Chapter Thirteen, Section One: Illumination and the Nature of Shakyamuni Buddha from Deception and Divine Religion by Sadeq Khademi

Chapter Thirteen: Illumination and the Nature of Shakyamuni Buddha

Among those acquainted with the teachings of the Iranian Magi, deeply connected to spiritual wisdom and influenced by the Khosravani insight, was Siddhartha (meaning “he who has attained the ultimate goal”) Gautama (Buddha Gautama, lived circa 563–483 BCE).

Evidence of Buddha’s Acquaintance with Magian Wisdom

As a prince, Gautama was versed in the sacred Hindu texts known as the Vedas. The Rigveda mentions the Parshavya, later referred to as Parasikaha and Persians. In the sixth century BCE, northern India, western Punjab, and the Sindh province were part of the Achaemenid Empire, constituting its twentieth satrapy. It is implausible that a learned prince like Gautama would have been unaware of Magian teachings. Indians refer to this period as the Zoroastrian era.

Some scholars posit that Buddha Gautama hailed from eastern Khorasan, an Iranian region, and was a descendant of an Achaemenid governor, suggesting that his teachings were transmitted from there to India. If so, Buddhism directly inherits Iranian roots and is profoundly influenced by the Khosravani wisdom and Magian teachings. Additionally, Gautama’s epithet, Shakyamuni, meaning “the sage of the Shakya clan,” aligns with the Magian concept of divine charisma (farreh). In Babylonian texts, Gautama’s original name is recorded as “Gaumata.” It is claimed that after Gaumata’s death at the hands of Darius the Great, his followers migrated to India, establishing and propagating Buddhism based on his teachings. While evidence for this claim remains incomplete, Gautama’s historical existence, based on extant documents, is indisputable.

Chronological Context

During Gautama’s time, India was dominated by power-seeking Hindu priests who reduced religion to mere external rituals—crude, ostentatious, superficial, and devoid of meaningful interpretation. Their teachings, though centered on the sacred Hindu texts authored by Brahmins, known as the Upanishads, were esoteric and precise, intended for philosophers and those with inner insight. However, these superficial Brahmins failed to grasp the profound semantic complexities of the Upanishads. The Upanishads spoke of a singular existence, asserting that liberation from suffering lay in turning toward it—a concept that did not address fundamental questions about the nature of life, creation, its meaning, or purpose, as the Brahmins lacked access to the lofty significance of this foundational proposition.

In this era, Brahmins and Hindu priests monopolized the Sanskrit language and Vedic education, barring others from entering their ranks, which were deemed the most prestigious and beneficial societal class due to their role in performing sacrifices and rituals. The Vedas, meaning “knowledge,” comprised hymns, prayers, and rituals such as sacrifices, considered divine revelations and sacred inherited sciences, dating from approximately 1400 to 1000 BCE.

Commentaries on the Vedas, known as Brahmanas, emerged to address the excessive focus on sacrificial rituals, which economically burdened the state and depleted royal treasuries. Through religious reforms, Brahmins developed the Brahmanas, divided into two categories: the Aranyakas, or “forest texts,” addressing the needs of ascetics, and the Upanishads, meaning “sit near,” symbolizing the spiritual disciple’s proximity to the master, connoting the cessation of ignorance and the acquisition of divine mysteries through the manifestation of knowledge and divine revelation. The Upanishads delve into the esoteric dimensions of the Vedas, redirecting attention from external rituals to inner mysteries and spiritual concepts.

Allama Muhammad Hossein Tabataba’i, in his exegesis of verses 50 to 60 of Surah Hud in Al-Mizan, remarks on the lofty monotheistic truths of the Upanishads: “The Upanishads are not identical to Brahmin beliefs. They contain sublime truths discovered and endured by rare individuals among God’s friends. A noteworthy point is that this very sublimity has harmed Indian mysticism, as, unlike Islam, it does not speak to the comprehension level of the masses. This is a common affliction among religious communities: imposing lofty divine truths without simplifying their expression, leading to the outcomes we have witnessed.”

Some Upanishads, composed with specialized contemplative insight, contain the most exalted mystical themes, some of which Islamic mysticism may lack the courage to express or repeat elsewhere. Despite this, Brahmins zealously guarded these secrets from the uninitiated, preventing unqualified individuals from entering the guru-disciple lineage with their discerning insight. Thus, the publicly available, written Upanishads are not universally accessible texts. Without the preparatory training under insightful masters, one risks misunderstanding and misguidance.

The Rigveda is a monotheistic text, recognizing only Brahman as the singular, omnipotent God and the foundation of existence based on unity. Brahman is the infinite, indeterminate essence, and phenomena are hierarchical manifestations of this singular truth. By renouncing worldly attachments, dissolving individual identity into boundless existence, one can attain union with it. The text explicitly states: “The wise give many names to that which is one.” All existence tends toward Atman, the invulnerable, immortal, eternal, life-giving essence unique to Brahman. The spiritual journey through Atman’s various stages, realizing that nothing exists apart from Atman and that all is Brahman, constitutes mystical insight. As the Upanishads articulate: “In truth, a husband is not dear for his own sake, but for the love of Atman, he is dear and cherished.” The Upanishads refer to the status of sage, teacher, and spiritual master as Guru, the guiding light, equivalent to the Magian concept of the divinely charismatic, perfected priest.

A Guru is a distinct master, not merely any teacher. Positioned at the heart, beyond the realm of discursive reason, a Guru is free from doubt or agitation, a steadfast individual entrusted with esoteric, revelatory teachings, possessing knowledge of inner truths, chosen by Brahman, to whom the Upanishads’ content is divinely revealed. The Upanishads themselves identify a class of pseudo-Brahmins, termed “Gurunamas” or “Karmis,” false Brahmins. In this book, we refer to such groups, present in every religion, as practitioners of religious deception.

Sacrifice

In Hindu belief, sacrifice and offerings were the sole means of salvation from rebirth and the “black death,” a final death without subsequent rebirth. Those who offered sacrifices were believed to achieve rebirth after death, escaping further mortality and attaining immortality. Sacrifice served as a savior for reaching eternity. Additionally, communities resorted to sacrifices to harness supernatural forces, subdue powerful cosmic energies, and render them obedient. Sacrifices varied, ranging from pouring water or wine to offering plants, crops, animals, children, or adults, and even casting children into fire. Occasionally, to preserve their population, communities raided other lands to capture individuals for sacrifice to their gods. Sacrificing chastity, i.e., engaging in debauchery to honor idols, was also prevalent among some groups. The wisdom behind such rituals lay in harnessing nature’s occult forces and spiritual powers.

In later periods, human sacrifice was abolished, and sacrifices were gradually limited to animals. The divine command to sacrifice Ishmael, if not a historical construct or a symbolic, metaphorical narrative, represents a form of sacrificial event. Brahmins conducted sacrificial rituals with rigorous and complex protocols, exploiting them for profit and commerce. The populace believed that the intricate science of sacrifice was exclusive to Brahmins. During this period, the Hindu religion lacked holy men in the public perception, and the profound, hidden content of the Vedas and Upanishads was misunderstood, with their teachings increasingly regarded as falsehoods. Only sacrificial rituals, deemed the essence of Hinduism, retained significance, believed to confer salvation and a mysterious, potent force indispensable for success.

