offers. There is no such thing as a scientific theory that has been proven to be true in the sense that mathematical theorems are proven true. To be sure, some theories now merit so much confidence that, for practical purposes, we can think of them as if they’ve been proven true. For example, I think the chances of the theory of natural selection being true are significantly greater than 99.99 percent—which is good enough for me. But some theories that merit much less confidence than that are nonetheless the leading theories in their field.

In the United States, we have a lot of work to do to communicate to our children that they are significant because of who they are and not because of where they rank in the hierarchy of things. A distorted sense of significance seeks recognition, fame and the accolades of achievement, not from the perspective of mastering a craft but for the sake of outperforming others and coming in first. Being the “most,” “biggest,” “fastest,” et cetera, is associated with being more significant. The virus of our insignificance has seduced us into dysfunction and has alienated us from ourselves. As a practitioner of dharma and a teacher of mixed African descent, however, I feel quite differently about our true identity: I believe that the liberated mind has no color at all. I believe that in our heart of hearts, we are neither black nor brown, neither yellow nor white, nor pink or any other color. In our liberated mind, we are free; we are beyond color. I am saying this because it is important for us to experience ourselves in both dimensions: the dimension of the fully integrated person who can connect completely to all colors and cultures while recognizing that none of the colors and cultures truly do us justice in our true essence (beyond color or creed), and the dimension of being simply human, as we present ourselves in our natural habitats, embodied as black, brown, or any shade at all. As spiritual beings, we must realize that we are beyond color, that at no time does the color of our skin hold any sway over us. What controls us are our wounds of insignificance. Some of these wounds have been perpetuated by centuries of slavery and colonialism; some of these wounds have been perpetuated by social incompetence, interpersonal ignorance and confusion. Whatever their origin, we must learn to identify and to honor a colorless, liberated heart and mind just as much as our fully embodied, beautiful, black, brown, and white bodies, and heal the trauma of our lack of safety and lack of significance. The promise of the dharma is universal liberation for all, regardless of origin, race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. One of the reasons dharma appeals to so many minorities is its focus on liberation from struggle, pain, and suffering. But, on the path to greater liberation, one challenging part comes in allowing yourself to release your identification with your color and race. I am not suggesting that it is not deeply important and meaningful to own our ethnic heritage or to heal all the shame and resistance to fully inhabiting ourselves. It is both critical and essential. But we also want to dismantle the oppression of being identified with our history of suffering from trauma and insignificance so we can recognize our timeless value in knowing the true identity of our colorless nature, which is eternally liberated and always magnificent. As dharma teachers, we share the message that inside each and every one us, there lies the flawless, colorless nature of awareness and liberation. If we do not share this message, we do all our brothers and sisters a disservice—repeating the injury of reducing us to the color of our skin and restricting their vision of their own liberation. When we manage to enroll someone in a vision of their own healing and liberation, it becomes more interesting to heal the present than to heal the past, and it becomes more interesting to acknowledge wholeness than to become holy. Waking up is a discovery process of who we already are, not a search for who we can become. No less is what we must accomplish if we want to heal the demons of our past with regard to race in this world. I have traveled the globe and I have seen wholeness and dignity in all corners of the world. Everywhere, you can find totality and healing, regardless of a person’s socioeconomic state or social position. We are carrying a burden of wounds that have not healed and identities that have not been allowed to re-signify themselves from a ground of colorlessness, soulfulness, and wholeness. How can we have these kinds of conversations about healing when so many people are still walking around amputated from the rest of their own humanity? How can we speak about forgiveness or complete reconciliation when the pain of our own amputation is still tormenting our minds and the wounds are still fresh? Do we even want healing? Do we even want reconciliation? Do we want to belong to each other, to our species, to this world? Or would we prefer to stay alienated and irritated enough to care that things aren’t solved, but not exasperated enough to solve them once and for all? When I embarked on the path of dharma, I thirsted for liberation, not for rehabilitation. I wanted freedom more than I wanted name and stature. And the price for that freedom was no less than everything. “Everything” meant surrendering the sense of belonging to one group of people over belonging to all humanity. I had to abandon my sense of insignificance (according to history) and accept the confidence and significance of being fully present. You cannot remain a black person and realize the meaning of dharma. You cannot remain a white person and awaken to the full potential of your true nature. You cannot elevate one