Enlightenment is the understanding of the nullity of samsara, of
experience, and this is why the enlightened can live desire without
getting attached to it: he rejoices in the illusion, but his soul does not
depend on it.
‘Even the most frightening monsters are only the hallucinations of
your mind’: these are the words of the Bardo Todol.^7 Desire is the force
giving life to demons and visions. It is a shared hallucination.
In their last shared work, What is Philosophy?,Gilles and Félix began
the elaboration of a senile utopia that perhaps we should consider
more deeply.
Today we need a senile utopia that would be able to integrate the
youthful utopia of desire.
The senile utopia of friendship is a sharing of experience but also an
understanding of its hallucinatory and thus impermanent character; it
is the clear vision of its own nullity, the dissolution of the dependency
and the attachment translating desire into depression.
This is the way to nirvana, the contemplation of nothingness which
in Taoist tradition is called wu wei.
This is the condition for being able to live desire while transcending
it at the same time. This process of transcendence is not purely intel-
lectual, but also experiential, aesthetic and sensual, and is founded on
the understanding of the impermanence of both body and soul.The Happy Depression 159780230_221192_03_cha02.pdf 10/3/08 11:32 AM Page 15