Life Is An Illusion! Vedanta Philosophy and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

An exciting podcast with two Experts

Dear readers,

I’ve been studying Vedanta philosophy for about 3 years.

Vedanta is one of the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy. It means “the end of the Vedas”. Vedanta focuses on the philosophical ideas expressed in the Upanishads, the final sections of the Vedic scriptures, which deal with the nature of ultimate reality and spiritual liberation. Vedanta emphasizes realizing one’s true self and its identity with Brahman, the universal soul or absolute reality.

Guests

I had the great pleasure of hosting Dr. Craig Warren and Prof. Thirthankar Chakraborty on my Learn Vedanta Substack podcast.

Craig Warren is a teacher of Vedanta, He is based in Cape Town, South Africa, where he runs the Vedanta Institute Cape Town. He offers weekly classes on various topics related to Vedanta, such as the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, and the Brahma Sutras1. He also conducts retreats and workshops in other locations, such as Farmhouse58 in Krugersdorp, South Africa.

Craig learned Vedanta from Swami Parthasarathy, a renowned Vedanta master and author of several books on the subject. Craig Warren has been studying and teaching Vedanta for over 20 years and is dedicated to spreading its message of self-knowledge and self-transformation.

Thirthankar Chakraborty is an assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Mandi and a scholar of comparative and world literature. He is the co-editor of the book Samuel Beckett as World Literature, which examines Beckett’s global presence and circulation, particularly the translation, adaptation, appropriation and cultural reciprocation of his oeuvre. We had an invigorating discussion on Beckett’s seminal work Waiting for Godot and its connections to Vedanta philosophy.

Both thinkers shared fascinating insights into Beckett’s dramatic works and legacy and their links with Vedanta.

Does Waiting for Godot lend itself more naturally to Vedantic resonances when read by Indian audiences versus Western ones? Or do its existentialist themes have universal relevance? Thirthankar weighed in with nuance on this cross-cultural hermeneutics.

Life’s absurdity

We discussed how Beckett’s play, which depicts two tramps waiting endlessly for a mysterious figure named Godot, resonates with the concepts of Vedanta, such as Maya, the power of illusion that creates the appearance of duality and multiplicity; Brahman, the supreme reality that underlies all phenomena; and Atman, the true self that is identical with Brahman. We also touched upon the cyclical nature of time, intrinsic absurdity and suffering as part of the human experience — and how these connect to concepts like samsara, karma, and Maya.

Thirthankar shared his insights on how Beckett’s play can be read as a critique of the Western metaphysical tradition that seeks to find meaning and purpose in a world that is essentially meaningless and absurd. We talked about existentialist philosopher Albert Camus’ notion of life’s absurdity arising from the disconnect between our desire for meaning and clarity on the one hand — and a mute, opaque universe on the other. Beckett gives dramatic form to this abyss between human intention and indifferent existence.

Thirthankar explored how Beckett’s highly minimalist aesthetic across his plays, novels and poems reflects his deep recognition of the limitations of language and human expression. His sparse, enigmatic work employs palpable silences, interruptions, repetitions and open-mindedness to evoke truths that cannot be adequately represented in direct descriptive statements or conclusive conceptual formulations.

In doing so, Beckett radically experiments with the very form of literary and dramatic arts to gesture towards the ineffable — that which lies outside the domain of signs, symbols and definitions. His avant-garde style challenges conventional narrative tropes and realistic representation, incorporating more abstraction, contingency, and opacity. What gets omitted or suspended in a Beckett text often speaks louder than what is elaborated.

Fragmentation

Thirthankar analysed how Beckett once wrote, “No symbols where none intended”. His art aspires towards the condition of being art-less — allowing salient moments, and vivid impressions to surface unexpectedly without imposed meaning or interpretative closure. Beckett strips away explanatory rhetoric and causal plot structures because he intuits life’s essential groundlessness. His works enact, rather than describe, the perplexity of being.

We discussed how this creative focus on irresolution, fragmentation and open horizons in Beckett’s oeuvre has remarkable resonance with the Advaita Vedanta acceptance of the ultimate paradox. Just as dialectical reason fails to capture the nondual nature of reality, language too cannot circumscribe the infinite, unconditioned absolute that ever eludes the descriptive net.

Beckett’s spiralling texts mimetically perform this unwinding of certainties — they circle an absent centre, neither affirming nor concluding anything definitively. We are invited as readers to embrace the ambiguity, the not-knowing, rather than grasp after solid conceptual positions or declarative statements about existence. His works convey this meditative quality of allowing meaning to emerge and dissolve spontaneously, without pinning it down.

Consider Beckett’s microplay Breath where the entire action on stage lasts barely a few seconds! The poignant cry that bookends a fleeting breath is the only event — almost over before it began. This profound minimalism and motif of evanescence sensitize us to the transiency of each moment. It directs attention to layers of reality that habitual modes of perception overlook.

We discussed many such dimensions where Beckett’s portrayal of life’s enigmas, his refusal of closure and his embrace of not knowing closely align with Advaita Vedanta. Both call into question our faith in conceptual thought and language as mediums to accurately represent the truth of existence. They bid us to loosen our need for certainty. Thirthankar’s scholarship wonderfully elucidates the connection between Beckett’s vision and Vedanta.

