A Paradox
In Blaise Pascal's thoughtful ramble, Pensees, humanity has the confirmation that "man is a paradox"; that we, as living and breathing humans are, and always will be, mismatched. The thread is there, in "What a piece of work is Man" from Hamlet, in Siddartha, and yes, in Pensees, in a little section entitled "Man and the Universe." It is in this mismatch that we are truly human and able to attain a higher understanding. As humans, we must understand what we can do, and know what we cannot. This standard is not static; it has changed as our species matures. Characterized by zeitgeist, each work describes man in terms of the state of our union, of how our thoughts and perceptions are held together. These mismatched effects are exacting in their complementarity; the works match because they are accurate and because they are opposing, giving us a newer and wiser Man after each reincarnation.
In his ode, whether embittered or not, Prince Hamlet does a fine job of lauding the state of Man. It is the Renaissance, and like it or not, Man is the center of the universe. Michelangelo celebrates the human body through sculpture, Haydn praises the gracefulness and stately air of nobility in music, and then there is Shakespeare. Man is calamity at its best, the affirmative answer to "To be or not to be?" in every one of its actions. Man is "like a god, the beauty of the world." With this view, man is supreme, raised over all: "..how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties.." It is infallibility; it is the Pope in all men expressing their correctness over everything (and everybody) else, "..the paragon of animals." Yet, Hamlet has one more silly question: "what is this quintessence of dust?" Even with all our good graces during life, we lose it all heading into death. Once the body is gone, the man is forgotten. Cut to: King Claudius, his smiling wife, his princely son, his charming court. Outside, King Hamlet molders away, brave and forceful, but lost to the winds of change. It is ironic that what we see as power and wisdom is nothing more than..nothing.
Pascal is a charming fellow. His almost stream-of-consciousness-like words seem to express what comes after the hanging mouth effect that Hamlet leaves behind. What is Man, after all? We are wise, but does that mean nothing once we are gone? In "Man and the Universe", Blaise Pascal, genius extraordinaire, is blunt: "A nothing in comparison with the infinite." How wonderful to know that we are actually nothing in the first place. We harbor illusions of grandeur: "what a chimera, what a novelty, what a monster, what a prodigy!" That's one question answered. But wait! that is not all; man is more than that. Man has only one hope as a species: the frightening capacities of the mind. We think! "Our whole dignity consists in thought." It is another paradox to consider: we are smart enough to think, yet Pascal must point out to us that we don't count for anything to that cold, unmoving and unsympathetic brute of a universe. It is the rationalist speaking. Pascal's age was one of science; his contemporaries had seen the wonders of the skies, had proved our physical limitations, and learnt that optimism was the key. Humans are not alone; no, to live, humans must think of everyone together, the General Will, if so inclined. Through experimentation and classification, we could control nature. That was our power trip, to control everything but what we could not: ourselves.
So, in the journey to enlightenment, Man has learned slowly that he is nothing. What is there then to this life that nothing can be so valuable? The common experience, Siddartha tells us: "other faces, many faces, a long series, a continuous stream of faces." To round out this new conception of man, a new traveler has come out of the wilderness to direct us. It is the Buddha of Hesse's imagination, a new spiritual guide to the common people. Through experience, the disciples learn, we can attain wisdom. Man knows nothing, has never known anything, but can, only by admitting he knows nothing. Man must suffer, for how did the American colonists become happy? How about the French people, after living through the Committees of Public Safety, and how about the poor laborers, forced to live in crowded shacks and work in the worst of conditions to earn enough money to continue for another day in hell? From suffering comes redemption. Man must search for his Self, and not for the world, and not for his perception of power: "although the paths took him away from the Self, in the end they always led back to it." It is the idea of an untamed nature, one in which the individual is emphasized. Man is a brotherhood, learning through experience, learning through ideals, striving for Samsara, and through that, Nirvana. To achieve this, the Self must "dispel the conception of time, to imagine Samsara and Nirvana as one.."
It is proved we can think, that we can control others, that we can control nature, but now Man must face the final task: controlling ourselves. We have been through the purification fires several times, but the last obstacle is that of contemplation of self-destruction. If we are nothing, why should we live? Pascal poses to us a difficult dilemma, one in which we are in "eternal despair of knowing either their principle or their end." Here again, another facet of complementarity rears its solemn head. Calm Siddartha tells us we need not think of death, or of forlorn perfection, because "it was necessary for me to sin..in order to love the world, and no longer compare it with..some..perfection..everything is necessary."
Through our mad existence as exercises in frustration, we have searched for, and found, many answers to our questions. In their very essence, however, these answers have changed to become questions again for the next generations to ponder. The intellectual arrogance of the Renaissance becomes the universal ignorance of the rationalist which becomes the calm Om of the spiritualist. It is a voice, albeit small one, that we have heard from the tortured deals of Hamlet, from the logical mind of Pascal, and from the despairing - now new and happy - Siddartha. Throughout all of our paradoxical lives, we have learned to adapt, to control what the ongoing cycle of life demands we control. The human race has slowly digested the fact that we are nothing to the universe and must suffer, but yet we are everything to ourselves. Because we think, we have power, and we have ethics to guiding us to use these powers over nature, science, and everything else, to think well and strive for Nirvana - as newer and wiser beings should. Like pieces to humanity's puzzle, Hamlet, Pensees and Siddartha fit together to explain our ever-changing existence, including all the mismatched borders and rough edges. This paradox has one very satisfying component common to all three, stated best by Siddartha: "It seems to me that love is the most important thing in the world..to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect."