Meditation, as a fold in history, shows us the Buddha and Descartes in parallel. In Buddha it will be a modulation of consciousness that will take you from your initial suffering and immersed in illusion, to become the "awake", to direct knowledge. In Descartes meditation will end in the I think, founder of the subject of the modern age. Both are thorny roads, both struggle against uncertainty, the two are rebellious to their time.
But to what extent does meditation, generally associated with wise men of the East in tunic and half-closed eyes, put the Buddha and Descartes on the same scene? To the extent that it will function as a field of experience that will provide for each the universe of thinkable. In this way, reason and compassion will be at the same time points of arrival and departure: on the one hand, the product of meditation, on the other, two different ways of conceiving knowledge and subject.
Could it be thought that in his journey the Buddha was drawn to the cogito, and that instead of being seduced by the analytical power of "I think" he would have resisted rational temptation, considering this claim as the ultimate illusion of the mind?
Through Descartes, who dreamed of renegotiating the contiguity between reason and Christianity, and of the enlightened Buddha who dispenses with the gods and of any divine guarantee, this book seeks a modernity in meditations, not only to understand them as a product of a historical context, but also as An activity that knows how to escape its time. The gesture of becoming a freedom.