“Waiting” as human condition

We delved deeper into the parallels between Waiting for Godot and the principles of Advaita Vedanta for a good portion of the podcast. Thirthankar elucidated how Vladimir and Estragon’s perpetual waiting can be seen as a metaphor for the human condition — we wait for fulfilment, purpose, and meaning, but it remains elusive. This resonates with the Vedantic concept of Maya, the veil of illusion that makes us see multiplicity and separation instead of the underlying oneness of Brahman. Just as the characters wait in vain for Godot, an external entity that never arrives, we too wait for lasting happiness from outside sources. Vedanta says that the eternal bliss we seek is already our intrinsic nature — sat-chit-ananda or being-consciousness-bliss.

So in a sense, Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for their Self to be revealed from behind the veil of Maya. Thirthankar also made connections between the absurdist nature of the play and Advaita’s premise that the perceived world has no inherent meaning other than what we arbitrarily project onto it. He pointed out the cyclical, repetitive structure of the play as another interesting parallel to the Vedantic idea of samsara — the beginningless cycle of birth and death that beings are trapped in, due to ignorance of their real nature as limitless awareness.

We discussed the tree in the play as a potential symbol of Brahman, especially in how it shelters Vladimir and Estragon. The bare, minimalist landscape echoed the formless, attributeless aspect of Nirguna Brahman described in Shankara’s philosophy. So too, the minimalism, pauses and blank spaces in Beckett’s work gesture towards what cannot be captured or confined in language.

The more we unpacked the play, the more Vedantic resonances emerged organically. Even subtle details like Estragon’s fragmented memory and fluctuating sense of self seemed remarkably aligned with the Advaitic concept that our individual identities and personal narratives are themselves part of the illusion that veils our true essence. Both Beckett and Vedanta point to this truth that cannot be conceptualized, using the via negativa — neti neti or “not this, not this”.

In a sense, the tramps Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for their own higher Self — which alone is real. This Self is ever-present behind the temporary roles and identities that flit across the stage of awareness like dramatic personae. But absorbed in the action, the characters have become disconnected from their essential nature. Thirthankar analysed this as a powerful dramatization of Vedanta’s metaphysics.

Cyclical, repetitive structure

We also discussed the cyclical, repetitive structure of Waiting for Godot and connected it to the Vedantic concept of samsara. Samsara points to the beginningless cycle of birth and death that spins due to metaphysical ignorance about our true nature as limitless, unchanging awareness. Beings recurrently take on new incarnations and personas in different times and scenes just as Vladimir and Estragon follow each other across multiple acts, yet essentially unchanged in their existential confusion.

The play’s absurdist angst and meaninglessness also resonate with Vedanta’s premise that the world has no inherent meaning or purpose other than what we choose to project onto it. Without the limiting constructs of space, time and causality imposed by the mind and senses, empirical reality dissolves into precisely the magical world of the play — contingent, fluid, and insubstantial.

Thirthankar also analyzed the minimalist tree that makes a solitary appearance on Beckett’s almost empty stage. In the second act, the tree sprouts a few leaves, indicating the passage of time. Thirthankar provocatively suggested that this tree echoes the symbolic wish-fulfilling trees in Indian mythology, and connects to core Vedantic ideas. For instance, it shelters the characters when they rest in its shade. This could symbolize the nondual brahman as the ground of all conditioned phenomena yet untouched by their flux. The bare tree also resonates with the notion of Nirguna Brahman in Shankara’s philosophy — the absence of any limiting attributes or qualities in absolute reality.

Gunas

We also plunged deeper into the three gunas — the fundamental “qualities” that comprise all manifestations in Vedantic thought. Everything in creation is a mix of sattva (light, wisdom), rajas (energy, activity) and tamas (inertia, resistance). So too we analyzed how Vladimir and Estragon contain shifting doses of all three gunas.

Vladimir’s philosophical questioning indicates a sattvic disposition towards truth. Estragon’s alternating despair, boredom and hope poignantly reflect the restless rajasic impulse for experience and stimulation when desires are unfulfilled. His inertia and world-weariness point to tamas. Their fragmented exchanges reveal consciousness caught between different compulsions — pulled between clarity, chaos and stupor. Thus Beckett provides an external projection of the complex dance of gunas that is the human psyche.

His dramatic genius fleshed out these gunaic mixes to depict consciousness caught in its conditioned workings, spellbound by Maya. Through the fluctuating moods and thwarted intentions of his characters, Beckett renders our existential confusion vividly. We recognize our innate urge to find solid meaning and identity in this quicksand world where certainty forever recedes.

So through multiple lenses, Beckett’s work parallels Vedanta in unsettling our complacent assumptions about self, world and truth. It pulls the ground from under our feet, exposing us to life’s abyss bereft of objective meaning. His plays, novels and poems gesture towards this unspeakable mystery we are embedded in, using silences, discontinuities, and negations. In thus eschewing rhetorical speech, Beckett’s art resonates with Advaita’s mystic poetry.

His minimalist invocation of the void is akin to the Zen master’s finger pointing at the moon — revealing by not revealing.I hope you enjoy this conversation with Thirthankar Chakraborty, and we invite you to share your thoughts and comments with us. If you want to learn more about Beckett and world literature, you can check out Thirthankar’s book and his publications. You can also visit his Google Scholar Page for more information about his research and teaching.

I hope you found this episode insightful. Stay tuned for more as we connect eternal truths to contemporary life. Please reach out with feedback or suggestions for future topics to cover. I appreciate your support on this never-ending journey of discovery.

I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed recording it!

Thanks for reading and for listening.