The Contradiction That Cannot Be Escaped
Some of you may have noticed that, over the past few weeks, I have fallen into an obvious contradiction—indeed, a striking contradiction—in the ideas I have been presenting. I am fully aware of this contradiction, and what is remarkable is that I found myself unable to avoid it. In the end, I had no choice but to contradict myself, because I found nothing in existence more contradictory than existence itself.
It is an existence that brings us into being, clothes us, feeds us, strengthens us, and then ultimately kills us. This alone places us before a paradox that is difficult to overcome or ignore.
Existence and the Poultry Farmer
Let us think about a poultry farmer, a cattle breeder, or a horse breeder. What does such a breeder do?
He brings in young chicks, feeds them, protects them from the cold of winter and the heat of summer, gives them water, treats them when they become ill, and takes great care of their health—sometimes even more than he cares for his own. Yet, once they have fulfilled the purpose for which they were raised, he sends them to the slaughterhouse.
At that moment, everything ends for the chicken. As for the farmer, it also comes to an end, because the need that once connected him to it has ceased to exist.
Here, the question that continues to accompany me emerges:
If existence has placed me in this position, granted me strength, and given me the ability to speak and to live, then what need has come to an end for my destiny to ultimately become a dark pit with neither life nor hope?
Care and the Limits of Self-Interest
It may be said that existence takes care of its creatures, and I neither deny nor object to that. Yet I find myself questioning the nature of this care.
If there were a chicken outside the boundaries of the farm where the breeder raises his flock, would he care about it? Would he feed it, treat it, or protect it?
The answer is clear: no.
The breeder only cares about the chickens that belong within the limits of his farm. Even those very chickens, despite all the attention they receive, eventually end up in the slaughterhouse.
To me, this is sufficient evidence that his concern is not for chickens as such, but only for his own chickens—for those that fall within the sphere of his interest.
The same is true of the shepherd. He undoubtedly protects the flock, yet he protects it because he needs the flock.
Need Is What Creates Care
This paradox led me to reflect even on my relationship with my own body.
If I did not need this body, would I ever have taken care of it? Would I have given it even a single sip of water?
The answer is obvious: I would not.
We care for what we need, not because it deserves care in itself, but because our need for it compels us to care about it.
From here, I began to see that something profound governs all these relationships.
For a long time, I searched for pure mercy—a mercy I would deserve simply because I deserve mercy. Yet throughout my journey, I found that everyone who showed me mercy, in one way or another, did so because they themselves were in need of mercy.
People ultimately defend the systems they cannot live without. No one can truly stand against the system upon which their own survival depends.
For this reason, much of what is said in defense of values, principles, or mercy may, in reality, be a defense of the very foundations upon which one's existence rests, and of the interests and systems without which one cannot survive.
Human Beings Are Children of the System
If we observe domesticated chickens raised in industrial barns, we find that they cannot survive outside the coop. If released into the open, away from the environment they have grown accustomed to, they become fragile and vulnerable, often falling ill before reaching maturity, and they may even die while still young.
This reality is not limited to chickens alone.
The plants we cultivate—watermelons, fruits, and countless other crops—gradually lose the ability to survive without continuous care, whether through irrigation, fertilization, treatment, or protection.
The same applies to children. No child in this world can survive entirely alone without someone to nurture, protect, and provide the conditions necessary for growth.
All of these examples point to a single truth: we ourselves belong to the same category of beings that cannot exist outside the system that created and sustained them.
We Are Children of the System
At this point, a truth became clear to me.
We cannot survive even a single day outside all systems, because we are, in essence, children of the system itself.
The system created us, shaped us, and made us what we are. This cannot be denied.
Yet at the same time, it created us dependent upon it.
Perhaps the reason is that it, too, needs us.
Just as the breeder makes the chicken dependent on him because he himself depends on the chicken, so it seems that dependency is mutual, and that the one who creates dependence is also the one who benefits from it.
Had the breeder not made the chicken dependent on the coop, it would never have remained there in the first place.
The Paradox of Leaving the System
Here, a profound paradox emerges.
Once you become domesticated within a particular system, leaving it is not necessarily in your best interest.
The one who steps outside the system finds themselves facing an extremely rugged path—a path unlike the paved roads that everyone else follows.
It is the path of wilderness, mountains, and deserted places.
On such a path, no one stands in your way. No one imposes conditions on you or tells you what to do. Yet this is not because you have become stronger, but because there is no road at all.
Those who leave the system do not walk on a mapped road. They move without a path, without a destination, and without a defined purpose.
Between the Free Chicken and the Domesticated Chicken
When I compare a free chicken with a domesticated one, I find no real difference in their final destiny.
The free chicken will die, and the domesticated chicken will also die.
Either one may die at any moment.
The domesticated one might say: at least I have a purpose, a destination, a shelter, and someone who takes care of me.
But the real question is not whether someone takes care of you.
The real question is: Why do they take care of you?
This brings me back to the question that has occupied my mind continuously:
Can anything genuinely care for something else without needing it?
Can there be a merciful being who has no need for mercy?
Is Mercy Ever Pure?
Every merciful person we encounter, as I see it, is themselves in need of mercy.
That is precisely why they show mercy.
The greater a person's need for mercy, the greater their inclination to extend it to others.
This raises a larger question:
Do those who offer mercy do so because it is truly selfless, or because they themselves are seeking mercy?
Can mercy that comes from someone in need ever be completely pure, or is it always, in some way, an expression of the giver's own need before it becomes a gift to another?
These questions ultimately led me to another paradox—one that seems even deeper:
The more I became free, the more I suffered. The more I accepted limits, the more I found comfort.