Iranian Magi consistently opposed the superstitious and polytheistic teachings of Hindu-Brahmanic traditions, and this opposition to superstition constitutes a shared trait between Gautama and the wise Magi.

The Meaning of Shakyamuni and Buddha

Through a spiritual revolution, Gautama renounced throne, crown, luxury, pleasures, and indulgences for seven years. Initially, he sought solitude, asceticism, contemplation, meditation, and self-mortification but found these external, afflictive practices inadequate. He retreated to a forest, sitting beneath an Indian fig tree (banyan or siddha, the tree of enlightenment, Bodhi). He vowed not to leave until he discovered the truth. This tree is now known as Bodh Gaya, the sacred tree of cosmic enlightenment.

After one night or seven weeks of negating greed, burning desire, and achieving cessation, a divine radiance enveloped him. Through this inner illumination, he attained truths, broke the cycle of rebirth with the light of knowledge, and achieved liberation, absoluteness, eternal salvation, and enlightenment, becoming Buddha. “Buddha” means the awakened, enlightened to truth, and united with the ultimate state of Nirvana (Nirvana = immortality or voluntary death = cessation and silence = annihilation). Derived from “Bodhi,” meaning illumination and enlightenment, Buddha attained truth through illumination and sagacity. Unlike Khosravani wisdom, where the essence is divine charisma and inner devotion to God’s illumination, Buddha never claimed prophethood but regarded himself as a sage and teacher.

Upon reaching Nirvana, the indescribable ultimate truth, one becomes complete by aiding others, earning the title of Perfect Buddha. A Perfect Buddha, or Bodhisattva, is an awakened being capable of guiding others to Buddhahood and spiritual awakening through love and compassion. From around age 35, Gautama’s teachings unveiled obscure and enigmatic truths, earning him the title Buddha, the Enlightened. This illumination, particularly termed Prajnaparamita (Perfection of Wisdom), as we shall discuss, equates to divine charisma and the Khosravani concept of illumination, if we credit Suzuki’s attribution to some Buddhists: “Existence is God. God and existence are one. What existence emanates is creation.”

The Nature of Shakyamuni

Gautama belonged to the Shakya clan, which bestowed upon him the title Shakyamuni, meaning the sage or wise one of the Shakyas, loosely interpreted as an ascetic. Siddhartha, eloquent, affable, charming, and endearing, spoke gently and humorously with the Shakyas, using the most heartfelt words. In Buddhist belief, the credibility of the wise Buddha’s teachings stems from his Shakyamuni nature, which endows him with a spiritual connection to truths. This nature brings awareness, freedom, sagacity, and unity with truths. Thus, Buddha is not confined to his physical form; his body has attained Buddhahood, enlightenment, glory, and absoluteness, endowed with the eye of knowledge and an eternal, imperishable light. The enlightened body belongs only to great perfected beings, granting meaning, knowledge, inner insight, and the ability to confront dangers successfully, emerging as a radiant sun traversing the earth. Therefore, knowledge and insight reside within, attainable through the Four Noble Truths. Buddha states: “O dear one, I say that in this body, whether tall or short, everything exists: perception, thought, the world, the origin of the world, suffering, the cause of suffering, freedom, and the path to freedom from suffering and the world.”

The mark of becoming a Buddhist is the turban called Ushnisha. According to Hindus, the bodies of Shakyamunis and legitimate kings emit a mysterious, fiery energy and halo, signifying their attainment of Nirvana, discernible by high priests and Brahmins.

Trans-Buddhist Perfection

Beyond the perfection of Buddha, Buddhists speak of the Perfection of Wisdom (Prajnaparamita) in the Heart Sutra, meaning transcendent knowledge and enlightenment. The sutra states: “Here, there is no body, no sensation, no perception, no mental formations, no consciousness… no knowledge, no attainment, no realization, for there is nothing to attain… Prajnaparamita is the great mantra, the mantra of great wisdom, the supreme mantra, the unequaled mantra.”

This narrative presents the pinnacle of Khosravani wisdom: the absence of greed, ultimate detachment, and absolute attainment. Buddha is the fruition of Prajnaparamita and the perfection of wisdom, akin to survival in illuminative and Khosravani mysticism. However, a critical distinction lies in that survival in Khosravani wisdom is identical to monotheism and unity with the Divine Essence, where only God remains, and love is solely for God. In contrast, the perfection of wisdom attained by Buddha lacks mention of God, with humans remaining human, achieving Nirvana in a loosely divine, human capacity. Belief in the Divine Essence and human Nirvana are distinct.

Nevertheless, Buddha explicitly opposed Hindu polytheism, unequivocally rejecting multiple gods. However, monotheism as a fundamental principle was not emphasized by his followers, who compiled his teachings, focusing instead on renouncing worldly attachments, forsaking possessions, and seeking refuge in the community and acceptance within the order of practitioners. This has shaped a spirituality and metaphysics devoid of God, prophets, or divine law in Buddhist traditions. Buddhists are neither recognized as People of the Book, granting them religious immunity, nor are most sects monotheistic. A semantic quotation attributed to Buddha states: “The trap of speculative discourse about God is futile wrangling, leading to sorrow, suffering, and personal grievances, never to wisdom or sagacity. Salvation is not achieved through external practices or knowledge of God, and religiosity leads to greed and avarice. The question of God is not the foundation of action. What matters is abandoning self-centeredness and performing good deeds.”

One who overcomes self-centeredness and pursues enlightenment is unlikely to fail to find the truth and recognize God as the ultimate truth. Declaring creation eternal and infinite does not imply its independence from a creator. While creation may be beginningless and endless, lacking inherent essence and independence, it requires an uncreated God.

In Buddha’s view, perceived phenomena, lacking inherent existence, are hollow, illusory, deceptive, enchanting, and magical—not truthful, righteous, or good, which would require independent, self-sustaining essence. The absolute, enduring essence is Dharmakaya, the locus of his enlightenment, and any description of it is a manifestation of absolute illumination, as the absolute cannot be captured in words or indications. Buddha, like Khosravani wisdom, considered the path to the state of silence or the uncreated as deconstruction of determinations, describing it thus: “A person free from superficiality and credulity recognizes the uncreated; such a person has broken all chains.”

Nirvana, the ultimate perfection of Buddha, is the state of absolute silence in Khosravani wisdom, ineffable and akin to the absolute truth equivalent to the Divine. If so, he attained the zenith of monotheism and divine awareness. Nirvana and enlightenment, or attainment and unity, are one, indescribable. Nirvana is a state of pure sanctity, absolute serenity, and eternal peace, an indeterminate, limitless, uncreated absolute that cannot be articulated. In the style of Khosravani wisdom, it is called eternal liberation, salvation, and absolute cessation. Its lexical meaning is: where no wind blows, no rebirth occurs, and desire is absent—a realm beyond samsara, the cycle of death and rebirth, and the current cosmos. One who transcends the cosmos and becomes Buddha attains Nirvana and eternal light, becoming luminous and spiritual—a truth that, when described, reduces to human conception, yet is neither human, perception, place, nothingness, this world, nor another, unbound by conditions, and thus ineffable. Buddha states: “O practitioners! There exists an unceasing realm: this is the end of suffering. If it did not exist, liberation would not; but liberation exists.”

