Our world-system’s historical Buddha is the Lord Sakyamuni, once called Siddartha Gautama, who left his beautiful wife and child to find a cessation to human suffering. The first Noble Truth he discovered was the truth of dukkha, or unsatisfactoriness. Often it is translated into “suffering”. Unsatisfactoriness is inherent in life. Many non-Buddhists reflexively think this is pessimistic. Nevermind that the Third Noble Truth explicitly states that there is a way to cease this suffering, and the Fourth Noble Truth states what it is. Also, when one looks carefully at the current events shaping our world, much of it is unjust, painful, and causes much suffering. Remember, we are not talking about the human perspective of life here – we are talking about a Buddha’s, an Enlightened One’s omnipresent consciousness that expands through the entire cosmos, shattering all delusions so that what is can be revealed to us.
Yet you look shamefully ignorant if you accuse a Buddhist of having a pessimistic, life-denying attitude. The loving-kindness and respect towards all sentient beings that is stressed in every Buddhist tradition, coupled with the fact that Buddhists see us as having a “precious human rebirth”, leave little room for the accuser to mount a convincing argument that Buddhism is a pessimistic religion.
Accusing Buddhism of being pessimistic because one of its major doctrines is that life is unsatisfactory is silly. It’s like accusing Christianity of being morbid because the founder of Christianity died on the Cross.
