The Buddha and the traveller by Pankaj Mishra

The Buddha and the traveller
SUN SHUYUN
878 words
19 February 2005
The Globe and Mail
D10
English
All material copyright Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. or its licensors. All rights reserved.

An End to Suffering:

The Buddha in the World

By Pankaj Mishra

Farrar, Straus & Giroux,

422 pages, $37.50

Pankaj Mishra's well-received 2000 novel, The Romantics, tells of students in Benares, India, afflicted with uncertainties about life, society, revolution and love. From the evidence of his new book, The Buddha in the World, it was clearly autobiographical — and now he is searching again, this time as a more mature man, though still at odds with almost all the worlds he lives in.

The exception is Mashobra, a Himalayan village where he rents a cottage from Mr. Sharma. It has everything he needs, not least a beautiful view of the mountains. He installs himself there to turn himself into a writer, and it is the place he thinks of while he is away, and where he returns to write and to find sustenance.

The search this time is on a broader scale, no less than an enquiry into Buddhism and its relevance to contemporary life. The reader will find here a clear account of the development of Buddhism and many of its variants and sects, first and foremost through the life of the Buddha himself. The book takes you through early Indian history, so that you can understand the kind of world in which the Buddha lived and found his way, or rather his “way.”

The Buddha began as an aristocrat, but abandoned his comfortable life, and his wife and child, to look for his truth. It was a largely Brahmin world, and he first went through the ancient forms of meditation and asceticism, but found them wanting. Finally, he won through to his own understanding, principally by an intense analysis of the mind and what constitutes the self. It is living as a determinate being with a strong sense of the permanence of the ego and all its desires that leads to suffering; only jettisoning attachments to the self and its normal worldly objectives can bring release.

That is the heart of Buddhism, but it is not enough on its own; a whole series of imperatives about behaviour and morality complete the account of what is needed to live freely and well. You cannot change the world and everything in it that causes pain — not least disease, aging and death — but you can alter your mind and how you come to terms with life. There is no need to rely on anyone or anything else, not even the Buddha. All you need is in you, you just have to find it.

The book does not quite do what the jacket promises, setting the Buddha's teachings in the context of the author's “restless journeys” in South Asia and abroad. There is all too little of the journeys, and rather a lot of enquiries based on literature and philosophy. The main feature of the book is exegesis. But it does raise intriguing questions, especially about the extent to which modern conflicts, whether the wars and genocides of the 20th century or the terrorism of the 21st, arise from individualism. Are they not all based on strongly held beliefs and ideologies? Could Buddhism be the answer, rather than the “moral certainty with which [people] spoke of the necessity of violence for remaking the world”?

Mishra does not offer any naive reply. While toward the end of his search he has given up much of his skepticism about the Buddha's metaphysical ideas and practical advice, he still asks whether Buddhism can “assuage the political impotence felt by many people today.” (Perhaps he could have addressed that question a little more fully if he had given more space to Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar and his “neo-Buddhist” followers, who at least wrest some dignity from their otherwise appalling lives as untouchables in India.)

Some of the best passages in the book are about Gandhi, who obviously found a great deal in Buddhist teaching, and who inspired Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. It also goes into Nietzsche — whose interest in Buddhism will come as a surprise to many readers — in some depth. And there are numerous intriguing sidelights, such as the vogue for Buddhism in the United States, where for all the meditation centres and effective social action, there is also a very American competition among Buddhist sects, not to speak of thoroughly commercial sales of Buddhist accessories accompanied by a whiff of holiness.

In the end, though, Mishra has not completed his search. Rather than telling you, he leaves you to ask yourself how far Buddhism can help in the modern world. In the final chapter, he returns one more time to Mashobra, no longer quite so paradisiacal. Development has come to the village. “Real estate speculators with alleged Middle East connections had built condominiums, offered them at very high prices, and sold them to suspiciously rich army officers.” Mr. Sharma has aged. The author watches the 9/11 collapse of the Twin Towers on a little black-and-white television in a farmer's hut on Mr. Sharma's estate.

Nothing lasts. As the Buddha said.

Sun Shuyun is a filmmaker based in London, England, and the author of Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud.