The Meaning of Everydayness

Published 29 September 2024
Last updated 4 October 2024

Here I am, sitting in a quiet room, typing away. There you are, sitting or standing or what have you: reading this article that caught the eye. Here we are, breathing, being. But what does it mean to be? Existential philosophers such as Heidegger and Sartre would say that ‘to be is to be engaged in a situation’. This means that whether the day is filled with busyness or tranquillity, surrounded by others or in seclusion, exciting or disappointing, we are constantly doing something in one environment or another—being is there. So, what may appear elusive (i.e. being) can be described more concretely as determined by meaningful activities: I reach out my hand for the cup, the cup is to be filled with tea, and the tea is to be drunk to relieve me of thirst. Such are the activities that fill our days.

Becoming: Doing, Having, Being

In fact, such are the activities that have always and will always fill our days for the remainder of our lives. However, anyone who has ever heard about Maslow’s hierarchy—or seen memes of it—would know that at the peak of the pyramid of needs stands self-actualisation. In a word, self-actualisation is to be who one really is. But hang on a second… haven’t we stated that whatever one does, i.e. whether this or that, one remains bound within being? In other words, haven’t we established that ‘to be’ is not a matter of choice? What, then, is the meaning of ‘self-actualisation’ that we have just introduced? We shall now take a brief detour to investigate its significance in order to make plain the meaning of our everydayness.

There are two ways in which we can apprehend the term ‘self-actualisation’: in terms of (1) being, and (2) becoming. In the first case, to think of ‘self-actualisation’ in terms of being is to think of a permanently enduring thing, as a stone is always a stone. However, this is evidently inapplicable to the human being. In the second case, we can conceive of ‘self-actualisation’ in terms of becoming (i.e. ‘self-actualising’) by imagining ourselves as evolving and continually pursuing fulfilment or happiness in every successive stage of life. Note that this second case presupposes instances where the individual is not self-actualised or where the very sense of fulfilment attained at every stage eventually becomes inadequate.

In either case, we are confronted with the question of happiness in everydayness. Indeed, what good does ‘self-actualisation’ do if it is realisable only once in a blue moon—or even once a month/fortnight/week/day? The goal of ‘self-actualisation’, then, is to achieve fulfilment and happiness for the remaining time of our lives, i.e. to be happy. Thus, becoming is a project of being. Yet, it is evident that our finitude denies us this possibility of a static or eternally enduring being. Therefore, we seem compelled to settle for becoming. Hence, we come to apprehend how we fill everydayness not only with ‘useful’ activities while we stay alive but also activities that make us feel alive.

Human-Reality as Projection: Suffering In Action

In becoming, therefore, we project ourselves through our day-to-day activities for the sake of self-actualisation: we do things in order to have a sense of self-fulfilment and to be something (or someone). Thus, our days are filled with doing, having, and being. In fact, we cannot begin to imagine what it means to pass a day without doing anything at all. Hence, the oft-quoted phrase from Pascal: ‘[T]he sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.’ Now, let us imagine what would happen to a man who does sit quietly in his room when he hears an unexpected knock on the door. He may delight in the idea of another’s presence, or he could feel disturbed—this most often largely depends on the mood he finds himself in. Thus, we can see how staying quietly in one’s room can quite often be another instance of doing, that is, of action in general.

Something to do [(emphasis added)]: that’s what was needed. My eyes roamed about, seeking anything which the gaze could seize upon. Ears, nose, body, mind, all were prowling, hunting as the bear or leopard. I kept waiting for something to happen.

You’re being absurd, I told myself. Everything is already happening. Nothing is ever going to happen. The only thing that is happening is your waiting for something to happen. Stop waiting for something to happen and everything will.

And then I caught myself waiting for the not-waiting to happen, and didn’t see any way in which I could make the not-waiting a fact instead of an explanation. Another proof of the impossibility of renunciation.

(Bodhesako, Getting Off, 2012)

Everydayness, therefore, is inseparable from action, or more acutely, it is defined by action—Sartre would say that ‘human-reality’ projects itself through action. Furthermore, since the project of everydayness is that of becoming, one which originally strives to transform itself into (a permanent) being, it is a project that is doomed for failure in its very inception.

The problem of everydayness, then, is synonymous with the problem of suffering. And concerning the problem of suffering, we can elucidate its nuances by examining what Early Buddhist philosophy calls dukkha. Dukkha, which literally translates to ‘unease’ or ‘dis-ease’, is described to be a fundamental aspect of our human condition:

“Now this, [monks], is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.