In Khosravani wisdom, negating greed liberates one from bonds and conditions, enabling the abandonment of self and attainment of the absolute, unconditional truth. As Buddha states: “Through the annihilation and cessation of self, the greatest law of emergence and survival arises.” In Buddha’s perspective, those who fail to tread this path of truth and purity are engulfed by the misery of suffering and repeated births and deaths.

One who traverses the stages of liberation from suffering becomes a saint, transcending the physical and natural, free from fears such as loss of honor or death, imbued with joy and vitality in serving others with goodwill. Such a person is liberated from samsara and rebirth outside Nirvana, abiding voluntarily in Nirvana’s silence.

If Nirvana is not equivalent to the absolute truth, existence, or the Divine in His nameless, indescribable state—the pinnacle of illumination—or the state of unity, the pinnacle of wisdom, then Buddha’s godless spirituality and divinity render his doctrine anthropocentric and wholly human. This stands at the antipode of monotheism and divine awareness, regressing into alienation and degradation from truth, lacking true salvation, eternal redemption, vertical ascent, and liberation from material existence. In this scenario, Buddha remains imprisoned in material life, bound by karma, adhering to a self-destructive, futile doctrine until he discovers truth and belief in it. The nature of this journey and the path to liberation are discussed in my book Awareness and the Divine Human, particularly in the discourse on the return and rebirth of the dead from a Shiite perspective.

The Eternal Law of Karma

What tormented Buddha was the origin of suffering and pain for humanity and how humans could lead a blissful life free from suffering and disease, attaining eternal joy, salvation, and contentment. Suffering and dissatisfaction are unpleasant feelings when one desires something unattainable, powerless to possess it, or, having attained something pleasurable, fears its loss, is anxious about its impermanence, or feels guilt for others’ deprivation and shared empathy. Suffering, frustration, and unfulfillment arise from any attachment, dependency, condition, or greed. Suffering is intrinsic to existence and life itself, as long as phenomena are in flux, not having attained permanence and survival. Until one relinquishes their being, ceasing to be a changing phenomenon, they remain vulnerable to eternal, immortal, and indestructible suffering, unable to taste fulfillment, purpose, or satisfaction. Buddha stated: “Suffering is the mark of existence and being; awareness of it is the privilege of the elect and the first step toward liberation from suffering.”

Suffering and hardship stem from existence and entrapment in the cycle of birth and rebirth driven by karma. Liberation from this cycle is achieved by eradicating greed, hatred, and delusion. Buddha states: “O practitioners! There are three unwholesome roots. What are they? O practitioners! Greed, hatred, and delusion are the three unwholesome roots.”

After years of suffering, asceticism, contemplation, and solitude, Gautama, under a fig tree, discovered the truth of the Iranian Magi’s teaching, which he deemed the secret to life and happiness. Thereafter, he abandoned solitude, rejected asceticism, and dedicated himself to guiding and instructing people.

From the Iranian Magi, he learned the path to liberation from the simple, natural law of karma: the world is governed by a law of reward and punishment, where good begets good, and evil begets evil. Thus, as the essence and epistemic core of Magian wisdom dictates: to escape suffering and reduce hardship, one must be free from greed. The essence of Magian teachings, which Buddha discovered for liberation from suffering, happiness, and prosperity, is encapsulated in Ahmad Shamlou’s verse: “Our fulfillment comes when we have relinquished greed for fulfillment.”

Buddha established the principle of detachment and universal compassion based on the law of karma. Derived from Hindu teachings, the law of karma, which Buddha learned to transcend through familiarity with Khosravani wisdom, considers the quality and value of each person’s actions as naturally tied to their deeds, inescapable. He rejected the sacrifices, prayers, and supplications performed for gods, condemning the distortions of superficial Brahmins who advocated such practices. Buddha did not regard these superficial Brahmins as holy, as their shallow teachings were misguided and perpetuated a caste system. He rejected the caste system and the privileges of the Brahmin class. In contrast, Hindu Brahmins labeled him a Nastika, a heretic.

Siddhartha redirected Hinduism (Vedic tradition) toward individual enlightenment through love, altruism, peace, and universal compassion, teaching all the path to liberation from suffering—a path of moderation and contentment, neither ascetic self-mortification nor indulgent hedonism.

In his first sermon, known as the Benares Sermon, delivered after attaining sagacity to five monks with whom he once practiced asceticism and self-mortification (who had parted from him when he accepted a bowl of milk from a maiden), Buddha stated: “All that tends toward existence inevitably entails suffering. The root of suffering is desire, craving, and greed. Suffering must be extinguished. When a person is free from desire and craving, they will be free from suffering. The path to extinguishing suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path.”

The best action, which produces no further suffering and generates no karma, is the cessation of desire, negation of greed, and absence of craving, leading to cessation. This is the doctrine of expecting nothing and eradicating greed, the essence of sagacity and the fruition of Khosravani wisdom—the pinnacle of perfection, wisdom, inner insight, the perfected human, pure awareness, and radiant light.

Buddhist Spirituality

Buddha’s teachings were not a religion but a science of liberation, expansion, and absoluteness of humanity, the goal of ancient Khosravani sages. This method teaches the attainment of Nirvana, immortality, or the origin of absoluteness, indeterminacy, indescribability, and voluntary death. Thus, Buddha’s system is a semantic framework orally transmitted by Gautama. This method converges with religion through wisdom and vision, which religion, via revelation or a guiding spiritual force and sagacity, articulates similarly. Wisdom and vision endowed with divine sagacity and enlightenment do not contradict divine religion.

Revealing truth up to Nirvana and the method of attaining eternal serenity validates the relative credibility of Buddha and his treasury of truths, particularly if, like Khosravani sages, he believed in a God whose essence and indescribability preclude any mention, as any description renders the absolute God determinate, limited, and diminished from the state of essence, manifesting in appearance. In this case, Buddha can be justified for deeming verbal discourse about God futile, emphasizing action—the inner, heartfelt journey to Nirvana through negating greed—due to God’s non-discursive, conscientious, and salvific nature.

Superficial Buddhist Sects

Buddha’s followers and the community of practitioners gradually transformed his teachings into several sects through Buddhist councils. This Buddha-centric spirituality lacks the methodological insight of Buddha’s personal vision, divine and illuminative origin, or logical comprehension, becoming a secularized philosophy and mysticism with human attribution to metaphysics and spirituality, no longer divine.

Buddhists are deeply divided, with over a hundred sects currently in Southeast Asia. Some Buddhist sects elevated Siddhartha, who rejected worship of gods, to a divine status, considering his worship the path to liberation from suffering and attainment of Nirvana, erecting temples and statues for veneration and prayer.

