I started reading Jean Paul Sartre’s “Being and Nothingness” last night. I only made it through the first 7 pages. His writing mirrors his stream of consciousness. This makes for difficult translation and understanding. His writing proceeds as a dissertation on himself rather than a reflection of his own introspection. The substance however, has striking similarities to Eastern Philosophy. The relationship, as i see it, is as follows.

The nature of all things only “exist” within thought and expression. The inside is only the inside from the current, static perspective. The inside is also the outside when the static perspective shifts in full and opposite. Inside and outside therefore, as appearances do not exist beyond the convention of words. That is dualism. There is no interior without exterior, there is no joy without pain, and there is no love without hate. All of these “existents” (love, joy, loss, hate) are equal and planar. Hierarchies – bad, good, better, best – only exist because one end of the SAME continuum is deemed as it is so.

The second similarity is that none of these existents really exist wholly and fully. The box on the table is equally everything that it is as well as everything that it is not. Secondly, the box is also equally everything that it was and will be. The box IS never. The box boxes, the table tables, and they’re neither. The box and the table now, is no longer. “We” don’t change, change is us. There “is” nothing to change, simply change itself in form. Form is what we make it. Life lives. Be.