“Now this, [monks], is the noble truth of the origin of suffering: it is this craving which leads to renewed existence, accompanied by delight and lust, seeking delight here and there; that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for [being], craving for [non-being].

(Saṃyutta Nikāya 56.11, italicised for emphasis)

Let us now attend to the italicised in the first paragraph of the above excerpt: ‘union with what is displeasing’, ‘separation from what is pleasing’, and ‘not to get what one wants’—it is these that we can hitherto consider to constitute suffering primarily. In fact, these three instances reveal the experience of suffering in all its dimensions: the actual and the possible. The first two instances describe the experience of being in contact with the immediate cause of uneasiness in everydayness, whereas the third instance indicates that the first two instances are only the symptoms of the actual problem: our liability to suffering.

Here, some person goes forth out of faith from the home life into homelessness, considering: ‘I am a victim of birth, ageing, and death, of sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair; I am a victim of suffering, a prey to suffering. Surely, an ending to this whole mass of suffering can be known. (Majjhima Nikāya 30, emphasis added)

This is the meaning of everydayness, of the inability to ‘stay quietly in one’s room’, of doing, of action: our tacit apprehension of being liable to suffering at any moment. To be prey to suffering is to be restless in the face of an ever-present possibility of suffering, even when one’s day seems to be going well at present. Every action, then, is an act of resistance. It aims to escape the immediate suffering and, more implicitly, the fundamental liability to suffering.

Phenomenology: Feeling and Craving

The second paragraph of the excerpt from Saṃyutta Nikāya 56.11, on the other hand, delves into the single root cause of suffering: craving. Here, we can ask: ‘What is meant by this term? What is its necessary condition? In regard to what does it manifest?’ This is when we recall: ‘[W]e fill everydayness not only with ‘useful’ activities to stay alive but also activities that make us feel alive.’ Craving is a phenomenon that is directed primarily towards a single phenomenon: feeling (vedanā, the hedonic tone of experience).

“[Monks], when the [ordinary person] is being contacted by a painful feeling, he sorrows, grieves, and laments; he weeps beating his breast and becomes distraught. He feels two feelings—a bodily one and a mental one. Suppose they were to strike a man with a dart, and then they would strike him immediately afterwards with a second dart, so that the man would feel a feeling caused by two darts. So too, when the [ordinary person] is being contacted by a painful feeling … he feels two feelings—a bodily one and a mental one.

“Being contacted by that same painful feeling, he harbours aversion towards it. When he harbours aversion towards painful feeling, the underlying tendency to aversion towards painful feeling lies behind this. Being contacted by painful feeling, he seeks delight in sensual pleasure. For what reason? Because the [ordinary person] does not know of any escape from painful feeling other than sensual pleasure. When he seeks delight in sensual pleasure, the underlying tendency to lust for pleasant feeling lies behind this. He does not understand as it really is the origin and the passing away, the gratification, the danger, and the escape in the case of these feelings. When he does not understand these things, the underlying tendency to ignorance in regard to neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling lies behind this.

“If he feels a pleasant feeling, he feels it attached. If he feels a painful feeling, he feels it attached. If he feels a neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling, he feels it attached. This, [monks], is called an [ordinary person] who is attached to birth, aging, and death; who is attached to sorrow, lamentation, pain, displeasure, and despair; who is attached to suffering, I say.

(Saṃyutta Nikāya 36.6, italicised for emphasis)

In order to make sense of the single root cause of suffering, which we have very briefly outlined to be craving (with regard to the phenomenon of feeling), we shall explore the phenomenon of feeling and its nature in greater detail. Before we dive into the italicised phrases in the above excerpt, allow me to state in brief an attitude of the mind towards feeling that we shall designate by the term ‘sensuality’: wanting pleasure and not wanting pain. The attitude of sensuality is one that is discernible (i.e. directly visible) in one’s own experience, even if it may not be the most noticeable to begin with—this requires sense restraint, seclusion and reflexive investigation, which is beyond the scope of the present essay.

Let us now examine the italicised in the above excerpt in order: (1) ‘Being contacted by that same painful feeling, [the ordinary person] harbours aversion towards it’; (2) ‘[he] does not know of any escape from painful feeling other than sensual pleasure’; (3) ‘He does not understand as it really is the origin and the passing away, the gratification, the danger, and the escape in the case of these feelings.’; (4) ‘When he does not understand these things, the underlying tendency to ignorance in regard to neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling lies behind this.’