The Hinayana (Theravada, meaning “Lesser Vehicle” or “Ancient Wisdom”), comprising thirty percent of Buddhists, primarily in southern Southeast Asia (e.g., Vietnam, Burma), does not address God, considering it irrelevant. Their practical focus is attaining Nirvana through superficial, ritualistic practices and external laws that scarcely align with Buddha’s esoteric teachings. Established three hundred years after Buddha, this sect is considered atheistic and polytheistic, as adherents believe worshiping Buddha, a divine entity with an inherent sacred body, leads to Nirvana. Their sacred texts are in Pali.

The Mahayana (“Greater Vehicle”), predominant in northern Southeast Asia (e.g., China, Japan, Korea, Tibet), with Sanskrit sacred texts, exhibits mystical tendencies and constitutes the majority of Buddhists. They view Buddha as a human endowed with divinity and sanctity, having attained Nirvana, but not a god to be worshipped. This sect introduced numerous distortions to Buddha’s original teachings, simplifying his rigorous doctrines to gain social and modern appeal, transforming them into a religion and doctrine. They mythologized Buddha’s teachings, sanctifying women and cows as symbols of abundance.

These sects diverged centuries after Buddha. The fundamental difference is that Hinayana emphasizes individual self-perfection without concern for others, deeming Buddha’s teachings suitable for select individuals capable of solitary spiritual practice, later called the school of masters. In Mahayana, social aspects of self-cultivation are paramount, considering Buddha’s teachings universal. Mahayana Buddhists cultivate themselves while striving to reform others, believing the goal is not merely personal salvation but saving others from ruin.

Hinayana rejects later sutras attributed to Buddha, unlike Mahayana, which considers ancient Buddhist texts, directly or indirectly from Buddha, valid, especially those inspired by the joy and serenity of the deceased Buddha.

Another significant Buddhist sect, Vajrayana, emphasizes esotericism. Buddhist mysticism, emerging in the eighth century CE in the Tantra (Vajrayana) sect, particularly in the Himalayas, Tibet, and China, focuses on mental purification and preparation for physical and metaphysical elevation. Tantra, the third major Buddhist school after Mahayana and Hinayana, comprises ten percent of Buddhists and claims to be the fastest path to Buddhahood and enlightenment. Universal awakened nature, self-sacrifice, and efforts rooted in compassion, love, and empathy for all living beings for their collective awakening are core beliefs. They consider emulating Buddha the path to Buddhahood, stating: “Live as if you were a Buddha, awakened, until you become one.”

For Buddhists, Buddha is a symbol and model of wise living. Nonetheless, Buddha’s teachings are one reality, and his followers’ interpretations another, potentially distorted or inverted, transforming a divine teaching into godless spirituality and metaphysics. For a Buddhist, metaphysics is not central; the essence is liberating action, identical to religion, aiming for enlightenment without becoming bound by it. As Buddha states: “O people! Live life calmly, self-restrained, and free from greed and avarice.”

The Sacred Text: Tripiṭaka

Buddha did not produce a sacred book, claim divine revelation, or leave written compositions. Like the Iranian Magi, he regarded himself as a wise teacher and guide, not a prophet. However, his followers, converting from Hinduism to Buddhism, compiled his sayings and advice into three baskets of wisdom after his death. These sayings, shaped by Hindu elements, complicate access to Buddha’s epistemic identity. Additionally, Buddhist councils held in 483, 338, and 247 BCE marked the onset of divergences among early Buddhists, who interpreted his teachings differently, indicating that his disciples could not grasp their profundity or achieve enlightenment.

The second council in 338 BCE compiled the Tripiṭaka (Pali texts). Philosophical-religious sayings attributed to Buddha were recorded in Pali, his native language, which supplanted Sanskrit as Buddhism spread. Buddha’s sayings are divided into three sections, housed in baskets, hence called Tripiṭaka or Three Baskets (of wisdom). These include Buddha’s biography, the doctrine, and the ancient Buddhist community.

Among Buddha’s sayings in the Tripiṭaka: “The lotus is born in the swamp, grows and thrives in mud and mire, slowly emerging from the swamp to gaze at the sky, yet remains untainted by the swamp’s filth. I, too, have followed this path: arisen in the world, I have transcended it and remained untainted by it.” In Hinduism, Brahman emerges from a lotus cup, termed lotus-born. The lotus appears in Persepolis structures, depicted on a silver plate crafted for the royal palace under Artaxerxes Longimanus (465–424 BCE), preserved in the Reza Abbasi Museum, and engraved on the tip of his sword’s scabbard at Naqsh-e Rostam.

The Cycle of Rebirth

In Buddha’s view, a desirous, thirsty human, driven by craving, is reborn in another form after death. This rebirth repeats horizontally, allowing one to experience various phenomena and life forms across classes, even coexisting with God in formlessness. This is termed the cycle of existence or birth and death, rooted in the Hindu concept of Kalpa and cosmic systems. Creation undergoes cycles that conclude and restart. Creation is endless, with new cycles emerging. Buddhists believe each cycle produces Buddhas, currently awaiting their era’s creation and descent. The key is finding the true Buddha of one’s time, living in solitude and obscurity, a mark of their authenticity, to be recognized and followed as a spiritual guide. Buddha states of them: “In each cosmic era, Tathāgatas (eternal ones) arise to select a Buddha from among themselves and send them to the dust-laden earth; a Buddha who attains enlightenment and enlightens others.”

The Suffering of Life

The cornerstone of Buddha’s teachings is the analysis and interpretation of suffering and the path to liberation from affliction. In Buddha’s view: Existence is suffering. Birth is suffering. Aging is suffering. Illness is suffering. Grief, sorrow, lamentation, and despair are suffering. Association with the undesirable is suffering. Separation from the desirable is suffering. In short, attachment is suffering.

From Buddha’s perspective, to escape the cycle of birth and death and its suffering, one must abandon carnal desires, act righteously, practice yoga (the path to unity), and achieve a state of spiritual trance. These experiences foster expansion, absoluteness, adaptability, and compassion for all phenomena. Through deep understanding and concentration, one attains enlightenment and awakening, escaping this futile, horizontal cycle trapped in the material realm.

Buddha viewed phenomena as perpetually changing and impermanent, existing in life’s suffering—a life never destroyed or lost. One bound by karma and the cycle of birth and death may not return to the human realm after death but could begin a new life in the animal world or, in some sects’ views, in hell or the lower heavens of dull-witted demons. Unlike Zoroastrian hell, Buddhist hell is not eternal, as evil deeds are not deemed sufficient to warrant perpetual damnation. Hell results from one’s actions, chosen freely, and sanctity, the sacred truth of the path to liberation from suffering, and a state of pure, ascetic ecstasy can grant immunity and lead to serenity, dignity, and stillness. Karma and the cycle of birth and death arise from unfulfilled desires, insatiable greed, and blindness.

The Spread of Buddhism

In his lifetime, Buddha garnered numerous followers. Two Indian states, including his father’s kingdom, embraced his teachings. In later eras, a renowned and powerful Indian emperor, Ashoka, in the third century BCE, converted to Buddhism, reviving and establishing it as the official religion. He commissioned numerous monasteries for Buddhists.

