An End to Suffering : The Buddha in the World

Rating:
Summary: Erudite & Thought Provoking
Review: "The other kind of future once laid out for them had failed. This was the future in which everyone in the world would wear a tie, work in an office or factory, practice birth control, raise a nuclear family, drive a car and pay taxes. There were not nearly enough secular schools to educate these young men in the ways of the modern world - and few jobs awaited those who had been educated.

The forward march of history was to include only a few of them. For the rest, there would be only the elaborate illusion of progress, maintained by a thousand `aid' programmes, IMF and World Bank loans, by the talk of underdevelopment, economic liberalization and democracy. But the fantasy of modernity, held up by their state and supported by the international political and economic system, had been powerful enough to expel and uproot them from their native villages.

This had also been the fate of my father and countless others like him. But the journey from the old to the new world had become harder over the years for most people. Now this journey seemed never ending, and it seemed to consume more and more people as it lengthened; hundreds of millions of stupefied and powerless individuals, lured by the promise of equality and justice into a world which they had no means of understanding, whose already overstrained and partially available resources they were expected to exploit in order to hoist themselves to the level of affluence enjoyed by a small minority of middle-class people around the world.

To the more frustrated among them modernity already appeared as a tall mountain, where a few people already occupied the summit, watching others inch up the steep slopes, occasionally throwing down a tattered rope but, more often, giant boulders. They knew that there remained no unknown lands and peoples for them to conquer, control and exploit. They could only cut down their own forests, pollute their own rivers and lakes, and seek to control and thereby oppress their own people, their women and minorities." [Extract from the book]

A situation that could be applied to so many sections of the world today - from the uncountable number of people migrating into our metros, to the citizens of Afghanistan, Serbia and now Iraq, just to name a small fraction. And according to the author this was applicable to the Buddha's time as well, a time when small city states were being swallowed up by the empire builders. And probably applicable to the history of mankind, some parts of which Mishra traces out in the book.

Pankaj Mishra puts across his thoughts and views on the state of the individual and society with eloquence and as the notes section at the end of the book demonstrates, a lot of personal research and reading. The primary focus of this book is the Buddha and his life and times, and an exploration of his doctrine and its role, if any, in our world today. What makes it different from becoming one more historical or analytical book on Buddhism is the weaving in of the author's personal evolution and the story of how he became interested in the Buddha and Buddhism - this makes the book more human and readable.

The author's interest in the Buddha was sparked in his early 20's and the book provides some insights into how an interest that was soon discarded as being unviable seems to have worked in the background for over a decade. And during this time, the author moved over the length and breadth of the country, wrote other books, went on to achieve fame and status even at an international level, living and working in the UK and USA. In a nutshell, he seems to have more than actualized the dreams of an Indian with a small-town, middle-class upbringing. (Read Mishra's earlier book The Romantics, which while being marked as fiction, does seem to have a lot drawn from his personal experiences as a student in Benares).

I've not done any reading on the Buddha so there was much I learned about his life and times. While there is a lot of reference to the Buddha's views, thoughts and words, the book is certainly not a Buddhist treatise and does not simply present the sermons or teachings verbatim, which I think is a good thing. It's a bit long-winded though and I do have the feeling that the book could have benefited from tighter editing; I couldn't read through at one go, and took and finished three other books after having started this if that helps illustrate what I mean. Perhaps by dropping or trimming some of the numerous references to Western philosophy or segments of ideas and thoughts on the present Indian situation which I found coming in more than one place.

Overall, a 3-star plus rating from me, drop by at www.theviewfromtheground.com in case you can tell me what's Mishra's summing up in the book.