gender over another and receive the most precious gift this world has to offer. You are either all in, or you remain a prisoner confined to the walls of your own making. The Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh once said in his poem “Call Me by My True Names”: I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river, and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly. I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond, and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence, feeds itself on the frog. I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks, and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda. 1 To evolve oneself through the practice of wisdom and compassion means to declare one’s willingness to outgrow not only the suffering in our genes but also the causes of the suffering. To become truly human thus calls for us to renounce all amputations, regardless of the underlying bias and experience that caused them. It is deep and vulnerable work and there are no shortcuts. You cannot simply wish your wounds away. An amputated heart and mind do not reconcile through further separation but through the realization of nonduality and the full reintegration of all aspects of itself. Can we be courageous enough to admit to ourselves the experience of amputation? Can we be courageous enough to admit to ourselves the existence of our wounds of insignificance and belonging? Can we be courageous enough to venture on a journey of rediscovering and redeveloping the relationship with ourselves, with humanity, and with the planet, until we experience those relationships as ones of love, respect, significance, and belonging? Can we overcome the experience of being a tourist in this life, entitled to taking whatever we want from our experience and leaving only trash behind, and instead transform into pilgrims on a sacred journey, traveling in life to reconnect with all our amputated parts until our sense of wholeness is fully restored? Can we step into all of who we are, fully embodied, and discover our colorless, liberated self-less being that is ever powerful, gentle, and unharmed as if we had arrived on the very first, timeless day? My practice and work are committed to the deep healing within myself and to the people who choose to trust me to guide them. To me, that is a great honor, because in supporting the healing of just one of us, we are learning to heal us all.

As human beings who have not done the work of reintegrating the many different expressions of our human family or species—the different faces, races, and creeds—we are striding through this planet like the walking wounded. We are amputated from many parts of ourselves that we lost somewhere along the way of our mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical displacement. We are ambivalent as to whether we should seek to love and to reintegrate with what we lost or to hate what we’re missing. The fact that we are amputated and in pain causes us to lash out. And since many people are either unconscious of this or feel unable to reconnect to the missing parts of themselves, we find comfort in the hatred we share for all the amputated parts, leaving us feeling incomplete, disfigured, imbalanced, disabled, and broken. When we are disconnected from our own personal stories as full human beings, we are living in an amputated state. And we can feel it. You can feel it. I can feel it. It feels off, it feels rudderless, and it hurts. The fate of the human amputee is to wander this earth without a sense of wholeness or a true and deep sense of connection and belonging. When we are separated from ourselves and from all the pieces that make up the whole human being, there is only the ongoing search. And since it is impossible to reattach ourselves to our sought-after wholeness outwardly—unless we embark on the inner journey of healing and reconnection from within—we are simply trapped in the feelings of separation and brokenness and we deeply miss our own sense of belonging, whether we are aware or not. The inner signs of this amputated state are isolation, meaninglessness, loneliness, and depression. The outer signs are hatred, division, and violence. We all know what it feels like to carry hatred inside. You do and I do too. Especially among minorities, anger and hatred related to the wounding of the amputated state are common. The amputated state reflects itself in a lack of human dignity, worthiness and deservedness, and as minorities, we often struggle with the anger and hatred born out of a state of perceived victimhood and disempowerment. But the amputated state is just as present in majorities and in people who choose to identify with being so-called privileged. Assuming an identity of privilege can be a telling sign that a person is suffering from the same sense of separation. A person in touch with their wholeness, connection, and integration would feel no need for privilege and would not bear the unawareness associated with it. The experience of perpetration belongs to the amputated state just as much as victimization does. When they play a role in the amputation, “over-privileged” people are just as out of touch with themselves as “under-privileged” people. The anger, hatred and selfrighteousness are as loud and rampant in the hearts of the overclass as they are in the psyches of the underclass. Therefore, I have made it part of my work to practice for the healing of this amputated state and to live that healing within myself. It is a practice to release labels; each day that I sit and hold space for the healing of my own amputation, my body reconnects itself to all mankind ever so slightly more than the previous day. I feel a little less isolated and I deepen my sense of belonging and grace.

