The Samurai share Sartre's view that one must have a fundamental purpose to make life meaningful. In Tsunetomo's The Hagakure, he states,human life is a short affair. It is better to live doing the thing that you like? (qtd. In Moore and Bruder 629). This idea is greatly influenced by the Zen Buddhist monk Dogen. He urged people to spend the time they have in pursuit of a worthy cause,a single objective that merits an all-out effort? (Moore and Bruder 619). Dogen and the samurai also believed thathumans exist in a world of constant and unpredictable change? (Moore and Bruder 624) in which suffering and fear are common problems. Sartre also share the belief that the world is consisted of uncertainty and unpredictability.
Arthur Schopenhauer, who greatly influenced the thoughts of Sartre, shared similar beliefs in the Buddha's viewpoint on human experience. Schopenhauer believed in a distinction between the world we experience and the underlying reality. According to him, this distinction can be found within a person's will. This will is considered to be an irrational and impersonal force within us and is the source for the irrationality. He believed that one of the most evident manifestations of this will is in all creatures, he suggests it is the will to reproduce. He took onthe Buddhist conception of theveil of Maya? and declares our experience of the world to be largely illusion? (Solomon 229). The assumption of the will as irrational makes our perception a relative illusion. Schopenhauer, like the Buddha, perceived the world of experience to be an illusion. The irrationality of our will, which shapes our experiences, is what causes suffering in our lives. Both viewed our experiences to be a source of our suffering.
Schopenhauer's solution to his existence in an irrational world resembles the Buddha's pathway of liberation. Liberation in the Buddhist perspective means freeing oneself from the world of illusion and living reality as it truly is.