Ashoka, a mighty king of the Maurya dynasty in the third century BCE, conquered territories spanning the Himalayas to southern India, killing hundreds of thousands. In his later years, he repented, embraced Buddhism, publicly confessed his sins, and accepted their consequences. This limited Brahmin influence in governance and promoted Buddhism extensively. He minimized animal slaughter in the royal palace, restricting it to three birds for guests, as Buddhism prohibits killing animals for sustenance. He banned butchery, closing slaughterhouses across India and prohibiting animal killing. Ashoka inscribed Buddha’s guidance on large tablets, promoting his ethical teachings. He sent emissaries with gifts and Buddha’s teachings to Southeast Asian countries, then idolatrous, inviting their rulers to Buddhism. He trained numerous missionaries, dispatching them to these regions. With his death, the Maurya dynasty declined, and the succeeding dynasty declared Hinduism the official religion, adopting fervent anti-Buddhist policies. Indian culture remained dormant for eight centuries until Alexander’s invasion and Greek cultural influence.

Kanishka I (Kanishka the Great), the most powerful Kushan emperor (127–150 CE), whose realm included modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, supported a syncretic Buddhism infused with Mazdaism, patronizing its priests royally. He established this blended Buddhism as the dominant religion and culture in China, other East Asian countries, and along the Silk Road, though he did not personally convert.

With Islam’s emergence, Buddhists faced both Hinduism and Islam, unable to resist these religions. Consequently, Buddhism gradually migrated from India to China and neighboring countries. In ancient Iran, Buddhism influenced Khorasan, Baluchistan, and Sistan, inspiring the pseudo-Christian Manichaean religion.

Today, Buddhism, with its diverse sects, has approximately five hundred million followers, making it the fourth-largest living religion globally. Its appeal lies in its godless, non-ideological spirituality and pacifism. Here, ideology refers to authoritarian, dogmatic prescriptions of religious dos and don’ts, not the general sense of doctrinal identity or religious self-awareness.

All Buddhist sects uphold the Noble Eightfold Path, the sanctity of life, universal compassion, forgiveness of enemies, and love for all humanity.

Buddhist Sufis

Sufis have been profoundly influenced by Buddha’s teachings, which are, in truth, superficial adaptations of Iranian Magian and Khosravani sage teachings. This superficial influence is evident in the Masnavi-ye Ma’navi by Jalaluddin Mohammad Balkhi (Rumi, 1207–1273 CE), a pseudo-Sufi with a Buddhist perspective framed within Sunni Islamic discourse. Rumi compiled earlier teachings into poetic form, highlighting the worldview and mysticism of Buddha’s followers and disciples, coated with Sunni Islamic terminology and concepts, in the simple verse of the Masnavi. Born in Balkh, a primary gateway for Buddhism’s entry into Iran, Rumi’s work reflects this influence.

Buddha and Modern Persian Poetry

The teachings of Buddha’s superficial disciples have resonated in the poetry of some Persian-speaking poets, characterized by innovative imagery and creations infused with extreme naturalism, particularly on themes of freedom and love. Some modern poets have reimagined a wholly human Buddhism, godless spirituality, anthropocentric and cosmic-naturalistic Sufism detached from God, or a nature-deified framework, in their poetic expressions with enchanting, pleasurable linguistic artifices, mirroring ancient rituals that endured through musical poetry. It must be noted that most people live through imagination, making imaginative representation a universal, empathetic language.

Imaginative language can draw energy from psychological distress and semantic disorders, producing a lofty surge of rebellious words in a mysterious, amplified harmony, rendering poetry replete with deceptive dreams and illusory artifices, especially since nature, including the poetry of this world, is merely a linguistic ideal of universal compassion and triumphant, hypocritical tranquility in an illusory mirage. The more disheveled, chaotic, and futile its allure, the more captivating and delightful it becomes.

A prevalent slogan in modern Persian poetry is: “One must live and let live; a unified life of harmony. It matters not who governs; life, whatever it is, must be lived with all, eagerly, and in universal peace, heedless of what life ought to be.” This slogan is purely rhetorical, as human practice reveals neither peace nor unity but a realm of domination where wolves howl with savage vengeance and destruction, amid the ruins of war and conflict.

Modern poetry draws on Buddhist metaphors to express both boundless tranquility and pervasive sorrow and suffering, as in a poem pulsating with love for the beloved, speaking of both her simple joy and heavy sorrow:

“As much as I say,
‘Tonight, I will write a poem,’
With smiling lips, she drifts into peaceful slumber,
Like a stone
Sinking into a lake,
And Buddha
Entering Nirvana…
If I say that happiness
Is an event born of error,
Sorrow envelops her entirely,
Like a lake
Embracing a stone,
And Nirvana
Embracing Buddha.”

A blend of tranquility and sorrow envelops the beloved, rendering her indifferent to both in a state beyond imagination:

“First,
I gazed at her long,
So long that, when I withdrew my gaze,
Everything around me
Had taken her form.
Then I knew
There was no escape from her.”

Natural descriptions, reborn imaginatively in some modern Persian poetry, for those confined to imaginative existence, were crafted centuries ago in Sanskrit hymns to Hindu gods with cosmogenic thought. Poetry born in the sultry, exhausting heat of southern India, in a narcotic, intoxicating swamp, nurtures the lotus of imagination and tames the savagery of language. A prayer from the sacred Tripiṭaka reads:

“I praise Buddha with a red rose,
A redness of freshness that blooms in separation at the heart,
And at dusk, with a pang of suffering, wilts, dies,
Petals scattered, autumnal!
And this lotus-bodied Buddha became my end.
I praise Buddha with the growth of a candle,
With enlightenment.
I was illuminated by the touch of eternal nectar,
I, a lantern of the flowing sun,
The heart of a sage.
I praise Buddha with incense,
Our lungs of pleasure perfumed,
This is life,
In annihilation all around.”

Iranian Buddhist poetry embodies Buddhism’s universal compassion for all natural manifestations, differing in that the phenomena poeticized, or creation itself, are either detached from God, self-sustaining post-creation, or, like Hindu gods, so immanent that God is identical to them, confined to these phenomena and visible to the naked eye.

In modern poetry, the blue lotus frequently appears, symbolizing solitary beauty, eloquent silence, godless tranquility, Buddha’s peace, and the throne of God in Hinduism, its ovary representing the cosmic womb. The final steps, brimming with welcoming imagination, begin with action, as Buddha did, calling for practice, then deem tranquility and liberation from suffering—symbolized by the lotus trapped in the swamp—attainable through the ecstasy of truth and the rapture of its song. Instead of the century, the lotus is chosen as a human, righteous path. The century represents the anguished existence of the solitary modern human, sometimes called a concrete surface. Lotus poetry reflects the repetitive rebirths and the Buddhist notion of phenomena as hollow, empty, futile, and illusory. The prevalence of such poetry has tainted the minds and imaginations of Iranian youth with the false notion of reincarnation, a baseless construct derived from the valid concept of return, fabricated by global oppressors to justify class disparities and supported by systematic political propaganda. False reincarnation, the return of a deceased person’s soul to a new body in this world based on past deeds, contrasts with the philosophy of return, God’s systematic justice in this world for maximal equity, as discussed in my book Awareness and the Divine Human.

