The problem of existence is the insecurity of life. Every human being is aware of his or her existence, but he/she is also aware of the impending death, which can come at any moment. This is the insecurity of life.
Most people like to forget this reality of life and escape into fantasy and build castles in the air, looking for a utopia, where there is eternal life and eternal happiness. This is what they call HOPE. They think Buddhists are beyond the threshold of hope, because the Buddhists prefer to face the reality of insecurity and find a solution to this problem of existence.
Buddha, the Awakened One, is the one who found a solution to the problem of existence, which modern existentialists are talking about. The solution was to awaken from the dream of existence. This means existence is not a fact. It is only a dream. Existence is not a rational concept but a mistaken notion. We are only dreaming that we exist. The Buddha broke the foundation of the problem of existence, which is "existence."
The existentialist says: "Existence precedes Essence." But the Buddha said: "Experience precedes Existence." The foundation of conscious life is experience, which is perception and conception. This was why the Buddha said, "The world, the beginning of the world, the end of the world, and the way to the end of the world is in this fathom long body itself with its perceptions, and conceptions." This means this mental process clouded by emotions is the Creator of the world, as the Buddha exclaimed immediately after his Awakening:
I was running in search of the Creator
But never did I meet him, that's awful;
O painful is birth again and again.
O Creator I saw you, no more will you create,
Broken are your supports, your structure is destroyed.
The mind has stopped creating,
The emotions have ceased."
(Buddha)