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Buddhism Is Not a Pessimistic Religion

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Buddhism Is Not a Pessimistic Religion Open Journal of Social Sciences, 2016, 4, 28-38 http://www.scirp.org/journal/jss ISSN Online: 2327-5960 ISSN Print: 2327-5952 Mind Is Reality: Buddhism Is Not a Pessimistic Religion Yan Shi Chinese Department, College of the Humanities, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China How to cite this paper: Shi, Y. (2016) Mind Abstract Is Reality: Buddhism Is Not a Pessimistic Religion. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 4, The main body of this essay was divided into two parts, with the first one—to con- 28-38. trovert the misunderstanding that “Buddhism is a pessimistic religion” and to point http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jss.2016.410003 out that Buddhism was neither pessimistic nor optimistic but realistic, and the Received: August 19, 2016 second one—to focus on the topic of nature of mind and to give reasons why Budd- Accepted: October 14, 2016 hism, especially Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism, said that “Mind is reality”. Published: October 17, 2016 Keywords Copyright © 2016 by author and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. Mind, Reality, Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism, Religion This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 1. Introduction Open Access Nowadays, people all over the world are getting more and more interested in Budd- hism. Numerous societies and study-groups have emerged, and scores of books on the teachings of the Buddha have appeared. One of the basic issues of Buddhism is the na- ture of mind, and to understand Buddhism, it is thus necessary to have an in-depth study of this subject. What is the nature of mind? Just because of thoughtless under- standing on this very question, some people were of the opinion that Buddhism was unscientific and superstitious, and that as a religion, it was completely based on Theol- ogy, and apart from its moral teaching, there was not much content to it. Others said that its theory, admittedly profound, was too idealistic, impractical and not worth learning. Indeed, there is much misunderstanding around the world with regard to Buddhism. However, in view of the continual existence of Buddhism in the past two thousand five hundred years and its prevalence in certain parts of Asia at different in- tervals, I strongly believe that it is clear that its unique value does not lie in religious worship, or else it would have declined and disappeared from human civilization long ago [1]. DOI: 10.4236/jss.2016.410003 October 17, 2016 Y. Shi In this essay, I am going to divide the main body into two parts, with the first one—to controvert the misunderstanding that “Buddhism is a pessimistic religion” and to point out that Buddhism is neither pessimistic nor optimistic but realistic, and the second one—to focus on the topic of nature of mind and to give reasons why Budd- hism, especially Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism, says that “Mind is reality”. 2. Is Buddhism a Pessimistic Religion A common mis-conception about Buddhism is that “Buddhism is a pessimistic reli- gion”. This erroneous criticism is an outcome of misunderstandings mainly from three aspects: 1) misunderstanding of the true meaning of Dukkha from the Buddhist pers- pective; 2) misunderstanding of how Buddhists (Buddhist monks and Buddhist laity) behave; 3) misunderstanding that Buddhism is a religion. In this part, I will refute these three misunderstandings with basic Buddhist theories, and explain why Buddhism is NOT a pessimistic religion. This part comprises three sections: 1) The True Meaning of Dukkha from the Buddhist Perspective; 2) A True Buddhist Is the Happiest of All Be- ings; 3) Buddhism Is More an Educational Doctrine than a Religion. Finally, the thesis that Buddhism is neither pessimistic nor optimistic but realistic will be given. 2.1. The True Meaning of Dukkha from the Buddhist Perspective 2.1.1. Life Is Not Only Suffering The focal point of the Buddha’s teaching lies in the Four Noble Truths (Cattāri Ariyasaccāni), which are: Dukkha, Samudaya (the arising or origin of dukkha), Nirodha (the cessation of dukkha), and Magga (the way leading to the cessation of dukkha). The Pali word dukkha (or Sanskrit duhkha) usually means “suffering”, “pain”, “sorrow” or “misery”. It is true that in ordinary usage dukkha is opposed to the word sukha, which means “happiness”, “comfort” or “ease”. But nearly all Buddhist classics and scriptures trust that as a key element of the First Noble Truths, the term dukkha in the Buddha’s view of life and of the world has a deeper and more philosophical meaning. Besides the ordinary meaning of “suffering”, the term dukkha in the First Noble Truth also con- tains