In the first place, given the occurrence of a disagreeable perception (through the eye, nose, ear, tongue, body, or mind), a painful feeling arises. Now, why is this painful feeling a problem? It is a problem because it is unwanted. And why is it unwanted? It is unwanted because it is a problem. Thus, we have a vicious circle of a problem with painful feeling that is rooted in our attitude of not wanting it—this is the attitude of craving. Therefore, (1) ‘[b]eing contacted by that same painful feeling, [the ordinary person] harbours aversion towards it’. Crucially, it is important to note that the attitude of aversion towards a painful feeling is directed not merely towards its contingent presence but more fundamentally towards the nature of its manifestation that is beyond one’s control (which is in the domain of possibility, i.e. always possible that it manifests)—we shall hereby denote this nature by the term ‘thrownness’ (to borrow Heidegger’s terminology).

Furthermore, the attitude of craving that we have highlighted is what (2) describes, which exemplifies the principle of sensuality outlined previously. Not knowing the escape from painful feeling, the ordinary person seeks relief from it through the pleasure of sensuality (and knows no other escape). Crucially, (2) is a direct consequence of (3), that is, the seeking relief from painful feeling through the sensual pleasure is due to an ignorance of ‘the origin and the passing away, the gratification, the danger, and the escape in the case of these feelings’. Put otherwise, craving exists in dependence upon one’s ignorance with regard to the nature of feeling—(4) is only an exemplification of this principle. So, what is this nature of feeling that we are concerned about? Before answering this question, let us examine the other two types of feeling, i.e. pleasant feeling and neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant (neutral) feeling.

In the second case (of pleasant feeling), imagine having your favourite food served before you. With the appearance of agreeable sight, smell, taste and touch (texture)—in other words, perception—of it, a pleasant feeling arises. At one point, the appearance of a pleasant feeling is apprehended to be insufficient as one wishes to experience more of it, to prolong it, or to intensify it. Once again, this is the attitude of sensuality—a manifestation of craving. Why is this so? We have previously explored how the attitude of craving towards the painful feeling can (more) easily be identified as an expression of sensuality. Hence, our current task would be to elucidate how the attitude of sensuality manifests more concretely in everydayness when we encounter the pleasant feeling (and subsequently the neutral feeling).

Our everyday attitude that we have in regard to the pleasant feeling indicates to us that the character of resistance inherent in craving is directed not merely towards the appearance of the feeling in itself, but towards its nature. Whereas we suffer from a painful feeling due to the facticity of its thrownness, we suffer before a pleasant feeling due to its impermanence. With the anticipation of a future (i.e. possible) more pleasant feeling, the presently felt pleasant feeling is experienced as unpleasant—a sense of ‘thirst’ accompanies the experience and is felt as painful, a hallmark of craving. With the presence of craving in the experience, one lusts after (i.e. becomes greedy for) the endurance of pleasant feeling that is actually impermanent—herein one suffers.

Existential Modality: Sensuality as a Worldview

Sensuality, being an attitude that we hold with regard to feeling in particular and to the experience in general, is not only a temporary state of mind but an existential modality, i.e. a mode of being of everydayness—it is also a worldview, for which we shall elucidate below. Having explored our everyday attitude with regard to pleasant and painful feelings, let us now discuss the neutral feeling. But what exactly is a ‘neutral’ feeling? In order to make explicit the phenomenon of neutral feeling, we will find it necessary to examine the mood of boredom.

How would you describe the mood of boredom? Perhaps, one can describe it as a sense of uninterestedness: time feels like it passes very slowly; I find the need to draw my attention away from this thing in front of me that makes me feel suffocated, etc. In however ways we describe it, we apprehend a sense of pain concerning it. However, in experiencing boredom, have we actually encountered a painful feeling? The answer would be no.

Reading a thirty-page work-related document, for example, is not painful in and of itself. But in perceiving a more agreeable alternative to it, such as reading thirty pages of a comic book, for example, then reading the work-related document is felt painfully. Here, we are again referred to the existential domains of the ‘actual’ and the ‘possible’ and, moreover, confusing disagreeable perception with painful feeling—and in a previous case, confusing agreeable perception with pleasant feeling. That is, when experiencing boredom, we are inclined to distract ourselves from what is presently felt by seeking to replace the immediate perception with any one of a myriad of possibilities. Thus, one dwells in the neutral feeling only insofar as it is apprehended to be potentially pleasant.

