The Portable Nietzsche

by Friedrich Nietzsche

I hope that my condemnation of Christianity has not involved me in any injustice to a related religion with an even larger number of adherents: Buddhism. Both belong together as nihilistic religions—they are religions of decadence—but they differ most remarkably. For being in a position now to compare them, the critic of Christianity is profoundly grateful to the students of India. Buddhism is a hundred times more realistic than Christianity: posing problems objectively and coolly is part of its inheritance, for Buddhism comes after a philosophic movement which spanned centuries. The concept of “God” had long been disposed of when it arrived. Buddhism is the only genuinely positivistic religion in history. This applies even to its theory of knowledge (a strict phenomenalism): it no longer says “struggle against sin” but, duly respectful of reality, “struggle against suffering.” Buddhism is profoundly distinguished from Christianity by the fact that the self-deception of the moral concepts lies far behind it. In my terms, it stands beyond good and evil. The two physiological facts on which it is based and which it keeps in mind are: first, an excessive sensitivity, which manifests itself in a refined susceptibility to pain; and second, an overspiritualization, an all-too-long preoccupation with concepts and logical procedures, which has damaged the instinct of personality by subordinating it to the “impersonal” (both states which at least some of my readers, those who are “...