17/12/2025
“If there is a spiritual path that has not lied about the human condition, it is Buddhism. It begins where all others end: with the recognition of suffering.”
E. M. Cioran
Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) was a Romanian-born philosopher and aphorist who wrote with razor clarity about despair, lucidity, impermanence, and the futility of egoic striving. Living most of his life in Paris and writing in French, Cioran rejected systems, optimism, and progress, choosing instead a fierce honesty about suffering and the illusions that sustain human life. From a Zen or Buddhist point of view, his work can be read not as nihilism but as a relentless deconstruction of false meaning, very close to the Buddhist insight that clinging — to hope, identity, or metaphysical consolation — is the root of suffering. Like Schopenhauer, whom he admired, Cioran refused comforting lies in favor of clear seeing.
Cioran is often misunderstood as a nihilist because he dismantled every conventional source of meaning, yet he consistently rejected nihilism itself, calling it too lazy and abstract. He expressed deep respect for Buddhism, especially its clarity about suffering, impermanence, and the exhaustion of desire, once remarking that Buddhism was “the only religion that never lied.” Though he did not practice meditation in a formal way, his aphorisms function almost like negative koans, cutting through conceptual refuge and forcing the reader into direct confrontation with reality. Read through a Zen lens, Cioran is not preaching despair, but pointing — harshly and unsentimentally — toward the freedom that appears when illusions finally collapse.
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Hyon Gak Sunim
