Energy and the Object: Desire and Suffering

Karolus Cothraige Gonxha Arnulfo Ceuta Isayevich Forgione was a contemporary of Spinoza, but living in self-imposed exile in a Cretan cave.  While little is known of Forgione’s life, we do know that he despised Spinoza (in a manner reminiscent of Kierkegaard’s hate of Hegel), being temperamentally disinclined to systemization and being equally driven to adumbrate the philosophical fragmentation of the twentieth century.  Despite living as a severe hermit, he was known to develop close relationships with various members of some of the natural species which frequented his cave, they finding him to be a warm, receptive, and vaguely entertaining companion.  We use the Papyrus Stuttgart Linear C text, the most commonly accepted most reliable source for this fragment in Forgione studies.

“Desire,” the first part of Energy and the Object, was showcased here in July 2010.  The Secular Sadoo is pleased to continue Forgione’s odd—some would say deviant—exploration into matters usually best left unexplored.

2.      Desire and Suffering

2.1.   The Buddha correctly identified desire and suffering, but he incorrectly assumed the equation should and could be broken.

2.1.1.      The equation is life’s; to attempt to break it is to strive for death.

2.1.2.      The one who attempts to break the equation still has desire, but his desire is turned against his body as opposed to being against other bodies.

2.1.2.1.            Against and For are incestuous siblings in the Preposition family.

2.1.2.2.            Who hasn’t loved his body by rejecting it?  And who hasn’t hated others through consummation?  Only he who is an Adjective¾that cloned genetically modified family of qualifiers.  Slip into his extended family’s picnic¾anyone can if he qualifies; slip into the modifying swamp.

2.1.3.      The cessation of suffering has been made a consequence of the cessation of desire, but this is only true for the one who strives to feel desire’s circumference and only true for this one in those moments of feeling.  The world is larger than these feelings and if the world were to shrink to them, it would end.  There is one world which is comprised of infinite worlds¾a feeling of the cessation of desire and suffering is only one of these, a description of this feeling another.

2.1.4.      The nature of desire is to strive for what doesn’t exist.

2.1.4.1.            Suffering is the distance between the one who desires and what is desired.  The more impossible his desire, the greater his suffering.

2.1.4.1.1.      This is why Christ is the ultimate sufferer, for he desires God (perfection)¾the truest impossibility.

2.1.4.1.2.      Christ suffers more than Buddha, for Buddha can achieve his desire through death, but Christ’s desire is frustrated by death¾Christ desires perfection in life.

2.1.4.2.            The common sufferer, the shadow of Christ, does not reduce the distance between himself and what is desired, but places a veil of flesh between them.  It is this veil that makes him common, for the veil is society¾desire’s commodity exchange.

2.1.4.2.1.      The one who knows the veil is a veil and yet maintains it possesses superior spiritual power over the one who believes the veil is the desired.

2.1.4.2.2.      The veil is common, but the relationship one maintains with the veil determines the desirer’s rarity or, in classical terms, beauty.

2.1.4.3.            All that is considered worthy in human history either attempts to remove the veil (what we call the spiritual) or believes in it only as a utility function (the political or sexual).  Buddha and Christ are symbols of the spiritual, Caesar of the political, Don Juan of the sexual.

2.1.4.3.1.      Political and sexual masters place the weight of suffering on others through desire, the spiritual on themselves.  Regardless of where suffering is placed, its weight is equal.

2.1.4.3.2.      The preexistent scales of the world have been formed to give more weight to each unit of spirit than each unit of utility.  This is what is meant, and the only true thing that is meant, by good’s superiority¾all other meanings are sentimental.

2.1.4.3.3.      Spiritual mathematics follow formulae that mock the laws of physical mathematics, even as the latter mock the former and each fears each as each erects a world inimitable to the other, seen by the other only in that ultimate instrument of death, the mirror.

2.1.5.      In desire, non-desire is desired; in non-desire, desire.  But I speak again of centers and circumferences.

2.1.6.      Desire’s suffering has been shown through religion.  But with religion discredited, geriatric or subsidized and subsidiarized by business, where can it be shown now?

2.1.7.      The Buddha then was right and wrong (the more right and wrong, the greater the teacher, for the more he highlights tension, the only truth).

2.1.7.1.            He was wrong in thinking desire and suffering should and could be separated.

2.1.7.2.            He was right, however, in disbelieving in the veil, in that he was one driven to show the texture of a certain brand of disbelief and disbelief is a rare and legitimate relationship with the veil.

2.1.7.2.1.      The veil defines the one who disbelieves in it as much as that-which-is-behind-the-veil defines those who believe only in the veil.

2.1.7.2.2.      That which is not believed in (veil or that-behind) is the soil to the weeds and flowers of belief.

2.1.7.3.            Buddha was right in pointing to that-behind not as any that but as not-that¾the not-that behind the that.  Christ and Plato pointed to a That behind the that¾that greater impossibility.

2.1.7.4.            Shakespeare is great partially because he provided the first comprehensive secular description of the not-that behind the that.

2.2.   True humanity, and thus divinity, is granted only to those who fear neither desire nor suffering, neither do they crave them¾they simply live them.

2.2.1.      The religious founders of East and West were such¾early explorers of desire incarnate; their words may have played on desire’s surfaces advocating different laws, but they inhabited desire and by inhabiting became their habitation.

2.2.2.      Regardless of his words’ content, the great teacher is desire made incarnate in the realm of spirit.

2.2.2.1.            This is technically impossible, for desire should only be incarnationally possible in flesh, where it is expected and at home.

2.2.2.2.            But the realm of spirit doesn’t care for technical laws; it wanders where it wills.

2.2.2.3.            We see, we know, desire in the great teacher, but of a qualitatively different kind than when we desire flesh.  This difference is what makes this teacher great.

