An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World

This is a beautiful book. Beautiful and complex. The writer, Pankaj Mishra is a young man who in 1992 graduated from a Delhi university wanting to be a writer. He goes to live in Mashobra, a rural village in northern India and immerses himself in reading and in travelling around northern India and Nepal learning a great deal about India's history. It was in this region of northern India and the border country with Nepal that the Buddha was born about 2,500 years ago. Mishra traces the story of the Buddha and his path to enlightenment within the setting of post Vedic India. His interest in the Buddha is not that of an enthusiastic convert seeking to win over the reader, rather it is a personal, knowledge seeking journey, which in the process, opens up windows for us into the religious, social and political climate of that time. The book has a circuitous form, going back and forward between the story of Buddha and ideas put forward by some of the great writers and thinkers of the Western 19th and 20th century world who were influenced by Buddhism. In spite of the broad sweep of the book's narrative, it does present core issues of the Buddha's teaching of the `middle way,' neither self-indulgence nor self-mortification, but living with a right view and intention; not a religion but a path to self-redemption. The Buddha taught that human beings do not have a single identity, that `I' is just a construct, a label for the continually changing physical and mental parts. It is this `self' that is the source of suffering and delusion and so by controlling the mind, one can attain spiritual and intellectual freedom. The path to enlightenment involves cultivating moral wholeness in oneself and encouraging a similar attitude in others. It eschews violence of any sort as any kind of aggression leads to more violence. Although Buddhism swept through Asia and began to be widely practiced in some parts of Europe and North America, the world became increasingly caught up in wars, each more deadly than the last. Then came the disaster of the World Trade Center. Mishra thought about how political and religious ideologies had given rise to a belief in the necessity of violence for remaking the world. He realized that while his understanding of the Buddha had placed him in the past, he could now see how his teachings held out the possibility of knowledge and redemption to the contemporary world. With this awareness, the writer began to write his book about the Buddha. This is a profound and enlightening book and a real contemporary treasure to keep and read and reread.

At first I did not know what to make of this book. As a prologue to its main protagonist, the Buddha, Pankaj Mishra describes his own life after graduating from Nehru University in New Delhi. In a quest for a new home he finds himself near Simla, a former British colonial resort in the foothills of the Himalayas. His prose is exquisite as he recalls the sights, sounds and scents of the region. Renting a small cottage to read and write, he starts to reminisce about his earlier discovery of Buddhism. A friend took him to Lumbini in Nepal, birthplace of the Buddha, where he was amazed to learn there was a man behind the myth. His project became an attempt to retrace a cultural history of the Buddha.Much of the life of the Buddha, and India's pre-Islamic past, was still undiscovered in the early 19th century. The Buddha was a historical person, not a deity. Although similar to Jesus and Muhammad, less was known about him. Inscriptions, sculptures and monuments lay buried or covered by jungle. British colonists, reflecting Enlightenment interests in ancient Egypt, helped to recover the lost history and literature of India. Buddhism had been disseminated to China from India in the 1st century AD, and a great repository of translated texts awaited study at the end of the 19th century. The Sanchi stupa, the ancient university at Nalanda, and the Ashokan pillars were gradually unearthed.Mishra continues with the development of Buddhism from earlier Vedic and Upanishad beliefs. As life on the northern plains became urbanized in the 6th century BC, ancient rituals and rigid social classes began to be questioned. Less bound by agrarian dependence on natural cycles, merchants superseded priests. Karma explained social inequality by attributing present suffering to past deeds. Rebirth insured a never ending cycle of future accountability. The Buddha challenged the concepts of caste, accumulation of merit and an enduring self. The adoption of Buddhism by Ambedkar and the Dalits in the mid-20th century mirrored this rejection of the class system that oppressed them.A theme of this book is that traditional cultures have been uprooted and secular philosophies took their place. Mishra compares the time period of the Buddha (6th century BC) to the Enlightenment (18th century AD). Without feudalism, monarchy and guild, clan or sect, individual people were left to determine their own existential meaning. In the 19th century western economic, scientific and nationalistic ideologies are examined as they tried to replace prior social cohesion. Nietzsche's pronouncement 'God is Dead' is invoked, as are the modern equivalents of questions the Buddha had previously addressed. Newton and Darwin aren't covered here, and I'm curious of their omission.With many of Mishra's efforts, literary matters prevail. The philosophy of Pyrrho, founded during Alexander's invasion of India in 325 BC is discussed, and the questions Menander, Hellenic king of Bactria, posed to Buddhists in 150 BC. German writers such as Schegel and Goethe looked to ancient Sanskrit works for poetic inspiration. Hesse, Wagner and Borges play minor roles. Influences to the thinking of Hume, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche are meditated upon. Einstein saw Buddhism as a religion of the future, since it fit into his scientific views. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and Schroedinger's cat are certainly suspect. Mishra's command of the western canon is impressive.This book is a stimulating mix of memoir, history, and philosophy. Mishra moves freely from poetic accounts of his personal journey to a clear exposition of past ideas and events. The structure of sections at times is disconcerting, and his ruminations ramble far afield. If you have further appetite for reading about the Buddha's life, I recommend Christopher Beckwith's 'Greek Buddha'. It traverses the ancient terrain from a linguistic approach, while Mishra focuses on modern connections to the Buddha's world view. Born and educated in India, Mishra has no trace of Edward Said's rancor towards western literature. The book may be his best, although others have come close.

Quite the best book on Buddhism I’ve ever read. Deeply thoughtful and consistently stimulating. The author has read and assimilated a vast amount of material - cultural, philosophical, theological and more - and writes in a beautiful, clear and subtle way. Recommended.

Bringing Buddhism into the modern world of turmoil and redefinition.... well done and well researched. No hiding behind myth or theology, just a transparent logic derived through experience and self reflection. Written by a person who understands both the western and Asian cultures and can make good comparisons between both philosophies.

bought this because Nadeem Aslam picked Mishra as one of the interesting authors and chose An End to Suffering as one of his favourites. What I am reading is very important from the various point of views. If you are trying to understand the India as a place as well as Buddhism, it is surprisingly informative and leaves you with a sense of ignorance and motivation that there are neglected dimensions in history, to explore, to write and to read. A well-written and well-researched piece of literature that should be praised and endorsed. Praise to our bright author for such a wonderful book, looking forward to reading his work, all of them. :)

Je recommande ce livre a tous. C est passionnant et permet de comprendre comment le Buddhisme s est transforme dans les differents pays et surtout pourquoi l Inde l a rejete

Great book. Highly recommended as an introduction to Buddhism for those who didn't know much about it before.The author did a great job. He is a good writer and writes very clearly. He also carried out a lot of research in many related domains.