About this item
Highlights
- An End to Suffering is a search to understand the Buddha's relevance in a world where class oppression and religious violence are rife, and where poverty and terrorism cast a long, constant shadow.
- About the Author: Pankaj Mishra was born in North India in 1969 and now lives in London and India.
- 432 Pages
- Religion + Beliefs, Buddhism
Description
About the Book
This narrative of self-discovery follows the author's search to understand the Buddha's relevance in today's world where religious violence, poverty, and terrorism prevail.Book Synopsis
An End to Suffering is a search to understand the Buddha's relevance in a world where class oppression and religious violence are rife, and where poverty and terrorism cast a long, constant shadow.
Pankaj Mishra describes his restless journeys into India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, among Islamists and the emerging Hindu middle class, exploring the myths and places of the Buddha's life. He discusses Western explorers' "discovery" of Buddhism in the nineteenth century. He also considers the impact of Buddhist ideas on such modern politicians as Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. As he reflects on his travels and on his own past, Mishra ultimately reaches an enlightenment of his own by discovering the living meaning of the Buddha's teaching, in this "unusually discerning, beautifully written, and deeply affecting reflection on Buddhism" (Booklist).Review Quotes
"Part biography, part history, part travel book, part philosophic treatise, [and mainly] intellectual autobiography, [by someone who] 'couldn't sit still' long enough to meditate successfully . . . Mishra's book is in the best tradition of Buddhism, both dispassionate and deeply engaged, complicated and simple, erudite and profoundly humane." --The New York Times Book Review
"Succinct, lucid, and coherent." --Los Angeles Times "[A] journey of self-discovery . . . [Mishra] struggles to reconcile lessons of the Buddha's life with his own shrinking world." --The New Yorker "The only sane response to the post-9/11 world." --ElleAbout the Author
Pankaj Mishra was born in North India in 1969 and now lives in London and India. He is the author of The Romantics, winner of the Los Angeles Times's Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, Granta, and the Times Literary Supplement.