Albert Camus vs Buddha on Death

Albert Camus and Buddha both have a great deal to say about death — 4 passages and 4 respectively in thinkr's library — and they do not say the same thing. Setting them side by side is more useful than reading either alone, because the disagreement shows you what each position is actually giving up.

Albert Camus on death

French-Algerian novelist and philosopher of the absurd. The Myth of Sisyphus asks how to live well in a universe without inherent meaning.

“We turn our backs on nature; we are ashamed of beauty. Our wretched tragedies have a smell of the office clinging to them, and the blood that trickles from them is the color of printer's ink.”

“Knowing that certain nights whose sweetness lingers will keep returning to the earth and sea after we are gone, yes, this helps us to die.”

“Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.”

“To become god is merely to be free on this earth, not to serve an immortal being.”

Buddha on death

Siddhartha Gautama — the awakened one. His teachings on the Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path form the foundation of Buddhism.

“I spit on my life. Death in battle would be better for me than that I, defeated, survive.”

“I can affirm that a person who neither eats the flesh of other beings nor wears any part of the bodies of other beings, nor even thinks of eating or wearing these things, is a person who will gain liberation.”

“Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.”

“In a world become blind, I beat the drum of the Deathless.”

Where they part

France/Algeria, 1913–1960 and India, c. 5th–4th c. BCE are not the same world, and the difference is not only historical. Albert Camus treats death as something to be we turn our backs on nature;… — a matter of practice. Buddha approaches it from another side entirely. Neither is refuting the other; they are answering slightly different questions, and noticing which question you are actually asking is most of the work.