Paulo Coelho

Eloquence in the realm of spirituality, metaphysical matters, and mysticism is prevalent in the works of Paulo Coelho. A skillful, imaginative, and eloquent writer, Coelho draws both from the truths of various religions and from superficial, non-specialized, and non-divine sources, which he employs in service of his ornate rhetoric. He seeks to penetrate the unseen world with his constructed pseudo-spirituality, aiming to supplant the divine religion’s revelations about the unseen. Coelho finds religious faith meaningless, harbors doubts about it, and ultimately lacks belief in it. Instead, he confidently presents a parallel spiritual world as a meaningful substitute.

The essence of his books lies in the notion that each individual must live according to their aspirations, guided by environmental signs and their inner voice, to realize their personal legend through love for their “missing half.”

God has ordained a decree for the life and existence of every phenomenon. Coelho centrally utilizes this religious teaching, interpreting it as the miracle of life and the legend of self-discovery. However, every human must live this decree in accordance with divine religion, in relation to God, and through revelation and divine inspiration. Coelho distorts this faith, advocating in a material world—fraught with conflict and systematically controlled by worldly overlords—for a life guided by signs and a generic inner voice. He neither recognizes nor describes the system of divine revelation and inspiration. The inner voice, a superficial and corporeal phenomenon arising from factors such as memories or temptations, is vastly different from the advanced knowledge of divine revelation, which is wholly divine and endowed with infallibility.

In his works, Coelho narrates, with intricate imagination, the sufferings of his protagonists, depicting life in a competitive material world filled with relentless conflicts, diverse and novel oppositions, and a globally hostile environment that necessitates the evolutionary trait of defense for survival. Esotericism is his primary technique in these novels, infused with a love that is a construct of the rebellious Coelho, written rather than lived. This written love is not the truth of love. Coelho’s love stands in opposition to reason and logic, whereas the inclination toward love and attachment is grounded in rational insight and its affirmation. Reason submits to pure love, but weak emotions and lust, which reason critiques, are not love.

Coelho defines love as the loss of agency, based on the concept of the “missing half.” In contrast, love both originates from reason and operates in a realm of attraction and endeavor, transcending the dichotomy of mental compulsion and choice. It is not a matter of choice that could be misconstrued as the agency of a rebellious or defiant disposition.

Coelho defines love through reincarnation, asserting without evidence that the soul, after death, splits into feminine and masculine parts, which, upon reuniting after a long period, become love. He arbitrarily considers every human as half-masculine and half-feminine, claiming that God manifests Himself in the feminine half. In love, the connection of feminine and masculine forces generates a magical force called wisdom. By wisdom, he means connection to the spiritual realm and the attainment of experiential knowledge. He argues that love must only be experienced, and God, being love, is similarly experiential. Seeking explanations about God reveals nothing.

In spirituality characterized by proximity to God, the love and wrath of the divine Beloved are equivalent for the devoted lover, who desires neither. However, in Coelho’s godless spirituality, despite his claim to enact God’s will and his assertion that, at the level of agape love, friend and foe are one, this principle is not internalized, and he contradicts it elsewhere. The love and wrath of God are not equivalent in his narratives. For instance, he expresses a desire for security, praying, “God, keep me safe from disaster.” He aspires to be the king of his own realm and dreams, not a devoted lover who finds God as the entirety of love, free from greed, living God’s will and decree out of necessity.

In his book Memoirs of a Magus, which bears an Iranian title, and in Aleph, Coelho speaks of himself. He claims to have attained the status of a magus in his spiritual journey, reaching absolute consciousness and silence. Remarkably, Coelho first published Aleph in Persian before releasing the original version. At the outset of Aleph, he immediately addresses the worst forms of suffering, particularly religious wars in a chaotic and belligerent world, instilling in the reader the sense that the cosmic force accompanies them through all material hardships. This shared feeling is present in every act and event, joyful or sorrowful, as Saadi eloquently states: “The cloud, wind, moon, sun, and firmament are at work / So that you may obtain bread and not consume it in heedlessness.”

Aleph continues Memoirs of a Magus, recounting another segment of Coelho’s memoirs. In these books, he seeks to live God’s plan and spiritual journey, but this divine plan is nothing more than efforts toward transcendence and liberation from the material, achieving silence and exploration within the material cosmos in its entirely material sense. This “divine plan” is not the decrees that religion receives from God and conveys to humanity but rather the author’s personal interpretations of the cosmos, its governing rules, and nature, lacking specialization, scientific logic, or reference to credible experts.

With wholly motivational interpretations devoid of accurate insight, Coelho absolutizes human will in the material realm of change and contingency, claiming that with will, any impossibility can be made possible, and no obstacle can stand in its way. When motivational writing captivates the reader’s imagination with representations of possessing limitless power, it engulfs them in the pleasure of fantasy and delightful, appealing depictions. Yet, the possessor of such will easily commits various corruptions and exhibits minimal restraint against sin or betrayal.

The Alchemist

Coelho’s most renowned book is The Alchemist. As noted, Iranian Magi were particularly adept in alchemy. The Alchemist portrays another facet of the Magi’s way of life, as narrated by Coelho. The core of the story in The Alchemist originates from the sixth volume of Rumi’s Masnavi-ye Ma’navi, in the tale of the man from Baghdad, which Coelho rewrites and develops into a novel without acknowledging this Iranian source. Since both the Masnavi and Coelho’s works draw on a shared source in spiritual matters, there are numerous similarities between them. Both share a pseudo-spirituality with Sufi undertones, incapable of discerning God’s will, as they replace divine religion with embellishments and pseudo-sciences in teaching spiritual and Sufi practices. Rumi begins the tale of the man from Baghdad with a dream and vision, stating: “He dreamt, and a caller said, as he heard / Your wealth will manifest in Egypt.”

Like this tale of the Egyptian man, The Alchemist is the story of a young man who receives a vision in a dream, which gives meaning to his adventurous journey. To find treasure and achieve self-sufficiency, his personal legend, he embarks on a journey, encounters a bandit, and ultimately discovers his treasure in a dilapidated church that served as a sheepfold, symbolizing his true self and human essence, interpreted as a divine decree.

The Alchemist constructs a model for individuals to pursue and live their dreams, or, in Coelho’s terms, their personal legend. In this personal quest, the protagonist entirely abandons religion, and his church becomes a ruin, a place for sheep to sleep, because the author does not recognize the truth of divine religion. Coelho has lived with distorted religions, particularly Jesuit Christianity under the yoke of the deviant Catholic Church, whose motto is “For the greater glory of God.” The Jesuits, the most loyal and zealous Christians devoted to the Pope during the Protestant Reformation, were agents of suppressing reformers. The Catholic Church, constructed by Saint Paul, not the spiritual system of Jesus Christ, will be discussed later.

Coelho, whose novels are enriched with the spiritual data of the distorting followers of ancient religions, advocates for abandoning these religions under the pretext of religious conflicts and in pursuit of universal peace. He suggests replacing the lofty stature of every religion with his findings, which lack any connection to God and, like constructed religions, distort truths. This absolute rejection of religion leads to opposition against true divine religion as well.

