“Eased with Being Nothing”

In the last act of Richard II, by William Shakespeare, the protagonist declares:

Thus play I in one person many people,
And none contented.  Sometimes am I king;
Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar, and so I am.
Then crushing penury persuades me I was better when a king;
Then I am kinged again, and by and by
Think that I am unkinged by Bullingbrooke, and straight am nothing.
But what e'er I be, nor I, nor any man that but man is
With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased with being nothing.

I began this essay several months ago and stopped midway through. Shakespeare conveys his profoundly Buddhist wisdom in the above passage, and I was struck by the existential truth when I read it. Richard II gives this soliloquy at the end of the play, after he has been overthrown by a general of the army, Bullingbrook. He gives these lines from inside the dungeon, awaiting his death. The final lines echo like a Zen koan:

But what e'er I be, nor I, nor any man that but man is
With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased with being nothing.

I stopped writing the essay because I had become disenchanted. At the time, I believed that my efforts were better spent on writing a novel, a project I’ve abandoned since then. Even though my friends enjoy my essays and encourage me to keep writing them, I have this fixed idea that essay-writing is not creative enough.

You see, I have far-flung ambitions to become a creative writer. Writing essays would eat up the time I could devote to more creative endeavors, poems, short stories, novels. To me, it seemed, there was a fixed amount of hours in the day and by that logic I could only get so much done. I drove myself mad thinking in these terms, and no matter how much time I had, it was never enough. From his essay, “If We Loved Time”, Charles Van Doren writes:

The fear of time -- of time lost, of time wasted -- is a mortal disease. It shortens a life to an instant -- this instant -- which will be followed by other instants that are equally fleeting. There can be no joy in moments that are carefully measured and doled out.

What I discovered was that my mood, and not the amount of time I had, determined my productivity. If time did make a difference, it was usually when I had less of it and not more. As far as writing goes, if you’re in the right frame of mind, a good draft happens rather instantaneously. You don’t even think about time; time disappears.

And yet, time often seems to stand in our way toward becoming someone. In order to become such and such I must invest a whole lot of time, and then, maybe, someday I will become rich, educated, enlightened, or whatever I want to become. I gave up writing this essay because I thought there wasn’t enough time to accomplish everything. My destiny seems to get shaped by these small decisions I make, of paying more attention to one thing, less to another. If I think of time as finite, it’s because I’m trying to conceive of myself as a finite person. This is how, both consciously and unconsciously, I become things; or in Shakespeare’s words, “Thus play I in one person many people”.

But what happens inevitably in the process trying to become something is that I become disenchanted. I realize that this position is no better than the one I left it for. Or I come up against so many obstacles along the way that frustration and weariness destroy me. There’s also the possibility that in the quest to become something, I meet its opposite. That’s what happens to Richard II in the play. For these reasons, I don’t envy movie stars, multi-millionaires, or famous people. I understand that there is nobody on this earth who has it better than anyone else. Why? Because, when you get down to it, we are all human; and to be human means to be nothing. Naturally, this provokes a great deal of frustration in us, and we rebel against our true nature. We must be somebody at whatever cost. Please tell me I am something.

But paradoxically that thing I want so badly to become cannot bring me happiness. To find true contentment, according to the Bard, you must be “eased with being nothing”. On most days, however, it seems I’d rather be tense and nervous and feel as if I’m something, rather than be “eased with being nothing”. If you took a sample of my day-to-day thoughts, you’d hear the tape playing “become, become, become” because that’s what my spirit is craving, unfortunately. There is a sense of urgency in my being, a voice that tells me I ought to do this and I ought to do that, ad infinitum. Until I accomplish these (often arbitrary) tasks I will not feel as though I made the most of my day.

Sometimes I think that I’m more obsessive-compulsive than most people. But then I look around and notice that obsessive-compulsiveness and addictive behavior is the general malaise of our anxiety-ridden culture. We are living in an era when are overloaded with facts, information, and knowledge about the world. We feel our little corner of the universe shrinking daily and we scurry to defend it. So I design a fabulous My Space page or make a shocking You Tube video and hope somebody, anybody, notices me.

Do I ever know if I’ve reached my ultimate goal? Unfortunately, there is nothing substantial about being a person. It’s like wearing a costume. Set a goal for yourself and accomplish it. The only thing left to do is to set another goal. My old accomplishments seem stale by now. I must create something new! I’m striving for a bit of stability, a bit of permanence, but it’s not happening. Ceaselessly one moment flows into the next, and I never feel as if I’m completely there. Or if I do, I get brief glimpses of who I am, brief twinges of feeling I’m somebody but not quite. According to Buddhists, our desires to become propel us into an endless cycle of birth and death. What do Buddhists mean by birth and death? To me, “birth” implies a sense of accomplishment, of possession; “death” implies a sense of loss. We gain and lose, succeed and fail, live and die, over and over again. The process goes on endlessly repeating.

It may seem like a cosmic pun on man that God should create a scenario where humans can only be happy when they let go of trying to become something. What an existential challenge! The more I confront my own obsessive-compulsiveness, the more I realize the futility of my way of life. A mountain of stress, for what? Sometimes I wonder, “Can I escape the cycle of birth and death even if I wanted to?”

Luckily, I can. We have all had moments like Richard II, when we drop out the cycle of birth and death. We enter a transitional space, a liminal space. This space stands between birth and death, between desire and becoming. Right after an emotional breakdown, I can feel an expanding sense of openness and possibility. I’m not tied down to an existence and I can feel myself spreading out and hovering over everything.

Shakespeare calls this state “eased with being nothing” because it’s a state of tranquility. I am nothing in this moment and my thoughts seem to die a natural death. I may breathe deeper or look around with a growing sense of appreciation for the world. There’s nothing I want right now. I don’t want to change anything about myself or my situation. I don’t want to improve anything, or get anywhere. I seem to understand, there is nothing more to life than this.

Mindlessly I step back onto the treadmill of birth and death. But at least I can say that I know what Shakespeare is talking about.

2/3/2008

CRA