This attitude of anticipation is characteristic of craving. If a pleasant feeling follows, sooner or later, it would be felt as inadequate. Otherwise, boredom sets in, and the neutral feeling becomes apprehended as painful. In other words, in either case, the neutral feeling is not recognised as it is, i.e. as neutral. Now, let us recall what (4) states: ‘When he does not understand these things, the underlying tendency to ignorance in regard to neither-painful-nor-pleasant [(neutral)] feeling lies behind this.’ (italicised for emphasis). What, then, might be the significance of this statement?

Our brief investigation of the mood of boredom makes explicit the pain of craving that we are simultaneously ignorant of (passively) and actively ignoring (at the very least, implicitly). Ignorance is an intentional act, even if there is a lack of awareness (or knowledge) of one’s active involvement—or, rather, because of it. And the act of ignorance is directed towards the nature of feeling in general, that is, their thrownness. With this preliminary information, we can hereafter investigate the meaning of sensual pleasure, which is the only pleasure that the ordinary person knows as he assumes the mode of being of everydayness.

In (3), it is stated that the ordinary person ‘does not understand as it really is the origin and the passing away, the gratification, the danger, and the escape in the case of these feelings.’ We shall now elucidate the meaning of this phrase—it gives us a hint to understand the nature of sensual pleasure. In a word, what makes the pleasure of sensuality so dangerous is not only that it is intoxicating but also, fundamentally, it is always simultaneously underlain by the pain that it itself brings—it is a vicious spiral.

In an Early Buddhist Text (Majjhima Nikāya 75), the Buddha uses the metaphor of a leper whose sores are worsened by scratching and cauterising his infected body over a burning charcoal pit to illustrate the nature of sensual pleasure. Before being cured, the leper’s impaired senses distort his perception, causing him to perceive the scorching fire as pleasurable or relieving mistakenly. Despite his constant agony, he finds a sense of fleeting sense of relief in his harmful actions, but this only worsens his condition, leading to more intense suffering and greater efforts to alleviate it. Similarly, sensual pleasure is inherently harmful and scorching, but those overwhelmed by desire misperceive it as enjoyable.

This also explains why sensuality is a worldview. With the attitude of sensuality (as in everydayness), we make a problem out of feeling in and of itself: either one suffers because of a painful feeling, or one is happy because of a pleasant feeling. Thus, in everydayness, we perpetually direct our efforts to replace a disagreeable perception with an agreeable perception in the hope of transforming a painful feeling into a pleasant feeling.

However, such an attitude is bound to fail because the ‘actual’ and the ‘possible’ are simultaneously self-standing and mutually dependent existential domains. The ‘possible’ provides the meaning of the ‘actual’ while the ‘actual’ is the standpoint that ‘unites’ the possibles and determines them as possibles. To illustrate, if the ‘actual’ is your present action of reading this essay, the ‘possibles’ would be to finish reading it, or to understand it, or to disagree with it without properly understanding it, or to stop reading so as to consider it gibberish, etc. The ‘possible’ is the motivation of the ‘actual’, because of which the ‘actual’ makes sense (in any shape or form), while the ‘actual’ is that because of which there are ‘possibles’.

Consequently, our effort to replace the ‘actual’ with a ‘possible’ in fact does nothing—it does not and cannot change our ontological or existential structure. Therefore, replacing one perception with another is no guarantee for a presently enduring feeling to change. In fact, it is an error born out of a fundamental misunderstanding because the ‘possible’ cannot (and can never) become ‘actual’. Thus, the presence of craving only constitutes a painful feeling in the experience and its gratification is only the anticipation of a pleasant feeling in view of the other possible end of the same craving, i.e. its cessation.

Being: Assuming Assumptions

Furthermore, in everydayness, we feel compelled to act at any cost without realising that we have falsely assumed the privilege of appropriating the phenomena (i.e. feeling, perception, etc.) that have arisen in the experience—the sense of ownership, ‘mine’—when we can find no justification for it: ‘I do this because I can (I am entitled to)’—until one cannot, which is why one suffers.