The Alchemist is a book that Iranian youth are systematically exposed to. They read it, highlighting passages relevant to their lives to internalize and live by them. To achieve personal aspirations and goals, even if incorrect, incompatible with their nature, or blasphemous, they pursue them through any means, trusting any sign, with pride in a will that breaks all barriers and the magical force of their personal legend that unveils mysteries. They feel no need for divine religion.

Moreover, Coelho does not relent, explicitly warning youth against all religions, even healthy divine ones, while obligating them to uphold and practice the rituals and traditions he recommends in place of religious rites, as well as to accept his distortions of truths.

The Alchemist is a clear example of ornate spiritual rhetoric and deceptive allure through the magic of beautiful expressions and manipulative chaos-writing. Lacking intrinsic meaning, it merely indulges in fantasy and occasionally imposes its dictates to suppress rational critique, compelling the reader through suggestion to adhere to them. Instead of the Magi’s spiritual truths, it conveys a constructed, chaotic pseudo-spirituality.

Employing limited and superficial spiritual meanings, The Alchemist is a pseudo-spirituality crafted with ornate rhetoric, elegant prose, and wordplay that, philosophically, lacks formation and meaning. It suffers from confusion, fragmentation, incoherent writing, and internal contradictions, lacking cohesion and consistency in the narrative, resulting in aimless wandering.

Coelho excessively suppresses religious rituals and ordinances. In The Alchemist, he mocks prostration, the pinnacle of corporeal worship grounded in religious insight and belief. As previously noted, religion is realized through assent to belief, submission to God and His decree, and acting upon it. Thus, performing religious rituals is integral to religion. Religion is an inner authority and a conscientious force that manifests, shines, and flourishes through external acts and rituals. Prayer, for instance, is a corporeal worship that gives practical and bodily structure to religious beliefs, enabling the body to practice piety with humility.

While The Alchemist speaks of human decrees and the necessity of freedom to attain this truth, it fails to accurately delineate the path of living according to God’s will and desire, as the author himself lacks a healthy divine religion. Coelho’s spirituality does not transcend imagination, and he has not traversed the divine path of receiving and acting upon God’s decree, nor lived within God’s will. He has mistaken detours for the straight path of human truth, detours he prefers to portray as mysterious and magical, with their discovery constituting his constructed spirituality. He assumes no responsibility to justify or scientifically explain this magical world and pseudo-spirituality, preferring the ease of rebellious pseudo-spiritual writing over the rigor of scientific inquiry, rationality, and methodical calculations. Thus, The Alchemist is neither based on a precise understanding of existence and its phenomena nor a philosophical or epistemological work.

In his pseudo-spirituality, Coelho promotes universal peace. As previously stated, universal peace is a grand deception. In a world with Russian and Israeli overlords where every possible peace is rendered impossible, can one pursue the dream of universal peace?

Coelho enjoys the support of the colonial world and global political elites. The Jewish Agency, in the form of the Zionist regime and at the level of Shimon Peres, acknowledged and honored his secular, anti-religious pseudo-spirituality in 1999.

Buddhism and Western Thinkers

In the West, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), an influential German philosopher, fully believed in the salvific path of Buddhism. Following Buddhism, he considered lust, avarice, anger, and pride as the four cardinal sins, and nobility, generosity, kindness, and humility—qualities of the will—as the four supreme and foundational virtues in ethics.

Schopenhauer was influenced by the Upanishads and Buddhist teachings. Rejecting Hegel’s rationalist system and absolute spirit, he viewed existence as will-driven, where the blind and deaf human will generates endless practical actions, which human reason then justifies as meaningful. Consequently, God or an aware absolute spirit plays no role in existence, rendering life meaningless. Desires, being infinite, are evil, and the desire for happiness, arising from an evil will in a system of survival struggles, begets further desires with greater suffering and enslavement in an endless cycle of painful desires and a chain of tedious afflictions. The source of suffering, anxiety, and worry is the uniquely human trait of time-consciousness, being bound to the past and future. The human consciousness is the origin of life’s enduring pains, perpetual regrets, and an insatiable vessel that never fills.

Externally, there is no rational reality beyond wills, which are the source of evils. Reality consists solely of the interference of human and other phenomena’s practical goals and needs, resulting in constant conflicts. The essence of life and existence is nothing but the clash of evil wills, the dominance of novel wills, and new, malevolent, and painful desires. Liberation requires artistic hedonism or the sublime goal of ending desires.

Happiness and pleasure, the path to liberation from this futile will—always accompanied by perpetual lack, suffering, and pain, where income never meets expenditure—lie in refusing to serve wills, harboring no desires, and temporarily denying desires through the aesthetic perception of art as a detached, will-free observer, or permanently through ascetic ethics, world-renunciation, reducing material inclinations, and universal compassion to achieve unity with a single will. In this framework, the annihilation of the self, the core of Buddhist teachings, is neither understood nor considered.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) regarded suffering as a meaning-making factor in all lives and the essence of existence, to be embraced rather than met with pity, romanticism, or artistic reaction. Suffering is a tool for building wings to soar, and joys and happiness are intertwined with suffering. Thus, one must courageously and actively remain in the world, built at the crater of suffering’s volcano, rather than fleeing to a fireproof room out of fear. Without pain and loneliness, pleasures and loves would lack meaning. Therefore, life’s goals, purposes, and challenges must be actively pursued, not abandoned through retreat to art or asceticism. This perspective, like Schopenhauer’s, is incompatible with the doctrine of annihilation, renunciation of greed, and unity with the divine will.

Viktor Frankl’s In Search of Meaning

Viktor Frankl (1905–1997) believed that life’s sufferings hold meaning for humans with a suffering nature, and failure to discern this meaning leads to psychological disorders. Thus, logotherapy, freedom, and growth involve finding meaning in life’s sufferings. Between these painful stimuli and the meaningful response lies human power to choose the type of response to suffering, defining and determining it. Every broken and suffering life bears a meaning that instills responsibility and fosters resilience. Suffering is not only not an obstacle to happiness but a necessary means for growth and freedom, not to be viewed as a pathological condition. Suffering is a passage.

This form of psychotherapy, rooted in existential philosophy’s analyses of existence, is a type of existential therapy where existence, specifically human existence, is central—a unique, resilient human capable of overcoming their living conditions and creating or sustaining a meaning that grants responsibility to fight and survive. Frankl states: “Beyond instincts and genes, beyond classical conditioning, beyond biological dominance, there is something unique: the singular, unparalleled human person.”

The pinnacle of Frankl’s work is inviting each individual to draw from their inner source of energy for life’s journey, meaning, and strength—a strength that grants the resolute will to pursue meaning, overcoming complex challenges and intense hardships stage by stage. Frankl does not lead humans to a detached, distant source but to the realm of their soul and psyche. As Mito puts it: “The part of psychology we know as science has tried to erase the soul from our encyclopedia. But perhaps the time has come to accept Frankl’s words and end the reign of reductionism.” If humans rely on their infinite inner source and draw strength from it, even if everything is taken from them, they will not lose themselves, succumb to degradation, or falter. Even in the harshest conditions, enduring immense pain and suffering, they sustain their dignity, grandeur, and freedom from this boundless inner source, standing tall and resolute. As Frankl asserts, no one can take away the choice of perspective in these fated conditions, and in all these grueling battlegrounds, the human is the “hero,” the triumphant victor of this saga.

