What would a modern Siddhartha think – the hero of Herman Hesse's eponymous novel – if he were to wade through today's India, sandwiched between the modernism of big business and the sacred cows squatting on the asphalt ribbons of the roads and unaware of the traffic that respectfully avoids them? The original land of Buddhism – a mild and harsh philosophy (religion?) that prescribes an inner light to be reached through meditation – it is also the land of sectarian violence and bloody clashes between Hindus and Muslims.
An unassuming pilgrim has ventured into the 'Buddhist holy land', trampling the sacred places where Buddha was born, meditated, taught, wandered and died. In these times of epochal tensions, furrowed by the poisonous tails of the Great Recession and scratched by the nails of geopolitics in the Near East, Does Buddhism have something to say?
The first thing the pilgrim notices is the 'Great detachment': in the chanting crowds that gather in the temples and in the 'stupas' that recall Buddha's steps and sojourns there is no trace of the restlessness that disturbs the world. There is a sense of immanence and permanence: the fervor that animates those present, the gestures and rites are the same as ten or a hundred or a thousand years ago. Subprime mortgages? Dodd-Frank law? Chinese slowdown? Sovereign debt crisis? Assorted spreads? Falling house prices? 'Tout passe, tout lasse, tout casse' the French would say to console themselves. But of those crises and those falls Buddhism it does not make it an occasion for resignation or cynicism. He just ignores them to focus on the essentials: a detachment that is the stripping away of desires and anxieties and the search for a misfortune-proof serenity.
Is Buddhism a religion or a philosophy? The answer to the donanda depends a lot on how you define a religion. But the explanation of Buddhism's durability – after all it has been here for 2555 years – lies in the fact that it lacks the religion's attributes of dogmatism and proselytism. The Buddhist does not aspire to convert except with the example of life and teaching. But what would a Buddhist do if he were put in charge of the ECB or the Fed, if he were prime minister in Italy or chancellor in Germany? How would you untangle the skein of the crisis?
Difficult to answer. The only thing a devout Buddhist would say is that if the mighty of the earth were Buddhists there would have been no crisis to untangle…
