The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

THE EXISTENTIALISM OF ZEN
as I am 'universal'. But every day, besides these actions, I perform others
which do not serve my vegetative life, which often even impede it, and whose
aim is to make me appear different from every other man, that is to say to
affirm me as distinct from every other man, as a particular man.
Between these two kinds of action lies the frontier which we are
studying. My egotistical state, which carries the fiction of my personal
divinity, makes me regard as senseless my vegetative life and all the actions
by which I serve this life (it is this ensemble which constitutes in my eyes the
contemptible notion of existing) and leads me to see sense only in those
actions which distinguish me (there in my eyes, is the precious, estimable
notion of living). I do not count in my own eyes in so far as I am a universal
man; I only count in so far as I am the individual 'I'. According to my fiction
of personal divinity, to found the sense of my life on my vegetative
phenomena and the actions which serve them is absurd, while to found this
sense on actions which tend to affirm me as separate is sensible. This view is
profoundly rooted in the mind of man.
It is evident to anyone who thinks about it impartially that it is this
opinion which is absurd. It assumes implicitly that my particular organism is
the centre of the cosmos (only the centre of a sphere is unique in its kind
within this sphere; every other point is at the same distance from the centre as
an indefinite number of other points). But only the First Cause of the cosmos
constitutes this centre; and my particular organism is manifestly not this First
Cause. My organism is a link in the immense chain of cosmic cause and
effect, and I can only perceive its real sense by considering it in its real place,
in its real connexion with all the rest, that is to say by considering it from the
point of view of the Universe, in my capacity as universal man and not
particular man, in so far as I am similar to all other men and not in so far as I
am different.
Man achieves existence, but only (as he thinks) because existing is a
necessary condition for living. He eats, he rests, but he does so uniquely
because he cannot otherwise affirm himself egotistically, as distinct; he only
performs commonplace actions, common to all, in order to do something that
no one but he will ever do, he exists in order to live. Basing, thus, the idea of
existing on the idea of living he runs counter to the real order of things since
he bases the real on the illusory. And so the equilibrium of the ordinary
egotistical man is always unstable; this man is comparable with a pyramid
standing on its apex.
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