17 February 2026 — 3 min read
Keep Rolling or Let Go?
Review of Lloyd J K‘s When Sisyphus Met Buddha
Sitting down to write a review after ages. Phew! Office time with overspilling deadlines? Check. General disregard for life and desolation? Check. One must imagine Sisyphus happy? Check.
Cutting to the chase, straight away(unlike you know who :p).
Let conscious experience be:
where x = the self (the capacity to experience) and t = time
For x ≠ ∅:
C < 0 — suffering
C = 0 — peace
C > 0 — happinessNow considering the null state,
“In a null state you aren’t relieved that pain is gone; you are just gone (x=null). You can’t appreciate this absence if you are not there to witness it.”
Logically, this is correct.
Emotionally, it is incomplete.
When misery is overwhelming, appreciation is no longer the goal. Relief is.
So instead of dismissing null as a failed solution, let’s frame it more precisely — as a limit.
Not:
But rather:
With an important clarification:
This does two important things:
- It acknowledges why the void can feel tempting
- It keeps the mathematical truth: no you → no experience
When misery becomes too heavy, escape—not understanding—becomes the objective. In that state, deleting the variables of life can feel acceptable, even desirable. Whether the absence is appreciated no longer matters; the promise is simply that the pain will stop.
Thus, you aren’t escaping misery, you are attempting to exit the domain where misery is defined. When suffering dominates the function, the system no longer optimises for meaning, growth, or appreciation, it optimises for cessation. It becomes a local minimisation strategy under extreme negative gradients.
The desire for nothingness is generated from within experience.
But nothingness cannot deliver what experience seeks.
Mathematically, this is not a solution—only a limit approached from within suffering. Once , the experience itself is undefined. There is no pain, but there is no relief either. The void does not resolve the equation; it ends in mid-calculation. It doesn’t resolve suffering. It removes the system where suffering (and relief) can even be measured.
That is the paradox: The longing for null arises inside the system, yet null erases the system that longs.
And to be clear — understanding why some people might approach that limit, doesn’t mean supporting it. It simply means recognising that when the function becomes severely negative, the drive toward cessation can feel internally logical. I’m not pretending that the temptation is irrational.
But it’s still not a solution.
It’s an interruption.
Life is messy math.
At any given , the output might be positive, negative, or zero.
And sometimes the graph looks brutal. The curve can flatten, it can plummet.
But as long as x=∅ the function can change.
That’s the only honest thing about it.
Amigos, never let go!
