An End to Suffering Quotes

“It was easy to denounce that American vision of endless space and well-being and leisure as a deception; to accuse it of obscuring the inner cities and drugs and violence, and the ruthless suppression of remote and near enemies. But to people from tormented societies, America was the country whose nation-building traumas seemed to lie in the remote past, and where many individuals could afford to look beyond the struggles for food, shelter and security that still weighed upon people elsewhere.”
― Pankaj Mishra, An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World

“I was to see Helen again, in another place and time. But now I was settling into my new self – the self that had travelled and imagined that it had learnt much. I didn’t know then that I would use up many more such selves, that they would arise and disappear, making all experience hard to fix and difficult to learn from.”
― Pankaj Mishra, An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World

“THE WESTERN IDEA OF history can be so seductive, with its promise of adding an extra emotional and spiritual dimension and validation to our limited life; with its ability to brighten the future and the past. It is especially attractive when you imagine yourself to be on its right side, and see yourself, in the way Jacquemont, Moorcroft and de Körös did, as part of an onward march of progress. To have faith in one’s history is to infuse hope into the most inert landscape and a glimmer of possibility into even the most adverse circumstances.”
― Pankaj Mishra, An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World

“I read all morning". The simple words spoke of the purest and most rewarding kind of leisure.

The Buddha had placed no value on prayer or belief in a deity, he had not spoken of creation, original sin or the last judgement.

The quality of all human experience depends on the mind and so the Buddha had been concerned with analyzing and transforming the individual mind.

India's intellectual backwardness, her inability to deal rationally with her past, which seemed no less damaging than her economic and political underdevelopment.

With its literary and philosophical traditions, China was well equipped to absorb and disseminate Buddhism. The Chinese eagerness to distribute Buddhist texts was what gave birth to both paper and printing.

There are places on which history has worked for too long and neither the future nor the past can be seen clearly in their ruins or emptiness.

In the agrarian society of the past, the Brahminic inspired human hierarchy had proposed itself as a complete explanation not only for what human beings did but also what they were. So, for instance, a Brahmin was not just a priest because he performed rituals; he was innately blessed with virtue, learning and wisdom. A servant wasn't just someone who performed menial tasks, his very essence was poverty and weakness.

Meditation was one of the methods used to gain control over one's emotions and passions. Sitting still in a secluded place, the yogi attempted to disengage his perennially distracted mind and force it to dwell upon itself.

The discipline of meditation steadily equips the individual with a new sensibility. It shows him how the craving for things that are transient, essence-less and flawed leads to suffering. Regular meditation turns this new way of looking into a habit. it detaches the individual from the temptations of the world and fixes him in a state of profound calm.

Mere faith in what the guru says isn't enough and you have to realize and verify it through your own experience.

The mind determines the way we experience the world, the way in which we make it our world.

The ego seeks to gratify and protect itself through desires. But the desires create friction when they collide with the ever-changing larger environment. They lead only to more desires and more dissatisfaction.

How human beings desiring happiness and stability were undermined slowly, over the course of their lives, by the inconstancy of their hearts and the intermittence of their emotions.

Buddhism in America could be seen to meet every local need. It had begun as a rational religion which found few takers in America before being transformed again, during the heady days of the 1960s, through the mysticism of Zen, into a popular substitute for, or accessory to, psychotherapy and drugs.

It was probably true that greed, hatred and delusion, the source of all suffering, are also the source of life and its pleasures, however temporary and that to vanquish them may be to face a nothingness that is more terrifying than liberating. Nevertheless, the effort to control them seemed to me worth making.”
― Pankaj Mishra, An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World

“Everywhere and at all times, it is up to you to rejoice piously at what is occurring at the present moment, to conduct yourself with justice towards the people who are present here and now.4 Although”
― Pankaj Mishra, An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World

“It was as if California, specifically the Bay Area, had most of what Nietzsche once defined as the ‘precondition’ of Buddhism: a very mild climate, very gentle and liberal customs, no militarism; and that it is the higher and even learned classes in which the movement has its home. The supreme goal is cheerfulness, stillness, absence of desire, and this goal is achieved.1”
― Pankaj Mishra, An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World

“According to the historian Arrian who reported the encounter, the ascetics beat their feet on the ground as Alexander passed them. When asked about the gesture, they said that Alexander occupied, despite his conquests, no more ground than that covered by the soles of his two feet. Like everyone else, he, too, was mortal, ‘except that you are ambitious and reckless, traversing such a vast span of land, so remote from your home, enduring troubles and inflicting them upon others’.4”
― Pankaj Mishra, An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World

“But, although the sramanas carried on much dialogue among themselves and before large audiences, they dealt primarily in assertion. Reality consisted of this and that; and there was no basis for morality. They lived in what the Buddha, commenting on the intellectual ferment of his time, later called the ‘jungle of opinions’.”
― Pankaj Mishra, An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World

“The world, whose nature is to become other, is committed to becoming, has exposed itself to becoming; it relishes only becoming, yet what it relishes brings fear, and what it fears is pain.10”
― Pankaj Mishra, An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World