qualities such as “imperfection”, “impermanence”, “emptiness”, and “insubstan- tiality”. However, many scholars have called the First Noble Truth as “The Noble Truth of Suffering” and interpreted it in the way that life according to Buddhism is nothing but suffering and pain. Neither the naming nor the interpretation is satisfactory, and both of them are highly misleading. Just because of this inadequate and harebrained translation and its superficial explanation, many people have been misled into regard- ing Buddhism as pessimistic. This is why some researchers have insisted on leaving the term untranslated, rather than turning it into a convenient translation with inadequate and erroneous connotation [2]. It is unquestionable that no one, rich or poor, strong or weak, intelligent or foolish, can avoid suffering, which is clearly universal: parting with the beloved, meeting the hated and undesired, illnesses, unfulfilled wishes, broken love, vicissitudes of life’s for- tune, etc. In life there are hundreds of afflictions that both undermine the body and 29 Y. Shi trouble the mind. Clearly, even in the short span of life there is always a lot of suffering and sorrow [1]. When the Buddha says there is suffering in life, he does not deny hap- piness. On the contrary, he admits the value of different forms of happiness for laymen as well as for monks, on both material and spiritual levels, such as the happiness of family life, that of pleasures of sensation and of renunciation and so on. Nevertheless, all these are actually dukkha in disguise [2]. Some may argue that they have never known suffering in their lifetime, but this is not true. Dukkha is universal. People are unaware of it merely because they are so used to it for so long that they take it for granted. As the Buddha says, “he who sees dukkha sees also the arising of dukkha, sees also the cessation of dukkha, and sees also the path leading to the cessation of dukkha” [2]. This does not make the life of a Buddhist melancholy or sorrowful at all, as some people wrongly imagine. According to Buddhism, all kinds of suffering are but reactions of the mind, and both their arising and cessation are separately brought about by the mind. If the mind does not create any karma, consequently there will be no trans-migration or reincarnation, and neither will there be any suffering at all (according to Buddhism, the force of all perverted activities of the body, speech and mind caused by delusions in Buddhist terms called “Karma”. And according to the causal vehicle, karma is the activ- ity of cause and result. According to the resultant vehicle, it is unnecessary to divide cause from result.) [3]. When in delusion, unknowingly the mind becomes discrimi- nating and automatically generate karma, hence a Buddhist dictum: “Because of delu- sion, there is Karma and because of Karma, there is suffering” [1]. As Buddhism tells us, although there is suffering in life, one who believes Buddhism should not be gloomy over it, and neither should one be angry or impatient about it. At the beginning we should grapple with the question of suffering with good understanding and deal with it fearlessly and patiently, and once our bias and subjective thoughts about the phenome- na before us are wiped out, suffering would be turned into happiness. From this, it can be seen that the Buddhist outlook of the universe and human life is active, positive, complete and universal. 2.1.2. The World Is Not the Source of Evil and Suffering for Man It is a common fallacy that the Buddhists see the world as bad and the source of evil and suffering. In fact, the Buddha never claimed that this world is purely evil, or that sen- tient beings are objectively evil. According to Buddhism, the source of evil is not the world, but our dualistic mind, or the ego-grasping mind, and that the world is only a reflection of one’s mind [3]. In Chan (Zen) Buddhism, the Sixth patriarch Hui Neng once said: “As the mind arises, so arise all kinds of phenomena; as the mind becomes extinct, so do all kinds of phenomena become extinct. Without the arising of mind, noth- ing will be at fault” [4]. Similarly, in the Agama, it says that “all phenomena are one, and the one phenome- non is the mind that gives rise to all phenomena” [5]. And the Avatamsaka Sutra also states that: 30 Y. Shi “The three world-spheres are an illusion created by the mind”. “If people want to know about the Buddhas of the past, present and future, they should contemplate on the nature of the phenomenal world and then they would realize that everything is created by the mind” [6]. All these scriptures tell us that the “mind” is the creator of the universe and our exis- tence comes from it. When our selfish mind takes control of us, it will directly influence our interpretations of the world and affect the way we act on the world.
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