Absence
September 01, 2019The Nyāẏa system of Indian philosophy takes abhāva as the seventh padārtha or matter, which is a subject of (ontological) knowledge (prameẏa). Abhāva means absence - non presence of something. How can something be ‘matter’ when it does not exist? How can absence be proof of existence? In answer, the philosophers have given different examples, but major three of them are of my focus. The first one is prior-absence, which denotes absence of something before its creation or production. A table was absent before it is made; once it is made from wood, it is no more absent. The second one is posterior-absence, which denotes the absence of something after its destruction. When that chair is destroyed, it ceases existing. The third and most pertinent one is anyonyabhāva, means one is absent in the other. That means mutual existence of two different things. Being a table means not being everything else, for example, a chair. Simultaneously, being a chair means not being a table. Everything that exists, carries a notion of abhāva, absence, separation. Being, then, is ontologically fragmented, separated, excluding.
Are we, people, inherently separated from others? Are we, separated? Do we separate? Can we? Strictly speaking, we are not ‘matters’, although we matter the most. We are created, and we shall be destroyed, and our absence remains before our creation and after our destruction. Mothers and fathers carry the absence of children; the bereaved family carries the absence of the dead. But where does this absence dwell? In the heart of a human being, in the memory of another created one? And before the first man, the first created one, was there an absence to be felt by the universe? When all the lives will be annihilated from the planet, will there remain an absence? Would anyone feel abhāva, since we need someone to carry it in memory? Maybe the Creator will miss us. So, the very notion of absence is associated with the notion of creation. Only that, which is created, can be absent; or to put it properly, can exist as being absent. Because, absence is not a matter in itself, it is a matter only when it is felt.
What about un-created? Supposedly, I created the table. Then I un-created it, carefully unhinge the parts, the woods restored their former state. How will the table exist being absent then? Will it be prior-absence or posterior absence? Was it absent before creation or after annihilation, in my mind?
Also, what is the fate of the uncreated, then, in a godless universe? Something, that just happened? Like a mountain, that just formed? Like a boulder lying in the ground that is shaped like a brain of a giant? Like a river that just fell off the cliff of an icy glacier? Where does the absence of the uncreated dwell? Something, that just happened? Like, Love? Where does love exist after it is gone? Where does it exist before it was there? It is lost.
Is it lost?
Is love lost or the lovers, who could not contain its non-existence as existence, are lost? What does it mean to be lost? Something is lost means it is neither absent nor present. So being lost means it can’t even exist as being absent, it ceases to exist in its abhāva. So lovers, when they are lost, actually stop existing.
But is something ever lost when it is ‘different’ (or to say mischievously, when it has a différance) from the other thing within a society of signs? Are two lovers really two different persons? Can they really be un-present from each other’s presence? They cannot exist without the presence of the other and much moreover they cannot exist without the un-presence of the other. The other lover, being the other lover, makes this lover be. The other lover, even if s/he stops ‘being’ the other lover, or stops being at all, still with his/her unpresence has actually made this two-lover paradigm possible which keeps on existing.
So, there is a categorical ‘undecidability’ of ‘presence’ and ‘absence’ in play at the origin of their being signified as a lover, or becoming the ‘signified’ of the ‘lover’. They mutually exist, even if they separately do not exist. They can never be truly lost; there is a ‘trace’ of one in the other, a trace that resists the absence, abhāva, and a ‘trace’ that consists of abhāva. Even after the love is lost, they remain lovers and find and unfind each other in a relentless ‘fort-da game’ that is called life.
1 comments
One can realise or be conscious of one's situation. It needs courage, yes, to introspect things and all the more courage to accept and embrace it.
ReplyDeleteBut is it enough? Is it enough to rationalize one's position and stop there. One needs to anticipate the danger of creating false perception (thereby creating myths) about one's subjective position, where one doesn't deny the fact beacuse one cannot escape it (yes) but then tries to see it differently. And the "differently" is actually then a defence mechanism through rationalized subjectivism. However the fact exist, in this case only neurotically differently perceived by the perceiver.
Therefore what is to be done then? With the dialectical dance of the conditions created, one needs to not only embrace the situation but one needs to act upon it, to change the situation then. Thereby creating reality which is completely a new one, not one of the situations choosen from the old paradigm.
The action therefore requires to concretize (objectify) the situation first and then act upon it. So this absence needs to be objectified first, after accepting it and only then one is proceeding a step beyong this, through actions.