The Story of Philosophy

by Will Durant

Buddhism is profounder than Christianity, because it makes the destruction of the will the entirety of religion, and preaches Nirvana as the goal of all personal development. The Hindus were deeper than the thinkers of Europe, because their interpretation of the world was internal and intuitive, not external and intellectual; the intellect divides everything, intuition unites everything; the Hindus saw that the “I” is a delusion; that the individual is merely phenomenal, and that the only reality is the Infinite One—“That art thou.” “Whoever is able to say this to himself, with regard to every being with whom he comes in contact,”—whoever is clear-eyed and clear-souled enough to see that we are all members of one organism, all of us little currents in an ocean of will,—he “is certain of all virtue and blessedness, and is on the direct road to salvation.”137 Schopenhauer does not think that Christianity will ever displace Buddhism in the East: “it is just the same as if we fired a bullet against a cliff.”138 Rather, Indian philosophy streams into Europe, and will profoundly alter our knowledge and our thought. “The influence of the Sanskrit literature will penetrate not less deeply than did the revival of Greek letters in the fifteenth century.”139