Frankenstein: Dharmagram #71
The poignant epigraph of the ‘Frankenstein (The Modern Prometheus)’, the classic novel by Mary Shelley, is a quote from John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’, that existentially questions why one was ‘created’ by a ‘creator’, when one was not, and could not be asked if this was wanted in the first place. There was no free will to choose whether one wants to exist or not, and to want free will or not? In existentialism, this is called being ‘condemned to be free’.
In the Buddhist perspective, we are individually and karmically our own (re-)creators and the (re-)created, the very ones constantly responsible for our freedom, for what to do with it, from the beginningless past to the boundless future.
We are also not as existentially free as we might imagine now, as we are still trapped in rebirth. Yet, with our limited freedom, we can strive towards greater and total liberation, from the cycle of birth and death entirely, and guide all other beings to do the same.