Schopenhauer and Buddhist View on Counselor, Morals and Life

Abstract

Arthur Schopenhauer, a German pessimistic philosopher (1788-1860), proclaimed
that suffering is the direct and immediate feeling of realizing that life, mind, and
knowledge obviously fail here. For him, the morals of mediation insight into the essential
identity, the identity with all sufferings of all beings, is the insight by which the original
egoism is overcome. The Buddhist moral concept suggests the cultivation of loving-kindness
(mettā) and compassion (karunā) and in the same way minimizes the desire and reduces
one’s own ego. The essence of the Buddhist teaching formulated in the first sermon
given by the Buddha as the Four Noble Truths is that unhappiness and unsatisfactoriness
(dukkha) are caused by the ego and four types of clinging (upādāna). The practice of
Buddhism combines the essence of the Four Noble Truths and the practical detailed
explanation of the Eightfold Noble Path divided into three groups: morality, concentration,
and wisdom.