/lit/ - Literature

>>23430004
Of all the Western philosophers, Schopenhauer has the most in common with Eastern philosophy. When he was in his mid-20s he was introduced to Hinduism and Buddhism by Friedrich Majer. Some will say Schopenhauer was influenced by Eastern philosophy but we can verify from his notebooks that his full system was worked out prior to his contact with Hinduism and Buddhism.

Schopenhauer arrives at many of the same fundamental conclusions about the nature of the world as the Eastern mystics, but he does it by a pure reasoning out from direct experience which is available to all. Obvious similarities exist on the subjects of desire, personal will, suffering, self-negation, and so forth. Schopenhauer writes in one of his notebooks: 'I confess that I do not believe my teachings could ever have come about until the Upanishads, Plato and Kant were able simultaneously to cast their rays into one man's mind.' For most of his life he read a few pages of the Upanishads almost every night. He writes, '... it is the most profitable and sublime reading that is possible in the world; it has been the consolation of my life and will be that of my death.' Schopenhauer is still the only Western philosopher to have genuinely grasped Eastern philosophy and related it to his own work. Anyone looking to unify Eastern and Western philosophy for himself would do well to study Schopenhauer.