“By meditating we accept reality as it is”

It’s a successful Philosopher, although he had a complicated birth that produced cerebral palsy. He grew up in an institution where he spent 17 years, but has ended up becoming one of the most widely read writers in much of the world.

Alexandre Jollien transmits joy, love for life and simply shares the wisdom he has gained through reading the great philosophers and a vital experience that includes 15 years practicing meditation. Now in the roguish wisdom (Ned Editions) shows us how it has been forged his art of living based on psychological chaos and chronic pain.

Has philosophy helped you heal? How did you discover it?
–I was terrible at school, but one day, while I was waiting for a friend in a bookstore, I looked through a book that talked about Plato, about how he invited us to improve rather than live better. It was a revelation. Later, one of my professors gave me some cassettes in which the Swiss philosopher Jeanne Hersch recounted the history of Western philosophy.

I liked them so much that for two weeks I would put the thermometer on the radiator so as not to go to class and listen to them over and over again. This is how my vocation was born. But I would not say that philosophy is healthy. I think it cures you of the idea of ​​healing, it pacifies you, it reconciles you with the world as it is.

–In your book you invite us to embrace chaos and dance in it within the tragedy of existence. Is achieved?
–Education teaches us to control everything, which is an impossible mission. It is about surrendering to life, giving yourself to it by letting go of protections and armor. It is a leap of faith from trust. The unconditional love I feel for my loved ones has helped me in this.

Being welcomed without having to do whatever it takes to feel accepted and be happy. Paradoxically, taking this great leap implies stripping naked, freeing oneself from reflex actions and from autopilot. It requires an abandonment moving away from the whys.

Would you say that adversity makes us wiser?
–“What does not kill you makes you stronger”, Nietzsche wrote. But it is not suffering that makes us grow, but what we do with it. Suffering can sink us or transform us into bitter beings. To make sense of it, luck and a lot of solidarity are needed. I don’t believe in the self-made man. We are beings of bonds and links. The tragic calls for solidarity. It is about moving from “I”, from individualism, to “we”, to sharing… To do everything possible to achieve a more just society.

You have to act and commit to alleviate pain, sadness and injustice. Chögyam Trungpa denounces spiritual materialism, the attempt to settle in a bunker to live in a desert of joy. For me, the paths of the interior life are detaching oneself and committing oneself body and soul to the other. We are always invited to make this progress.

–Are we too attached to our individual identity, be it that of a victim or a successful person?
–First of all, when we talk about ego, it is about understanding that it is not a sin or a fault. We must discard the feeling of guilt. The ego, the self, the mental are alienations, they are neuroses… emulating the words of Chögyam Trungpa. Buddha’s diagnosis is clear: fixation creates suffering.

From the moment I identify myself with an identity, be it that of a victim or another, I suffer. It is important to remember the magnificent intuition that Spinoza had, who said that it is not renunciation that leads to joy, but that joy leads to freedom.

It is also urgent to ask what it is that truly frees us. Escaping all fixation is asceticism. Far from forcing, it is about becoming oneself, going down to the bottom of the bottom and seeing that we are infinitely more than our individuality, we are richer than it. It is about understanding that we are going through a movement of life that surpasses us by far.

–And what to do with the deep wounds of the soul and the traumas that resist us?
-In Beyond good and badHe, Nietzsche offers a fabulous image. He talks about the granite, the part that resists in us like prejudices, wounds and traumas. The challenge is to love each other with these resistances and progress. Without fanaticism or self-celebration, but without despising oneself either and always motivated to progress. you

Both Diogenes the Cynic and Nietzsche teach that it is possible to reconcile acceptance and rebellion. It is the old distinction of Epictetus, who proposed to the aspiring philosopher to distinguish between what depended on him and what did not. The questions are: “Today, what can I do to improve?” and “What should I accept unconditionally?”

What can awaken a deep joy?
–We are all invited to ask ourselves what connects us with her. Does it happen to us with the encounter, with the meditation, with the reading? Boethius says that when it comes to happiness we are all like drunkards going home: we vaguely know what it is, but we don’t know the path that leads us there. What do I really need to be happy? It is a capital question.

–How do I get rid of the weight of what others think of me?
–For me it is often an arid struggle to free myself from the gaze of others. The reality of my disability forces me to do so, and the wound, the sore, is still there. And fortunately it is so, because it is what proves that I am still alive. I love an anecdote from the ancient doxography: there was a disciple who wanted to become a philosopher and Diogenes the Cynic proposed that he cross the city dragging a herring. It is a wonderful spiritual exercise to realize that you are not determined by what the other thinks of you.

Every day we are more or less vulnerable to the gaze of others. It’s almost dangerous and cartoonish to pretend the problem has been solved. And it would be much worse to shield oneself, to become impermeable…

–And what is the role of meditation in your life?
–The fashion of meditation, if it is not rooted in a genuine generosity, can become an almost abusive mandate. It must be meditated without an objective and without the intention of taking advantage. But we don’t meditate to heal ourselves, to improve ourselves, or to collect some magical recipes. We meditate to surrender, to let reality be as it is. Tilopa said, “Don’t think, don’t ponder, don’t analyze, don’t know, don’t meditate, leave the mind as it is.” In other words, it is not a question of manufacturing joy, happiness, peace, but of going down to the bottom, of reconciling with the world, of daring to have a contemplative attitude. We are Buddha nature, there is no need to manufacture nirvana or peace.

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–What helps the most on the path to “being”?
–We are so used to living outside… Meditation is letting be, leaving the mind as it is, Spinoza would say. It’s not a technique, it’s a posture. It is living without a why. And this leads to three paths: not to become obsessed with the future (avoid it being a project in itself), to free oneself from what others will say and the need to continuously project oneself.

-Living without thinking…
–The Patriarch of Zen, Huei-Neng says that the nature of the mind is non-fixation. It is normal for the mind to go from the rooster to the donkey and that during meditation one has the impression of being invaded by thoughts. Psychologists have shown that the human mind is crossed by 60,000 thoughts a day, of which 70% are negative. Clinging to these mirages is leading to torment and dissatisfaction. All the work consists in letting this flow pass, without settling anywhere.

– Is cultivating friendship another of the secrets of well-being?
–Houei-Neng speaks of “friend in good”. He is a friend who drives us along the way, who allows us to stay the course, who never lets go of your hand. This reality touched me greatly when I was in the institute where I grew up and studied for 17 years. We are all invited to become friends for the good of the other, to give ourselves, to commit ourselves without conditions.

–Should we learn to simplify life?
Yes, moving on to the acts. Aristotle said that by forging one he becomes a blacksmith. By practicing virtue, one becomes virtuous. What should I exclude from my life? What are the shortcomings that structure me? What am I chasing? You can dream of a simple life, but nothing can beat the actions you take. The art of living, that is the initial intuition, that of Plato: before living better, try to improve.