TWO PLAYS

Samuel Beckett's play WAITING FOR GODOT opens with the character Estragon struggling to remove his boot from his foot. He eventually gives up, muttering, "Nothing to be done." While it was not Beckett's intent, even though his writing is at times abundant with religious references, "nothing to be done" relates well to the argument in Zen Buddhism that there is no agent of any real substance to act on anything. What we think of as ourselves is a socially conditioned phenomenon, an illusion. There is no "I" that exists that can do anything, as it pertains to spiritual liberation at least. This is Krishnamurti's point as well when he insists that there is nothing one can do to "save" oneself. Referenced also by the line "Nothing to be done," is that even if there was a real agent that could act, there is nothing actually it can do.

In ENDGAME, Beckett's play that was written after WAITING FOR GODOT and which is arguably part two of WAITING FOR GODOT, the theme is, as the character Clov says, "Something is taking its course." Zen masters, and Taoist masters as well, remembering that Zen is a combination of Buddhism and Taoism, will say that for this very reason they have nothing to teach. Something is taking its course so what possibly could a master or teacher teach? The line could be stated as the Tao is taking its course, the Tao that is the flow of existence itself, is doing what it will do. And this action is unknowable except in the most intuitive of ways and even then it cannot adequately be expressed. The Brahman, or "Ground of Being," in Vedanta, is the same thing, immanent and transcendent yet unknowable. And unstoppable.