Thus, sensuality, as a mode of being of everydayness, is in essence a turning a blind eye to the nature of feeling—feeling that arises independent of one’s volition, i.e. un-ownable. Therefore, when in everydayness we fail to distract ourselves from the mood of boredom (which is in itself neutral rather than painful), for example, sooner or later, we descend into the mood of anxiety: a state of mind permeated and overflown with a sense of helplessness. Cf. Heidegger (1962): ‘Being has become manifest as a burden. Why that should be, one does not know.’ (p. 173). It is once again in Early Buddhist philosophy that we find an answer to this problem:

And how, [monks], is there [anxiety] through clinging? Here, [monks], the [ordinary person] regards form (feeling, perception, determinations, consciousness) thus: ‘This is mine, this I am, this is my self.’ That form (…consciousness) of his changes and alters. With the change and alteration of form (…consciousness), there arise in him sorrow, lamentation, pain, displeasure, and despair. (Saṁyutta Nikāya 22.8)

According to Early Buddhist philosophy, therefore, the root cause of anxiety for the ordinary person is ‘self-view’ or holding (or clinging) to a belief in self—a phenomenon so subtle that it goes unrecognised, one that is assumed tacitly and manifestly by the ordinary person.

Now that we have brought this elusive phenomenon to the surface, how can we unveil it more fully so as to make explicit its meaning? Recall Sartre’s dictum that human-reality projects itself through action and what we stated previously that every action (in everydayness) is an act of resistance.

With this new information, we can say that every action (in everydayness) is effectively a selfish action. Every action is an action to assert, defend, or protect the assumed sense of self that one has: ‘I am [insert nationality]’, ‘I am from [insert the name of a prestigious family]’, ‘I am a [insert profession and achievements]’, ‘I am [insert personality (intelligent, stupid, honest, genuine, brave, timid, average, etc.)]’, etc.

The experience of the ordinary person, the puthujjana, is invariably involved with holding [(or better, assumption)], the fundamental form of which is holding to a belief in self (see MN 11/M I 66–7). However, this self that is believed in [(or assumed)] has the nature of being inadequate. The ordinary person thinks “I am,” but he is then unable to avoid the puzzlement, “But what am I?” He will seek in one way or another to establish an identity: “I am this; such is my self.” If a belief in self was adequate…then this quest(ioning) would be unnecessary. … Because the ordinary person does find it necessary to repeatedly reconstruct this self identity we may say that…this self that is believed in lacks essence. …

However, though it certainly lacks essence, it is not strictly correct to say that “self” lacks existence, or that “self does not exist.” … For the ordinary person self does exist; but he fails to recognize that it exists as a belief. But this belief in self is essentially a notion of independence: a self that is in thrall to the world’s vicissitudes is no self at all. Therefore the ordinary person cannot escape the conviction that this self in which he believes is independent of his belief in it. His view is that the appropriated depends on appropriation (i.e. that things are “mine” because “I am”). Therefore he fails to see that it is appropriation which depends on the appropriated (i.e. that “belief in self” persists only for as long as things are regarded as “mine”).

(Bodhesako, Beginnings, 2008)

Therefore, it is this self-view that is the origin of suffering for the ordinary person. Self-view (or personality-view) is a wrong assumption that belongs to the mode of being of everydayness which provides the meaning and motivation for our perpetual quest (and unrest) in life. Thus, Early Buddhist philosophy encourages us to contemplate the phenomenon of craving (or desire) in our lived experience so as to apprehend its true nature as gratuitous and a burden to existence. (As per the above excerpt from Bodhesako, the origin of suffering traces right back as far as conceiving things as ‘mine’ and the conceit ‘I am’, which provide the basis for actions rooted in greed, aversion, and delusion; the sense of entitlement that one is spared from suffering while living; the basis for any act of resistance whatsoever.)

Happiness: The End of Pursuit

Suffering, then, is not to be found in experience. Suffering is precisely the fundamental view belonging to the mode of being of everydayness that regards happiness and suffering as to be found in the experience or determined by the experience—i.e. one’s attitude with regard to the experience rooted in craving. Rather, happiness or the cessation of suffering is the extinguishment of desire and lust with regard to any experience whatsoever—what Early Buddhist philosophy calls nibbāna (or nirvana), or more enigmatically, the ‘cessation of Being (or existence)’.

“[Monks], form is impermanent, feeling is impermanent, perception is impermanent, [determinations] are impermanent, consciousness is impermanent. Seeing thus, [monks], the instructed noble disciple experiences revulsion towards form, revulsion towards feeling, revulsion towards perception, revulsion towards [determinations], revulsion towards consciousness. Experiencing revulsion, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion, his mind is liberated. When it is liberated there comes the knowledge: ‘It’s liberated.’ He understands: ‘Destroyed is birth, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more [of this (Being)].’” (Saṁyutta Nikāya 22.12)