A Response to "Was the Buddha a pessimist, by S N Goenka"

Mr S N Goenka, of Goenka Vipassana fame, has written a long essay claiming that Buddha was not a pessimist.  The essay was originally written in Hindi, but has been translated into English and is available in its entirety here.

The essay is quite long and meandering and does not possess a formal structure for it to be formally reviewed and analyzed.

Before reviewing and commenting on Mr Goenka's essay, some general comments: After regarding the length of the essay, one could be forgiven for assuming that there must be good reasons for many people to consider the Buddha a pessimist.  As an analogy, if the defense statement in a trial is very long, it stands to reason that the prosecution must have some evidence or persuasive power.

Secondly, the essay has cherry-picked incidents and sutras of the Buddha which purportedly show him to be not a pessimist.  There are grave examples in Buddhist texts (for example the Nine Cemetery Observations section in the Satipatthana Sutta) which show the contrary.  Be that as it may, I think even in these incidents and sutras there is ample expression and illustration of why Buddha can still be considered a a non-votary of happy living on earth.

Thirdly, I recognize that Mr Goenka is not a rigorous intellectual and his writings are meant to be emotionally persuasive, and he perhaps is not willing to question the basic tenets of Buddhism.  His acceptance of Buddhist texts is no less than veneration.

Now, on to some brief comments about the essay.

In the section "Ultimate Truth", Mr Goenka states that for the Buddha, "the four Noble Truths lead to the ultimate reality of nibbāna, which is beyond the senses: eternal, everlasting and permanent."

This statement is the key to understanding the aim of Buddhism (which is similar to the aim of all spiritual disciplines): to escape this world (the world of senses, people, time and space) and to somehow experience or dwell in the other world (the world of senselessness, timelessness and spacelessness).  This world is the plane of misery, and that world is the plane of bliss.  This world is the plane where there is craving, aversion, suffering, birth and death; and that world is where there is only absolute bliss.

The Buddha is quite explicit about it:

‘There is that dimension where there is neither earth, nor water, nor fire, nor wind; ... neither this world, nor the next world, nor sun, nor moon. And there, I say, there is neither coming, nor going, nor stasis; neither passing away nor arising: without stance, without foundation, without support. This, just this, is the end of dukkha’. (Udana 8.1; PTS: viii.1; Nibbana Sutta).

It is clear that the Buddha is advocating not a modulation or management or lessening of one's suffering or stress or sorrow while living on earth; his only solution is to proceed towards experiencing a timeless, space-less realm.

Further down, in the section "Does a doctor promote disease?", Mr Goenka writes:

An expert doctor comes to examine a sick person. He explains to the sick person: "This is your disease; this is the cause of your disease; and here—I have a medicine for your disease. The medicine will remove the cause of the disease and thus cure the disease." The sick person takes the medicine and becomes healthy. Now, can we say that this doctor is promoting disease or promoting health?

The criticism of the Buddha is not that he is promoting suffering, but that he is seeing life on earth as nothing but suffering and that the only worthwhile endeavor according to him is to not be born again.  The "medicine" that the Buddha offers the suffering person is of a curious kind, viz, to be completely detached from this world and its happenings, to not let anything affect or bind oneself.  In effect, Buddha is not being a doctor at all.  He is claiming that there is actually no cure in this world, and the only cure is to leave this world and its miseries behind.  As an analogy, it is as if a patient goes to the doctor to get relief from toothache, and the doctor removes his jaw altogether.  No teeth, no toothache, the doctor happily proclaims.

A little further, Mr Goenka writes:

Every serious meditator experiences that the entire field of the cycle of birth and death is misery. However, most importantly, one also knows that there is a way out of this misery. How wrong it is to call the Buddha a preacher of misery when he has actually given us a way out of all misery!

Nobody is calling the Buddha a preacher of misery, Mr Goenka.  He has been called a pessimist because he, like you, saw only misery in this "entire field of the cycle of birth and death".

I am inclined to think that Mr Goenka, in his zeal to defend the Buddha, is attacking straw-man arguments.  For example:

From the assertion that his philosophy and teachings were nothing but suffering and misery, the implication is that the Buddha himself was miserable and unhappy.

Nobody is asserting is that his philosophy and teachings were "nothing but suffering and misery".  The claim is that his teachings see only misery in this life, and offer the solution which is to escape to a birth-less/death-less realm.

In the section "Happiness even for householders", the advice quoted as given by the Buddha ("obey your parents", "keep standing when elders are standing", "be moral", "remain content", "abstain from evil", etc.) is embarrassingly pedestrian, unquestioning, and timid.  Even so, this is not really Buddha's main teaching.  The crux of Buddha's solution to the problem of human suffering is to attain Nirvana and to never be born again.

In the section "Use of the term sukha (Happiness)", the Buddha is very explicit in stating that happiness in the "other" world is to be preferred over the the happiness in "this" world:

1. Happiness of home and happiness of homelessness (of a monk or a nun)—between the two, the happiness of homelessness is greater.

2. Happiness of sensual pleasures and happiness of renunciation—between the two, the happiness of renunciation is greater. 

3. Happiness of various realms and happiness beyond all the realms of existence—between the two, the happiness beyond the realms of existence is greater.

The section on "Overemphasis on misery" is quite interesting.  Mr Goenka compares the Buddha's aphoristic statements on misery with the descriptive ones in Vishnu Purana and comes to the conclusion that if there is to be blaming and shaming, then Vishnu Purana is the worse offender.  I find the section on the suffering of birth quite hilarious.  That Mr Goenka agrees with the Vishnu Purana statements is quite telling.

...

In summary, I find that Mr Goenka has not fully understood the criticism against the Buddhist teachings and has therefore offered a meandering and weak defense.  The Buddha is in-line with other eastern spiritual traditions in offering an out-of-this-world solution to the problem of suffering.  To be fair, the Buddha only emphasized and verbalized the aspect of misery more, but all eastern spiritual traditions regard life on earth as sorrowful, secondary and preparatory for a blissful life elsewhere.  

If one really listens to spiritual philosophy, life is best avoided.  They only differ in the "How" aspect.