. . . .the Buddha appeared to have inspired something of a cult in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe and America, especially among the artists and intellectuals. Schopenhauer spoke often and admiringly of Buddhism towards the end of his life and even that he and his followers were the first European Buddishts. Wagner planned to write an opera about the buddha. In America Henry David Thoreau translate a French version of the Buddhist text, the ‘Lotus Sutra’ terebess.hu/english/Lotus-Sutra.pdf into English. The German writer Hermann Hessee wrote ‘Siddhartha (1922) a novel about the renunciation of the young buddha, which was embraced in 1960s by young Europeans and Americans disenchanted with what they saw as the aggressive materialism of their societies
It was not just poets and philosophers but scientists and technologists who had spoken well of the Buddha. Albert Einstein had called Buddhism the religion of the future since it was compatible with modern science. The French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss had ended his memoir, ‘Tristes Tropiques (1955) with extraordinary praise of the Buddha: “What else, indeed,” he wrote, “have I learned from the masters who taught me, the philosophers I have read, the societies I have visited and even from that science which is the pride of the West, apart from few scraps of wisdom which, when laid end to end, coincides with the meditation of the Sage at the foot of the tree?” ~ Page 48
From the Book “End of Suffering” ~ Author Pankaj Mishra
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Annemarie said:
Happy Sunday evening:)
Malik Raoulda said:
Bonne et agréable semaine.
Jocelyne Villoing said:
Bonne nouvelle semaine Denis.
Jaap van 't Veen said:
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Heide said:
Dinesh said:
It was not just poets and philosophers but scientists and technologists who had spoken well of the Buddha. Albert Einstein had called Buddhism the religion of the future since it was compatible with modern science. The French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss had ended his memoir, ‘Tristes Tropiques (1955) with extraordinary praise of the Buddha: “What else, indeed,” he wrote, “have I learned from the masters who taught me, the philosophers I have read, the societies I have visited and even from that science which is the pride of the West, apart from few scraps of wisdom which, when laid end to end, coincides with the meditation of the Sage at the foot of the tree?” ~ Page 48
From the Book “End of Suffering” ~ Author Pankaj Mishra