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This is a theme that Evola will develop in his Cavalcare In tigre, a book conceived and partially written in the early 1950s and published in the 1960s. Cavalcare la tigre points out an 'existential path' that, like the 'Doctrine of Awakening,' is meant for 'a very restricted circle of people who are endowed with a not too common inner strength.' At the center of that work, as in Doctrine, there is the problem of the 'inviolability of being' vis à vis the devouring Becoming that surrounds us. The themes of "he who stays by going and goes by staying"; of kaftan karaniyam, 'done is what needed to be done,' or 'the work has been completed because it had to be, without reasons why or benefits'; of surviving death, which 'can logically be conceived only for those few who, as human beings, were able to realize themselves as more than mere human beings'; of 'everybody is lord unto himself, there is no other lord, and by dominating yourself you will have a master the like of whom it is hard to find' (as is written in the Dhammapāda) are all taken up, developed, and adapted to the theses of Cavalcāre la tigre.
The Prince Siddhartha whom Evola describes is certainly not the one depicted by Hermann Hesse in his novel, which has become a sort of livre de chevet to many contemporary readers, especially the young ones. The historical Siddhartha was a prince of the Sākya, a kşatriya (belonging to the warrior caste), an 'ascetic fighter' who opened a path by himself with his own strength. Thus Evola emphasizes the 'aristocratic' character of primitive Buddhism, which he defines as having the 'presence in it of a virile and warrior strength (the lion's roar is a designation of Buddha's proclamation) that is applied to a nonmaterial and atemporal plane... since it transcends such a plane, leaving it behind.' The 'essential nucleus of Buddhism is therefore metaphysical and initiatory.' he wrote, while its interpretation 'as a mere moral code based on compassion, humanitarianism, and escape from life because life is `suffering,' is absolutely extrinsic, profane, and superficial.
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