Buddhism and Black Liberation A plethora of publications and a few organized gatherings on Buddhism and Black identity illuminate how Buddhism serves the liberation of Black people. Since 2000, with the publication of Rev. angel Kyodo williams’s Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace, Black Buddhists have reflected on their embrace of Buddhism as a path toward freedom. Part personal reflection, part advocacy for healing through Zen practice, williams writes, “the Zen principles . . . can give us direction for addressing our innermost spiritual questions and experiencing their relevance to our lives.”82

Williams’s focus on spreading Zen teachings among Black people was joined by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Lama Choyin Rangdrol, who wrote Black Buddha in 2001, and by Tibetan Buddhist scholar Jan Willis, who also in 2001 published Dreaming Me: An African American Woman’s Spiritual Journey. 83 Willis’s memoir chronicles her travels in India during her college years, when she encountered Tibetan monks. Willis eventually embraced a Tibetan monk, Lama Yeshe, as her teacher, feeling that he understood the parallels between being exiled from Tibet and the oppression experienced by Black Americans. Willis writes, “I should have told him the truth . . . that I suffered; that I was often frustrated and angry; that slavery and its legacy of racism had taken their tolls on me; that I had come seeking help in coping with feelings of inadequacy, unworthiness, and shame. I should have told him that I felt a certain kinship with the Tibetans because they, too, had suffered a great historical trauma and yet seemed able to cope very well and, indeed, even to be quite joyful.”84 In witnessing the resilience of Tibetans, Willis was inspired to heal an internal suffering that was wrought, in part, by the conditions of racism in the United States. Indeed, Willis was keenly aware of the social conditions that led to Black people’s suffering. She could become peaceful and still experience a deep anger triggered by white people who exhibited racism

I want to talk this morning about ‘a soft & flexible mind’. This phrase is said to have been coined by Great Master Dōgen when he was asked what he had brought back from China to Japan. Dōgen lived at a time when Japan was still looking to China for the importation of ‘civilization’. Since the 9th century, Japanese Buddhist monks had been making the dangerous journey by sea to acquire the latest Buddhist teachings then available in the ‘Middle Kingdom’. These monks usually brought back crates of stuff – scriptures & commentaries, paintings, statues, scrolls, religious implements, etc. – all the items deemed necessary to practice the new teachings. Therefore it must have been quite a surprise to hear Dōgen say that all he had brought back was “a soft & flexible mind”. Was this adage original to Dōgen? In the Hōkyōki, a diary of sorts of Dōgen’s initial attribution of this phrase to his Master, Tendo Nyojō, in a conversation about compassion: [Nyojō] “In [the Buddhas’ and Bodhisattvas’] vow to save all sentient beings, they transfer their every merit to the salvation of all sentient beings…[and thus] attain a flexible mind.” When Dōgen asked: “What is this flexibility of mind?” his master replied, “The will of the buddhas and patriarchs to drop the body and the mind leads to the attainment of this flexible mind.” In studying the Lotus Scripture recently, I found several lines which may have inspired Nyojō and Dōgen. We know how devotedly Dōgen esteemed the Lotus Scripture, even calling it the ‘king of Scriptures’. Its words and phrases emphasizing compassion would have easily come to mind. The first instance is in the Skillful Means chapter. The Buddha is explaining the myriad ways people connect to the truth – skillful means – and how even the smallest act of devotion to the Dharma assures one’s eventual full realization – and even already is full realization. After the extinction [nirvana] of buddhas, Humans with good and soft minds for the truth, Such living beings as these Have all realized the Buddha-way. This soft compassionate mind for the truth is what Nyojō and Dōgen are pointing to. It may help to remember that in Chinese and Japanese the same character xin (shin) can be translated as ‘mind’ or ‘heart’ depending on context. Here it is clearly referring to the heart-mind, not the intellective or discriminative mind.We find references to this soft or gentle mind as well in the Immeasurable Life of the Tathagatha chapter: When these sentient beings in faith and humility, honest and forthright in manner, gentle in