Many thanks for your admirably detailed letter. The attitude you speak of, that of cursing the world and oneself, is, in a sense, the beginning of wisdom. Revolt is the first reaction of an intelligent man when he begins to understand the desperate nature of his situation in the world; and it is probably true to say that nothing great has ever been achieved except by a man in revolt against his situation. But revolt alone is not enough—it eventually contradicts itself. A man in blind revolt is like someone in a railway compartment trying to stop the train by pushing against the opposite seat with his feet: he may be strong enough to damage the compartment, but the damaged compartment will nevertheless continue to move with the train. Except for the arahat, we are all in this train of samsāra, and the problem is to stop the train whilst still travelling in it. Direct action, direct revolt, won't do; but something, certainly, must be done. That it is, in fact, possible to stop the train from within we know from the Buddha, who has himself done it:

I, monks, being myself subject to birth, decay, and death, having seen the misery of subjection to birth, decay, and death, went in search of the unborn, undecaying, undying, uttermost quietus of extinction (nibbāna), and I reached the unborn, undecaying, undying, uttermost quietus of extinction.
Revolt by all means, but let the weapons be intelligence and patience, not disorder and violence; and the first thing to do is to find out exactly what it is that you are revolting against. Perhaps you will come to see that what you are revolting against is avijjā.

The Four Noble Truths are not logical propositions

Dr. Jayatilleke, in the second essay, represents logic. This is evident from the way he turns the Four Noble Truths into propositions, or statements of fact. That they are not facts but things (of a particular kind) can be seen from the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (Vinaya Mahāvagga I: Vin. i,10; Sacca Samy. 11: v,421-24), where dukkha is pariññeyya, 'to be known absolutely', samudaya is pahātabba, 'to be abandoned', nirodha is sacchikātabba, 'to be realized', and magga, the fourth Truth, is bhāvetabba, 'to be developed'. A fact, however, is just a fact, and one cannot do anything to it, since as such it has no significance beyond itself (it does not imply any other fact not contained in itself)—it just is (and even whether it is is doubtful).

But things are significant; that is to say, they are imperatives, they call for action (like the bottle in Alice in Wonderland labelled 'Drink Me!'). Heidegger, and Sartre after him, describe the world as a world of tasks to be performed, and say that a man at every moment of his life is engaged in performing tasks (whether he specifically pays attention to them or not). Seen in this light the Four Noble Truths are the ultimate tasks for a man's performance—Suffering commands 'Know me absolutely!', Arising commands 'Abandon me!', Cessation commands 'Realize me!', and the Path commands 'Develop me!'.

But by transforming things into facts (and the Four Noble Truths, which are descriptions of things, into propositions) I automatically transform myself into logic—that is to say, I destroy my situation as an existing individual engaged in performing tasks in the world, I cease to be in concreto (in Kierkegaard's terminology) and become sub specie aeterni. (By regarding the Four Noble Truths as propositions, not as instructions, I automatically exempt myself from doing anything about them.) The world (if it can still be called a world) becomes a logician's world—quite static and totally uninhabited. (It is significant that Wittgenstein, in his celebrated Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which helped to establish modern logical positivism, starts off by declaring: '1. The world is everything that is the case. 1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.' Compare, in this connexion, the note in the Preface to Notes where it is said 'Things, not facts, make up my world'.)

Kierkegaard would be more severe on Dr. Jayatilleke than on Professor Wijesekera:
It is not denied that objective thought has validity; but in connection with all thinking where subjectivity must be accentuated, it is a misunderstanding. If a man occupied himself, all his life through, solely with logic, he would nevertheless not become logic; he must therefore himself exist in different categories. Now if he finds that this is not worth thinking about, the choice must be his responsibility. But it will scarcely be pleasant for him to learn, that existence itself mocks everyone who is engaged in becoming purely objective. (CUP, pp. 85-6)
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