Being in the World: Skillful Living

By Devānanda Sarasvatī

Ontology, the science of beingness, reveals deep insights about the nature of human life and experience. An ontological analysis of the human condition—our way of being—shows that our everyday social relations give us a particular kind of preoccupation with the world. This care about the world involves us in a network of conditions and actions we do not choose, leading us away from our authentic self. 

But this situation, if taken in a specific way, also permits us to investigate our human condition firsthand. Wise men down through the ages have taught that a properly performed phenomenological inquiry into human beingness can bring us to a unified ontological model of human existence, in which we at last find ourselves at home with ourselves. This realization of authentic beingness is the actual goal of human life, toward which we are relentlessly driven by the anxiety arising from falling from our real self into the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Devānanda Sarasvatī
• Release date: Mar 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386963257

Devānanda Sarasvatī

Devānanda Sarasvatī is a lifelong sādhu, traveling around the world to enlightened masters and learning their traditions in their native cultures. He has written many books on philosophy, bhakti, meditation, yoga, Self-realization and enlightenment. He also produces instructional videos and music for deep meditation.

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Being in the World

The Story of Everybody’s Life

Ontology, the science of beingness, reveals deep insights about the nature of human life and experience. An ontological analysis of the human condition—our way of being—shows that our everyday social relations give us a particular kind of preoccupation with the world. This care about the world involves us in a network of conditions and actions we do not choose, leading us away from our authentic self.

But this situation, if taken in a specific way, also permits us to investigate our human condition firsthand. Wise men down through the ages have taught that a properly performed phenomenological inquiry into human beingness can bring us to a unified ontological model of human existence, in which we at last find ourselves at home with ourselves. This realization of authentic beingness is the actual goal of human life, toward which we are relentlessly driven by the anxiety arising from falling from our real self into the world.

Falling into the World

We are not alone. To exist means to be in relationship. Even to be alone implies the possibility of being in relation with others. In being with others, we typically maintain ourselves in the being of the Other; that is, we see ourselves in the mirror of our actions and relations with others in the world. We lose our real self in this fundamentally inauthentic mode of Being, because none of these mirrors are true. They all reflect a distorted and incomplete image of our real self.

So our everyday mode of Being, as we actually experience ourselves, is being in the world. We are not spectators of life from some transcendental perspective, but deeply involved in it. We cannot meaningfully conceive of our being apart from the world in which we exist. Indeed, the world is the context that gives our being its meaning and value. Yet we become overwhelmed and lose ourselves in the complex relations and reactions of living in the world. In this condition, how can we recover our authentic being?

The answer to this question begins from asking how relating to ourselves and others inauthentically, in which we fail to find ourselves and so fail to achieve genuine individuality, shows up in our clearing (the space of consciousness that we are). Our ontological analysis of worldly inauthenticity focuses on three phenomena of being in the world: idle talk, curiosity and ambiguity.

Idle Talk

Idle talk includes any communication outside of the ontic conversation—the inquiry into the authentic nature of our being, as a discourse of phenomenological self-reflection. We examine our life, not according to some superimposed external system of values, but how we actually experience it. This essay is an example of a disciplined ontic conversation. Idle talk is typical average everyday linguistic communication.

All communication displays a triple ontological structure:

• a subject (the topic or speaker),

• an object (what the conversation is about) and

• a relation (the speaker’s claim about the object).

The unit of