thought, wholeheartedly yearn to see the Buddha… This reference can also be seen as an echo of that quality advocated in the Metta Sutta: “straightforward and gentle in speech”. The gentle or soft mind is the mind of tenderness highlighted as one of the Four Wisdoms in the Shushogi, based on Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō discourse “Bodhisatta Shishōbō (The Four Ways a Bodhisattva Benefits Sentient Beings)”: “Beholding all beings with the mind of compassion and speaking kindly to them is the meaning of tenderness.” This tender mind is the parental or nurturing mind which Dōgen also teaches in the “Tenzo-kyōkun (Instructions to the Chief Cook).” Like the love of a parent, it is not sentimental, patronizing, or indulgent. This deeply caring mind genuinely wishes for the welfare of the child, just as we do when we treat other beings as if they were our own children. Dōgen says that this kind of mind can have a “revolutionary impact upon the mind of man.” Now let’s examine the flexible mind, which is also described in the Lotus Scripture. A different translation of the above quote from the Immeasurable Life chapter reads: When living beings have believed and [surrendered], Being simple and straight, and flexible in mind, And they wholeheartedly want to meet Buddha…

In Zen, the strength of the bamboo has always been held to be superior to that of the oak. The bamboo bends, it’s flexible. We’re not talking here about bamboo fishing rods, but bamboo that can grow to the size of a person’s arm. Although the oak tree is magnificent and has a deep tap root, it can be blown over by a high wind. In contrast, the bamboo bends, this way and that, depending on the direction of the wind. Likewise, a flood will uproot and wash away the oak, but it can only bend the bamboo. This is the sort of mind that we wish to develop in meditation, one that accords with conditions and does not see them as separate from the Way. I view this flexible mind to be that which Rev. Master Jiyu translated as the ‘kaleidoscopic mind’ in the “Tenzo-kyōkun.” The valuable feature of this translation is that it describes a mind which in its nature—continually shifting and changing—accords with the nature of reality. All is in flux (anicca, or impermanence), and all is brilliant in color and form. A more literal translation of ‘kaleidoscopic mind’ in this writing is “to minutely observe from different viewpoints without absentmindedness.” I don’t know if kaleidoscopes existed in Dōgen’s day, but I feel that this image surely captures what he meant. Dōgen teaches, The chief cook must be so kaleidoscopic that, from only a stalk of cabbage, he seems to produce a sixteen-foot-long body of the Buddha. Even in the present day and age it is possible for him to develop a kaleidoscopic nature to such a degree that he helps all livings things thereby. As in Dōgen’s monastery, the kitchen is still a prime place to learn moving or active meditation. Once when as a novice monk I served in the kitchen at Shasta Abbey, the chief cook asked me to do five things at once, including watching a pot about to boil and going outside to fetch something. All were equally important, some impacting the other trainees working in the kitchen, and we also had the press of getting lunch out on time. My mind had to be one-pointed, single-minded, whole-hearted, quickly responding to each activity. This was not multi-tasking, as there was a still core of meditation that enabled me to intuitively sense which thing needed immediate response, and then the next thing, and so on. The mind had to be empty of any self-concern or self-preoccupation. As the Scripture of Great Wisdom teaches, this is not a negative emptiness, but also not a ‘something’ either. Practicing in this way develops prajna—wisdom, or wise discernment. This flexible mind is also traditionally taught to monks through ceremonial. The instructions for each ceremony are a blueprint which needs to be adapted to the occasion. For example, how one performs a given ceremony in a small temple is going to be of necessity smaller in dimension and possibly shorter in length. And outside the instructions and order of ceremony is the challenge of following a given celebrant on each occasion. Particularly when one is a chaplain (assistant), one has to remain on the alert and sensitive to any unforeseen needs or wishes of the celebrant. The celebrant may wish a window or door opened, ask for an extra stick of incense, give instructions for adding or deleting a scripture, or make an unexpected visit to the Founder’s Shrine. And different celebrants may do things slightly differently. Rev. Master Jiyu taught us that we never do the same ceremony twice, and it is especially the responsibility of the celebrant to make the ceremony live. This is moving or dynamic meditation. Given the same shared root word as dynamite – Greek for ‘power’ – the term ‘dynamic can give one the sense that the ceremony should be powerful, not necessarily loud, but vigorous. Even if one is simply chanting the scriptures for morning service, one puts one’s whole heart and energy into the activity. In a recent senior monks’ tea discussing the pros and cons of changing the schedule and calendar to make it more rigorous, this quality of adaptability and flexibility is what came up strongest for me as the central teaching regarding daily life we wish to impart to younger monks. It’s much more important than how early we get up or the specific activities we take part in. In daily monastic life, this practice is constantly necessary. It’s a vinaya or discipline centered on the heart of meditation rather than rigid adherence to an external set of ancient rules and regulations. Rev. Master Jiyu gave us many examples of this soft and flexible mind. One can view her whole teaching life as devoted to manifesting this quality. She taught us to do what needs to be done, without attachment to personal wishes or ideals. In my novice years at Shasta Abbey, each term would have a different focus: sometimes helping a dying monk, other times constructing a building, yet again once publishing our liturgy book, learning new ceremonial, or just simply doing a lot of formal meditation. And when Rev. Master was old and dying, we learned how to train with the ever-changing vicissitudes of chronic and disabling illness. She gave us a memorable example from her own experience while training at Soji-ji Temple in Japan. During one of the monks’ sesshins, a week normally devoted exclusively to intense meditation and a sacrosanct monastic activity if ever there was one, the monks spent the entire week matching up body parts of victims of a nearby train wreck. I took away from these experiences the importance of responding to the needs of the situation and bowing to circumstances. And these teachings stood me in good stead when I later served as the prior at a small temple where I was continually called upon to respond creatively to a variety of changing conditions. A soft and flexible mind is of course relevant to both lay and monastics and is one of the greatest gifts we can learn through practice in a temple setting. Who does not have a life buffeted by circumstances? Who does not eventually face the changes of illness, aging, and death, when our bodies (and sometimes our minds) do not conform to our expectations? This soft and flexible mind is also the heart of ‘perfect faith’, as Rev. Master Jiyu once explained in a Dharma talk: Perfect faith is full of lightness and acceptance. It is softer than a cloud yet harder than a diamond. It is all these things law of anicca applies as well as the law of no-self….Perfect faith is always changing and always the same, always interesting and always joyful, never seeing an opposite because it has indeed gone beyond the opposites. Opposites can only exist when we have not yet transcended them; when they have been transcended, every day is a good day, as Keizan says, and all work is the work of the Buddha. I’ll close with a final admonition Dōgen offered the chief cook: “All day and all night things come to mind and the mind attends to them; at one with them all, diligently carry on the Way.”

It started before I was born. It began before you were born, too, this turning wheel of racialized consciousness; its tracks are evident across the face of time and the threads of human connection. Let us propose it is not an intractable condition but a legacy of human thought, speech, and physical behaviors. Our racialized consciousness and the suffering and confusion associated with it need not continue. This moment in our social history compels us to invite ourselves into a path of discoveries, learning, and practices to transform our karma.

I ponder the wheel, an ancient invention of great practicality. Its shape appears throughout human history in art, culture, science, and spiritual traditions. It has provided a powerful image and metaphor for the spiritual journey of humanity. In the Buddhist tradition, the wheel is a primary symbol of an eightfold path of healing and transformation leading to freedom. But the wheel also describes a repeating pattern of suffering called samsara, a Sanskrit word referring to the experience of wandering, trapped through endless cycles of suffering.