Why Does Limitation Become a Blessing?
These questions led me to a conclusion that initially seemed strange, yet became increasingly clear with reflection: the freer I became, the more I suffered, and the more I accepted limitations, the more I experienced comfort.
The blessing of limitation does not lie in limitation itself, but in the fact that it provides the boundaries that make experience possible. The existence of the body, with all the conditions it imposes, is what makes the enjoyment of anything possible in the first place.
Imagine wanting to touch something while having no body with which to touch it. Or imagine desiring something while possessing no means of reaching it.
You would then realize that limitations are not merely restrictions—they are also tools.
The Body as a Collection of Tools
The body is nothing more than a collection of tools, a collection of limitations, and a collection of conditions that make action possible.
If I wish to see, I must have eyes.
I cannot see without eyes—at least not in the ordinary physical sense of vision that we are discussing here.
For this reason, the body imposes a clear condition: if you wish to see, hear, touch, taste, or smell, you must first exist as a tangible, embodied being.
You cannot touch something physical unless you yourself possess a physical form.
Why Are We Embodied?
Based on where my reflections have led me, I believe this is the very reason we all came into existence in this embodied form.
Perhaps we are embodied because no genuine enjoyment can exist without a body.
I do not say this casually or as an exaggeration. Rather, I reached it after following this idea through many different perspectives, only to arrive at the same conclusion each time.
That is why I say that, as I understand it, there is no enjoyment outside the concept of embodiment.
Suffering Is a Defect in the Body
If we examine every form of suffering, we eventually discover that it returns to a defect affecting the body or the conditions necessary for its survival.
Illness is a defect of the body.
Poverty, in essence, is also a threat to the body, because the impoverished person suffers from being unable to provide food, medicine, and care. In other words, the embodied self becomes endangered.
For this reason, every form of suffering we know is connected, directly or indirectly, to the body.
I have yet to encounter any suffering that falls outside this framework.
Whatever pain a person experiences, it ultimately reflects a problem affecting the body—whether through health, safety, or the means required for its continued existence.
There Is No Bliss Outside the Body
This is why I continued repeating a statement that may sound shocking, yet has become, for me, an unavoidable conclusion:
There is no bliss outside the body.
I pursued this idea extensively, examining it from many different levels, and every path led me back to the same conclusion: the more a human being is freed from embodiment and from bodily limitations, the less capable they become of enjoying anything at all.
If you were freed from the mechanism of sight, you would simply no longer see.
That is the straightforward meaning of saying that someone no longer possesses the faculty of vision.
They no longer possess the instrument that makes seeing possible.
Thus, every blessing depends upon the instrument that makes it possible, and removing that instrument does not create greater freedom—it abolishes the possibility of experiencing the blessing itself.
When Is a Human Being Truly Free?
If a person's ultimate goal is absolute freedom, then such freedom can only be achieved when they no longer possess anything.
I do not merely mean giving up certain possessions, but rather ceasing to be attached to anything whatsoever.
No one can claim to have become free from embodiment while still clinging to something in this world.
Every attachment is a limitation, and every possession creates a bond between the individual and what they possess.
From this perspective, complete liberation can only come through the loss of all such bonds.
Freedom as the Loss of Every Sign of Stability
Imagine a person who owns nothing.
Their health is failing, their psychological state is unstable, their social life has collapsed, and they possess no stability in any aspect of existence.
They have no home, no food, no medicine, no friends, no loved ones, and no guarantee of tomorrow.
They possess none of the indicators of stability.
From one point of view, this person is the freest of all, because there is nothing left to lose.
Yet this very freedom represents the deepest form of suffering.
The more a person loses every object of attachment, the closer they come to freedom—but also to absolute emptiness.
When Even the Possibility of Salvation Disappears
To complete the picture, imagine not only someone who has lost everything, but someone who has also lost every possibility of ever regaining anything.
They are ill, with no hope of recovery.
They are lost, with no hope of finding guidance.
They possess neither home nor wealth, neither support nor companionship, nor any realistic opportunity for their condition to improve.
At this point, they reach the furthest extreme of freedom, because they are no longer attached even to the possibility of change.
This is a pattern of existence that I believe can be recognized by anyone who reflects upon it carefully.
Reframing Suffering
This led me to ask whether suffering itself can be reinterpreted.
Can a human being redefine suffering in such a way that it is experienced as pleasure, fulfillment, or a path forward rather than something to escape?
Can one continue stripping away every attachment until people abandon them, every source of dependence disappears, and nothing remains—not even the possibility of possessing anything again?
This, to me, represents the ultimate image of freedom.
A freedom in which no dependence, no attachment, and no expectation remain.
Yet it is also the ultimate form of suffering.
Conclusion
In the end, I found myself arriving at a paradox I had never intended to reach, yet one that imposed itself upon my thinking.
The more a person becomes bound by limitations, the greater their capacity for enjoyment becomes, because limitations provide the very instruments through which one sees, hears, touches, and lives.
The more a person frees themselves from those limitations, the closer they come to a form of freedom that leaves nothing left to enjoy.
Thus, it seems to me that freedom and suffering are not two separate concepts. Rather, when freedom is taken to its absolute limit, it becomes suffering itself.
Likewise, bliss cannot be separated from limitation, because every blessing requires an instrument, and every instrument is, by its very nature, a limitation.
For this reason, the original question has never left me: Can there be care that is not born of need? Can there be mercy that does not originate from one who is themselves in need of mercy?
That question remains open before me, and it is the question that led me through all of these paradoxes.
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