Besides the frequent appearance of images and symbol in Beckett’s plays and novels, images and symbols that due to their polysemic nature can easily be ascribed to philosophical, religious and psychoanalytical systems belonging to the western tradition as well, in my opinion it is important to realize that very often Beckett’s thought covers individual paths that are its own, though to some extent similar to those belonging to the Buddhist Zen tradition. For instance, in the scarcely known essay Henry Heyden, homme paintre, the author underlines Siddharta Gautama’s declaration of the simultaneous existence and non-existence of the “I”. Applying Buddhism as a critical approach to Beckett’s works doesn’t mean neither assuming a Beckettian in-depth knowledge of the Buddhist issue, nor stating his precise intention to diffuse Buddhist doctrine in his own works, though there are several instances of Beckett’s explicit statement of the importance of Buddhist principles. Steven Rosen, in Samuel Beckett and the Pessimistic Tradition (1976), moves further, by analyzing Beckett’s works and stating that they reproduce a great variety of Buddhist conceptual elements. Richard Coes, in his Beckett (1964) infers it with authority, offering several relevant examples of a possible comparative reading. ""The first attempts to apply Buddhist and Zen systems of thought as critical methodologies in the examination of Beckett’s canon can be traced back to the first half of the Sixties. For instance, one of the most frequent topics in both Beckett’s plays and novels is the examination of the human condition and the perception of the suffering “I” in the daily experience of living and dying, that is the Buddhist samsara."" The main topic of my paper consists in the analysis of some fundamental Buddhist concepts hosted, so to speak, in the playwrights’ art, concepts that can consequently be employed as helpful tools in order to reach a better understanding of several of Beckett’s artistic issues.
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