Hermann Keyserling: The condition of the Buddhist is a happy one

The condition of the Buddhist is a happy one, for he longs for nothing more than to escape from his particularised existence; the condition of the modern European is tragic, for he is consumed by a passion for exist­ence; he regards himself as impotent in so far as he fails of self-realisation. To deny existence absolutely, that saving grace of the Buddhistic nihilist, is an impossibility to the vital European. Therefore precisely the same circumstance which made the teaching of Buddha take root in Ceylon, caused at home the success of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s doctrine of the superman is not an expression of greatness, but an ex­ pression of the desire for greatness, perhaps the most pathetic expression of that desire which has ever been known.
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How I long for Nirvana! How I long for an existence where creation is not over-powerful, where nature does not smother the mind with its luxuriance! How I long for a non­ individual, non-defined condition of existence, in which I could be free from all that binds me now, free from joy and sorrow, free from gods and men, and free from myself.
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While studying the teachings of Buddha I frequently asked myself whether he wished to make plants of men; there is no doubt that he did so. His teaching aims so strongly at the unification of life that the beings who have followed it were bound to develop towards what is common to all. The passivity of the Buddhist has no other significance but that he is a plant-like being.
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I must confess that the Buddhist priest surprises me by the level to which he attains. I do not mean his mental level but his human one; his type is superior to that of the Christian priest. He possesses a gentleness, a capacity for understanding, a benevolence, an ability to rise above events which even the most prejudiced person would scruple to describe as charac­ teristic of the average Christian priest. The reason for this is undoubtedly the perfect disinterestedness which Buddhism develops in its disciples. In theory it may seem more beautiful to live for others instead of for oneself, but if you take men as they are, active love of their neighbours does not make them more generous but more mean in heart; it is only in exceptional cases that it does not develop into importunity and tyranny.

How tactless are all the people who insist on improving their fellows! How narrow-minded are the missionaries! No matter how open-hearted a man be by nature — no matter if the faith he confesses be the most universal in the world — the mere desire for proselytising limits him, for psychologically it always signifies the same thing: the imposition of your own view upon another human being. Anyone who does this is ipso facto limited, and anyone who does it continuously or even professionally must needs become more and more limited from day to day. For this reason meanness, aggressiveness, tyranny, lack of tact and lack of understanding, are typical traits of the Christian and especially of the Protestant priest.

A religion such as Buddhism, which teaches the care for per­ sonal salvation as the only motive in existence, is incapable of evoking such traits. It would appear that in their place Budd­ hism should develop the crassest egoism, but this does not happen for two reasons: firstly, personal salvation in Buddhism does not imply the eternal bliss of the individual but, on the contrary, the liberation from the limits of individuality; egoistic desires therefore signify misunderstanding, because beneficence and compassion appear to the Buddhist as virtues whose practice favours and accelerates more than anything else the liberation from the ego. It is this combination of the ideals of disinterestedness and love of your neighbour, then, which has produced that atmosphere which above everything else gives its superiority to Buddhism. I mean the specifically Buddhist form of charity. Charity in the Christian sense means wishing to do good; in the Buddhist sense it means wanting to let every one come into his own at his own level.
And this does not imply any indifference to the condition in which another man finds himself, it means that it implies the sympathetic understanding for the positive qualities of every condition. According to the general Indian point of view every man stands precisely on the level to which he belongs, to which he has risen or fallen by his own deserts. Every state therefore is inwardly justified. Of course it would be desirable that every one should reach the highest level, but this cannot be attained by a jump but only by a slow and gradual rise, and each level has its special ideal. Whilst Christianity, as long as it was ascetic, judged the life of the world to be inferior to that of the monk and would have loved to place the whole of man­ kind at one swoop into the cloister, Buddhism, whose attitude is in principle more inimical to the world than the original Christian attitude and regards the condition of the monk expressly as the highest form of life, nevertheless refrained from condemning the lower states for the sake of the higher ones. Every state is necessary and in so far as it is necessary it is good. The blossom does not deny the leaf and the leaf does not deny the stalk nor the stalk the root. To be friendly to man does not imply the desire to change all the leaves into blossoms, but it does imply letting the leaves be leaves and understanding them lovingly. This marvellous and superior form of love is written on the most insignificant face of every Buddhist priest. Now I am no longer surprised at the unparalleled veneration which the Buddhist priest enjoys among the people. At first sight it seems paradoxical that the man who is disinterested should enjoy more veneration than the one who actively concerns himself for the benefit of his fellows; in practice this is the same everywhere. Men do not wish to be tutored; he who tries to convince others is at much greater pains to do so than the man who unintentionally and without ulterior motives does for himself what seems right to him. The intentless, selfless, pure life which the Bhikshu leads is, according to Buddhist theories, the highest which a man can lead. Thus he who serves the monks, serves his own ideal.

from the book The travel diary of a philosopher. Vol. 1 by Hermann Keyserling