Schopenhauer’s teachings drawn from Buddhism

The possibility of drawing teachings from Eastern religion didn’t occur immediately to Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). It does not appear in his early work “About the fourfold root of the principle of sufficient reason” (1808) and only starts to take shape in “The world as will and representation” (1818). Schopenhauer grew acquainted with Buddha’s teachings in the years after 1815. Initially, he read extensively about the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the creator of Buddhism. The insights gained by Siddhartha Gautama appear rather harsh for thinkers trained in Western philosophy. Buddhism in its original form entails a radical rejection of Western comforts and values. Schopenhauer was unwilling to endorse a radical rejection. I have no problem understanding his logic; he wanted Buddhism to enrich his life, not to render it miserable; he wanted to attain higher levels of happiness, not to give up happiness altogether. In the sixth century of our era, Bodhidharma (also called Da Mo) made the ideas of Siddhartha Gautama even more radical. When Bodhidharma said that “everybody knows the way, but few people actually walk it,” he was appealing to emotions and demanding visceral reactions. He wasn’t offering a smooth path from Western philosophy to a Buddhist lifestyle. Those radical teachings did not appear to Schopenhauer. He had realized that Buddhism had very much to offer in terms of stress reduction but was unwilling to abandon the comforts and sophistication of Western culture. Schopenhauer found after further research a milder form of Buddhism, a form that appears more practicable to the Western mind. The developer of this milder variant was Nagarjuna, a Buddhist thinker of the second century of our era. Nagarjuna presented himself as a follower of all Siddhartha Gautama’s precepts, but developed additional doctrines that are known as The Middle Way. Nagarjuna’s doctrines are outlined in poetic sentences compiled by his disciples. According to Nagarjuna, we can overcome all suffering and achieve enlightenment if we understand the nature of reality and act accordingly. The process of understanding, he said, can require extensive meditation, accompanied by study. Schopenhauer did not care much for the stories of miracles attributed to Nagarjuna and other Buddhists thinkers. Miracles cannot be reproduced by the reader. Schopenhauer was mainly interested in techniques for stress reduction, increasing one’s effectiveness, and making better decisions. Nagarjuna had acknowledged the suffering inherent in each individual existence. He wrote that “birth is suffering, ageing is suffering, illness is suffering, a displeasing environment is suffering, loss of pleasure is suffering, frustration is suffering, and death is suffering and inescapable.” Those elements are dominated by the will (“life force”) that Schopenhauer had described in his book “The world as will and representation. Nagarjuna’s teachings are greatly appealing to people who want to keep suffering at bay without having to renounce the world. Here is the link to the original article: https://johnvespasian.com/schopenhauers-teachings-drawn-from-buddhism/