Imagine you are condemned to repeating one act over and over. Imagine that this one act is of Herculean proportions. Such as rolling an enormous rock up a steep hill only to reach the top and have it roll back down again. You return to the bottom of the hill and begin again.You have to repeat this one absurd act for all eternity. What if you saw someone performing this madness, what if you were condemned to doing this yourself?
Such a punishment was awarded Sisyphus, a mythic Greek King who was none to popular with the Gods on account of the fact that he messed with their minds with his outrageous flamboyant behaviour. With tricks and pranks such as capturing Hades, God of the Underworld & Death, who had been dispatched by Hades's brother the almighty Zeus to arrest Sis for crimes against the Devine. Sis convinced the God of the Underworld to show him how the handcuffs worked where by the non too bright Hades cuffed himself instead. This lead to unforseen circumstances in the realm of mortals.With no one to claim the dead, soldiers ceased to die on the battle field, which made the whole idea of war a complete farce. It wasn't until the intervention of angry Ares the God of War that Sisyphus released the humbled & humiliated Hades. Then all returned to normal for awhile with Sisyphus finally getting his over due punishment.
Now it is the nature of this particular punishment that we turn to philosophical writer Albert Camus, who has in the tradition of existentialist writers like Kiekegaard, Kafka, Heidegger & Satre el al, tried to understand how one is to deal with the absurdity of life.
An Absurdity because Life has an absurd dimension to it. That is, once you are conscious of it.
For Camus at least, it was the observation that there is a stark contradiction between the Reason of man and the Unreasonable world in which man lives. In his Le Mythe de Sisyphe, (The Myth of Sisyphus) an essay on the absurd, he admits the absurdity of trying to find meaning in a meaningless world.
He argues it is not that the world in and of itself is absurd, or even the act of thinking, but in their juxtaposition. When we try to meet with pure reason unreasonable events that appear to contradict our expectations of the way 'Things' should be, we suffer.
See posting "Happeness" (Dec 4th).
Metaphor & abstraction is often the best we can do in the face of this kind of subversive contradiction. One example for dealing with Absurdity, in this case my own is: by seeing as Shakespeare did that "All the Worlds A Stage" If thats the case then its all a Play, anything can happen (there's the logic of it) that its a tragedy and a comedy both at the same time ( there's the unreasonableness of it) completes the paradox . It is this paradoxical thinking that is the solution, for the mind wishes it be either this or that, not this AND that, and especially not, at the same time.
Back to Sis our Rock & Roller. Here is a man, a sentient being who is performing an absurd act endlessly, how to deal with it? Well Camus supplies possibly the only solution to this abominable predicament other than suicide. He says:
"One must imagine Sisyphus happy"
And here is the brilliant release to life's suffering once you have seen its absurd side. When you have viewed the umpteenth performance of the 'Play' your 'PLAY' from the wings of the theatre and not from the stalls or from the balcony.
BE HAPPY.
JUST THAT.
Even in the face of what ever happens to happen. Over and over again.
Buddha might have said don't look for meaning in 'things' you will only find confusion , contradiction, change and much repetition out there. Rather look within, find peace inside yourself, in the face of what seems to happen out there.
Out there can be scary. We see it all around us, "Shit Happens" is a familiar mantra we use to appease the anxiety of the sudden contradictory event. The Black Swan as it has been called by Economics Philosopher & Epistemologist Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The impact of the highly improbable, the so called 'random' event is as unsettling as it has always been for mankind to deal with.
But thats another story about the absurdity of this world, lets return to Sis.
He is still there rolling his rock up that hill only to watch it roll back down again.
Now it takes a compassionate intellect of the caliber of a Camus, to be interested in what might have been the thoughts of Sis as he walked back down that hill.
What was he thinking, feeling, saying to himself under his labored breath?
" Man this rock rolling is getting me in shape"
" Been doing this for so long I got Attention Surplus Disorder"
" How does it feel?
How does it feel, to be on your own
With no direction home
A complete unknown
Just like a rolling stone."
Hey man thats Dylan !!!
Sorry bro .....
Who knows, but our little lives are not that different in many ways to this absurd action. We persist in rolling our rocks up the hill, only to watch them roll down, then we roll them back up again and again. By rolling our rocks i mean believing that this or that particular 'thing' will bring happiness in a world that provides an unlimited number of special things to distract you from real PEACE.
Let me ROCK your world.
And we all wanna be Rock Stars. This is the futility of attainment.
See posting " Wheels of Samsara" (Oct 18th).
What finally pops you out of this Sisyphus suffering, and gets your head above water so's you can see where you are is AWARENESS. Full cognisence of what you ARE doing again and again and again.
It is the red wake up pill of the Matrix.
In a word Consciousness.
We all loose that from time to time, actually a lot of the time, so don't get upset or pissed with yourself when the world rolls you back again. The world didn't DO anything.
It was You who just kept on rollin along.....
And when you do wake up to the charade, to realise what you are doing, and may well continue to do; just at that moment : Be Happy
Be Happy for no reason at all.
Be happy for no little or big rock, how ever far you have rolled it, or have yet to roll it.
Realise everyone else is rolling their precious rocks.
Realise there is a lot of rocks out there. A very lot of rocks.
Realise Rock Rolling is Absurd.
It is not reasonable.
It is not unreasonable.
Its hopeless but not serious.
It is a tragic comedy.
What else can you do,
but imagine Sisyphus & yourself Happy.
{thanks be to LC for reconnecting me with this wonderful Myth
& for ACIM insights}
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