2.2.3.      In atmospheres of discourse of desire, where all is spoken and seen desire and the desire for desires of speech and sight, where can one flee to find a place where desire is silent?

2.3.   In the hard ambiguities of the world, justice is distributed through the courts of suffering.  Through desire, acclaimed judge and silent, humans receive not what is their due, but desire’s portion.

2.3.1.      Above religion’s horrible hopes and business’s cold securities, desire randomly determines the world’s oppressions.

2.3.2.      Desire is justice; there is no more unjust judge.

2.4.   Desire breeds desire, suffering breeds suffering.

2.4.1.      Desire in breeding adds texture to the veil, or in other words adds to humanity’s mask collection.  Thus in breeding desire adds mass to the world.

2.4.2.      Suffering in breeding is constant¾it maintains the same mass now as it did at the beginning of time.  Suffering defies mathematics:  it multiplies but never increases.

2.5.   The human project is not to eliminate desire and suffering but to become them.

2.5.1.      We are destined to suffer and desire.

2.5.2.      Only by accepting desire and suffering (discomfort, loss, alienation, incompletion), do we stop fighting them and give ourselves over to their random rule.

2.5.3.      This becoming is the divine project.  If we, individually and collectively, become desire and suffering, we abdicate the need to enact our desire or seek vengeance for our suffering.

2.5.3.1.            Technology and art are the couple who can facilitate the appearance of progress toward completion.

2.5.3.1.1.      But while technology increases desire and suffering through its global and instantaneous mirror production, it equally ensures they remain infinitely distant by placing them within another skin, the skin of the machine.

2.5.3.1.2.      Meanwhile, art only facilitates such an appearance for those for whom art and names belong in the same metaphysical house (which, admittedly, are the physical majority).

2.5.3.2.            This becoming is impossible to complete.

2.5.3.2.1.      If it were completed, it would no longer be a becoming.

2.5.3.2.2.      If it were completed, we would not have become suffering, for we would not be alienated¾that which simply is is not separate from itself.  Yet we are becoming more separate from ourselves or from what we feel is or was ourselves, our very definition being (or becoming) that which is separate.

2.5.3.2.2.1.            This separateness is a kind of holiness, and the only holiness we will be offered.

2.5.3.2.2.1.1.      In the ultimate ironic twist, alienation becomes holy.

2.5.3.2.2.1.2.      Against all philosophy, religion and psychology, all systems and yearnings of healing and wholeness, we become truest and best as we cast ourselves in the sea of sin.

2.5.3.2.2.1.2.1.            This casting cannot be active, for such is a rebellion against healing and wholeness, and all rebellions participate in the perpetuation of the rule they attempt to break.

2.5.3.2.2.1.2.2.            This casting must be passive, a falling, a union with our separation.

2.5.3.2.2.2.            What becomes possibility is never what was possibility.

2.5.3.3.            We cannot become desire and suffering, but only desire to become them.  This desire includes their absolute incarnation in us and their absolute eradication from us.

2.5.3.3.1.      While the religious past focused on their absolute eradication, the techno-aesthetic future focuses on their absolute incarnation.

2.5.3.3.2.      Both will fail, but both must be tried.

2.5.3.3.3.      At the end of both attempts, how will the new be defined?

2.5.4.      To accept may be to negate, to negate may be to accept.  If we were desire and suffering, we might know.

2.6.   True¾desire leads to suffering, but suffering also leads to desire.

2.6.1.      Desire and suffering are like two business partners who have formed an alliance in the world of spirit, but if the alliance is broken, life ends.

2.6.1.1.            Against all nature and science, spirit rules physics.

2.6.1.2.            Nature and spirit are like two parallel kingdoms¾neither of which has heard of the other, neither of which has any knowledge of the other, but both of which utterly control the other’s destiny.

2.6.2.      Equally, the attempt to eliminate suffering or desire leads to suffering and desire.  All paths lead there, so one might as well accept them.

2.6.2.1.            Acceptance is dissimilar to seeking.

2.6.2.2.            Seeking fulfillment or removal is still seeking.

2.6.2.3.            Seeking. Accepting.  Is the difference between these the difference between society and nature?  Isn’t the human that which is both and neither?

2.7.   If one could experience desire as equally suffering and suffering as equally desire, names would become like art in a gallery of nature.

2.7.1.      But this would require the experiencing one to know nature in ways that have become impossible externally.

2.7.2.      The only remaining gallery of nature is the unseen one within.  To cultivate this garden and place art within it¾who can do this?

2.7.3.      This union¾of nature and art, desire and suffering, names and namelessness, striving and sacrifice¾within the garden of oneself is to bring Buddha and Christ, East and West, together.

2.7.4.      Such a union does not eliminate desire and suffering, but brings their dimensions into mirrored life, the death-life we live and are, so we can see and groom them.

2.8.   I desire desire, certainly, but I also and equally desire suffering; isn’t this the truth humanity has hidden in the folds of history and each individual in the closets of his dreams?

2.8.1.      To pursue equally desire and suffering, primarily in oneself, secondarily in others, to pursue equally comfort and discomfort¾surely this is the only spirituality, the one uncoded by the past.

2.8.1.1.            Any spirituality of the future, any sacred text that might appear through the holes in the webbed earth, must then include these tensions.  And not just these—but its own antithesis, its own negation.

2.8.1.2.            Uncoded because there was no language to negate language—or rather, in geometric terms, the surfaces available for the code were insufficiently large to begin appearing as a sphere.

2.8.2.      Primarily in oneself because the self must be the prime laboratory for the experimenter and adventurer of new forms of God.  One must feel directly the joys and agonies of suffering and desire.  Without this directness, one is a charlatan.