An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World

by Pankaj Mishra

Book Overview

An End to Suffering is a search to understand the Buddha's relevance in a world where class oppression and religious violence are rife, and where poverty and terrorism cast a long, constant... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374148368
• ISBN13: 9780374148362
• Release Date: December 2004
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.4" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

A Young Writer's Spiritual Journey

In "An End to Suffering", (2004) Pankaj Mishra, has written a personal and eloquent account about the history and basic teachings of Buddhism and about his own life. Mishra, (b. 1969,) a young Indian author,has written a novel, "The Romantics" and a recent collection of essays, "Temptations of the West" (2006) following-up his book about his search to understand Buddhism. For those new to Buddhism, Mishra offers an excellent, informed introduction. He describes well the Indian society into which the Buddha was born with its moves towards centralization and urbanization with the attendant religious change and skepticism. He discusses what Buddhists texts and legends have to say about the Buddha's life, and he presents a good overview of the Buddha's teachings, with close attention to specific suttas such as the Fire Sermon and the Parinibanna Sutta (which recounts the death of the Buddha.) Mishra also gives a brief and lucid information about how Buddhism was rediscovered in the West as a result of the efforts of a number of European travellers and British colonial officials during the 19th Century. Most importantly, Mishra explains well the appeal Buddhism, a religion without a God, has to him. This discussion will resonate with many contemporary readers who are fascinated with Buddhist teachings. But what makes this book work is not merely the factual treatment of basic Buddhism which can be learned from many sources. Rather, Mishra relates his interest in Buddhism (not the religion of his birth) to his own life and ambition. The book comes alive as Mishra learns to understand Buddhism through his own experiences. In this book, we meet a young man born into a poor family in rural India with a driving urge to become a writer. Mishra takes the reader through his childhood and college days. We meet his family and companions and share in his travels. At the outset of the book, the reader joins Mishra as he moves to a small hut in a north Indian village called Mashobra where he studies, wanders, and reads in the process of becoming a writer. We meet his landlord, Mr. Sharma, and many of Mishra's friends in the course of the book. I got the feel, in reading this account, of the life of a strugling young author, who is committed to his chosen path in life, and who achieves a degree of success and fame and still finds the need to ask spiritual questions. Mishra's book alternates chapters dealing with autobiographical matters with chapters dealing with the Buddha. This juxtaposition is convincing for showing his growing understanding and appreciation of Buddhism. The book also displays an impressive degree of learning and reading, as Mishra discusses and relates his interest in Buddha to Plato, Thoreau, Emerson, Toqueville, Schopenhauer, and, in particular, Nietsche, among others. I found some of the portions of this book that deal with world politics rather short, free-wheeling and superficial. Perhaps Mishra was overly-ambitious

An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World

I bought this book on a hunch because of my long standing interest in India and in Buddhism (I am a Vipassana meditator). Mishra's book is simply stunning. Not only does it constantly surprise, intrigue and move the reader, but it is also surprisingly scholarly. All aspects of the Buddha's life and teachings have been researched here quite extensively but the novel and fresh format of this work makes the reader forget the scholarship that sustains the book while Mishra imparts reals wisdom based on experience really, an approach that I feel the Buddha would not have found uncongenial! By mixing personal history, consideration on Indian society, on modernisation and its impact on world society, stories about the Buddha and his time and place, as well as a look at the Buddha's ideas and how they relate to some of Europe's leading philosophers of the post-enlightenment era, Mishra has created a work that defies categorisation into any particular genre but that consistently illuminates its subject matter and touches the heart of his reader. I will cherish this book and read it again for years to come and think that over time it could/should become a classic.

A Traveler's History of Buddhism

Pankaj Mishra is an excellent writer and in his "An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World" he uses this ability to great effect. He tells the story of Buddhism between accounts of his travels in India, England, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States, weaving a coherent tale that does not spare the negatives, but also presents the positive aspects of Buddhist history. Like other belief systems, Buddhism has been misused, misinterpreted and misapplied, sometimes in the service of quite evil goals, as in Japan's militarism in the 20th Century and in Cambodia's destruction of the city-dwellers during the Pol Pot regime. That said Buddhism at its best is a very civilized religion (or philosophy, if you prefer.) It has no gods, no real holy prophets (Buddha says that he is no greater than any of his followers and asserts that he is only "awake", not holy,) and its texts are considered teachings, not revelations. In its essence, Buddhism has a number of similarities to early Greek philosophy, but also was more egalitarian, including all sentient beings. The Buddha himself says that women, slaves, and untouchables are all capable of enlightenment, although like any other mortal he sometimes did not practice what he preached, especially in regard to women. Still he was among the first (if not the first at around 500 BCE) to recognize that women could be as good as men in the spiritual realm. Mishra has told this story with good humor, local color and skill. This is no dry history of Buddhist theology, but a living and charming exposition of both reality (as much as we know it) and myth behind the modern rise in Buddhism. Indeed, Buddhism's attraction lies both in its positive goal of compassion and the ending of human suffering and in its lack of the literalism that dogs other worldwide religions in their too often expressed extreme forms. It is certainly refreshing not to hear absolutist rantings for a change (unfortunately the worst of the three revealed religions seems often to the forefront these days, between bombings, attempts to control national politics and laws and indeed, nihilist longings for the End Times!) Mishra is a native of the part of the world where the Buddha lived and it is also refreshing to read an account of the history of Buddhism from someone who has experience with the land out of which it arose, someone who knows it intimately. If you would get the essence of Buddhism, its history, geography, concepts, and failures and successes, this is definitely the book to read!

Soulful and Scholarly

"An End to Suffering" combines three books into one. It includes: 1.) the author's autobiographical coming of age amidst the brutalities of contemporary India; 2.) an account of what little is known about Gautama Buddha (the historical Buddha), and how his actual existence only came to light relatively recently (through the odd efforts of various fascinating Western scholars and explorers over the past couple centuries); and 3.) a serious and lucid consideration of the Buddha's practical philosophy, illuminated by comparisons with various ancient and modern philosophers (ranging from Epicurus and Rousseau to Nietzsche and Gandhi). `An End to Suffering' is especially relevant to intellectuals trying to come to terms with our contemporary world's fall into ever-greater chaos and violence (which, according to Mishra, is strikingly similar to the Buddha's India of the 5th Century BC). For example, Mishra's description of the circumstances in which he first saw the 9/11 attack (on a small, blurred black- & -white TV in a Himalayan village) reframe the significance of that event from a perspective unfamiliar to most American readers; his philosophical reflections go far beyond contemporary politics -- as he takes into consideration such things as the Buddha's personal response to the genocide of his times, inflicted on his very own people. If you're looking for a quick E-Z `self-help' fix on Buddhism, then this certainly isn't the book for you. But those who appreciate good writing will find Mishra's style masterfully personable in its presentation of serious subject matter -- bringing it all to life far better than more 'trendy' or academic authors can. This is the ideal `five star' book for earnest readers who understand that the way to deeper understanding can often be more circuitous than direct.