Frankl aligns the meaning humans seek with the existentialist philosophers, particularly Heidegger’s “Dasein.” If Heidegger (1889–1976) refers to Dasein as the human core, his friend Frankl claims in his logotherapy to see the patient in their full humanity, stating: “I step into the center of the patient’s being. A human is a being in search of meaning, a being that transcends itself, capable of doing anything for the love of another… You know? Every human is like this, but they may forget or suppress their essence. Yet, fundamentally, they are a being in search of meaning for self-realization or in search of those at the center of their affection.”

Like Heidegger, Frankl focuses on the core of humanity and its state of being, driving his book within the framework of humanism and self-founded psyche. However, the meaning of life and its sufferings must be understood through the propositions of existential-phenomenological philosophy.

In logotherapy, Frankl does not externalize meaning, considering it the human’s longing and desire for an ultimate meaning, which is comprehensive yet incomprehensible. He borrows his concept of meaning from Heidegger’s philosophy, following him closely. Thus, Heidegger, one of the West’s most profound philosophers on human existence, serves as Frankl’s philosophical guide. Like Heidegger’s human, Frankl’s human, rather than observing suffering through the mind’s lens, is a participant and protagonist in the film of suffering, a hero who never halts. Their life’s series is an endless chain of adventures, each scene driven by the continuous release of suffering, embodying Heidegger’s Dasein.

While logotherapy claims to humbly explore the objective order of the world, it falls short in this recognition, failing to uncover the philosophical subtleties embedded in existence’s phenomena. In justifying the pains and sufferings he profoundly experienced during three years of imprisonment, Frankl succumbs to superficial thinking. He admits that his book explains logotherapy as a concrete experience, aiming to make his analysis believable for average minds. Thus, a precise re-examination requires changes to replace average-level superficiality with meticulous precision.

Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, written by the psychiatrist and founder of logotherapy, seeks to justify, render meaningful, and treat the pains and sufferings that all humans experience to varying degrees and intensities. In an era where adolescent anxieties are likened to the psychological disorders of the 1960s, Frankl’s effort is magnificent, commendable, and worthy of pursuit and reconsideration. The small and large anxieties, hardships, afflictions, pains, fears, worries, and concerns present in everyone’s life are, on one hand, tormenting and painful injuries, and on the other, a hidden layer of profound potential that can flourish by drawing strength from that apparent suffering.

In this journey, one must live in the present, adapt, seek peace, be courageous and fearless, remain loyal, honest, sacrificial, and preserve their humanity in all conditions, so the soul remains resilient and impervious in the harshest circumstances, fearless of external factors. As Frankl states: “After all the suffering my soul and psyche have endured, there is nothing left to fear, except God.”

Man’s Search for Meaning deliberately adopts a general, horizontal approach, independent of belief in God, such that even those who view humans as confined to instinct and matter can benefit from Frankl’s logotherapy. The book does not undertake the responsibility of proving or teaching the salvation of the soul, focusing solely on the profession of psychotherapy.

Frankl, with his self-described peace-loving spirit, adopts a strategy to engage the broadest range of people with his therapeutic culture, infusing this spirit into his therapeutic method. For Frankl, mental health is paramount, ensuring the individual believes they are moving toward happiness and fulfillment. However, he does not hold himself accountable for achieving true human fulfillment. He only seeks to instill in the patient the belief that, per their unique nature, they are striving for happiness. He makes no effort to map a path to recognizing and attaining true fulfillment, nor does he contemplate what true fulfillment is, even recommending against pondering its details. For him, what matters is faith in meaning, not knowledge of it. He states: “The core issue is having faith in it (meaning), not thinking about it. In other words, faith is pitted against reason here.” In psychotherapy, it is crucial to accept the meaning that eludes pure logical comprehension, termed “supermeaning” due to this quality, and to have faith in it. However, knowing or contemplating this supermeaning is not only unnecessary but discouraged.

From this perspective, what matters is how to evoke in the patient the sense of being responsible for something in life, even in the worst conditions. This meaning cannot be found by another; each person must seek their life’s meaning themselves, accepting its responsibility with faith. In this way, despite all humiliations and degradations, the individual persists, as Nietzsche puts it: “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

Dr. Frankl recounts a painful experience where excruciating sufferings and afflictions nurture a fruit within, fostering creativity in the mind and soul to penetrate the depths and nuances of logotherapy stage by stage. These pains grant the ability to see, observe keenly, and understand better. Hunger, humiliation, fear, and deep anger from injustice empower one to better understand loved ones, overcoming selfish desires and futile expectations, and to appreciate them. They heighten attention and connection to phenomena, drawing one to bond with nature’s soothing beauties, like a tree or a sunset, absorbing pleasure and tranquility, aiding every prisoner to find meaning in their life’s sufferings.

In life’s sufferings and afflictions, pain upon pain imparts new knowledge and revelation. These pains and sufferings reshaped Frankl’s existence, stripping everything—home, possessions, wife, parents, family, freedom, and life’s values—leaving only a bare body captive in Auschwitz. Yet, he is a heroic fighter whose victory and success owe to existential therapy and creative reflection on human existence and nature. This success, initially a painful tale, inwardly charts an existential journey, transforming a captive on the brink of annihilation into a global psychotherapist adorned with a hero’s medal—a hero who, by drawing on their human essence, overcame the harshest conditions and discovered an illuminating truth. This truth, rooted in human nature, resonates with readers as their own heartfelt voice, making it compelling.

The core message of Frankl’s logotherapy is returning to the self—the human self—a return impossible without pain and suffering. Returning to one’s human essence, the existential meaning and truth of the self, lies buried under heavy layers of comfort and accumulated possessions and attachments. Accessing it requires losing comfort and enduring hardship and pain. The elixir of pain, suffering, and the shedding of all worldly burdens yields the gold of self-discovery. One realizes that home, money, cars, friends, fame, wealth, power, and even knowledge are not their essence. With each pain, they shed virtual selves, ultimately reaching a meaning worth fighting for through every pain and suffering in an endless cycle. This ultimate meaning is the true self, the personality that defines their health and liberation from futility. This meaning, unique and distinguished for each individual, crafts a singular, vital personality reflective of their unique nature, attainable through pains, sufferings, and the shedding of possessions. These possessions, not being the ultimate human truth, obstruct resilience when held, veiling the truth and obscuring identity, leaving one with a sense of unattainable loss, heavy disorientation, and intensified distress.

A meaning attained under the weight of pains and sufferings grants responsibility and the mandate to fight—a fight that is their unique way of living, experienced solely by them, with no one else able to assume this responsibility. This singular responsibility makes them unique, distinguished, and precious, a one-of-a-kind entity without a duplicate. The true self, revealed by dismantling selfish barriers through the loss of virtual possessions, grants life and vitality, fueling the drive for greater, honest effort to live better and more divinely. Frankl, in depicting pains and sufferings that create meaning and enduring those arising from meaning, attends to the realistic nature of humans, distancing himself from excessive idealism or inaccessible, unrelatable ideals. Even in recounting his memories, he omits unbelievable or unverifiable parts to remain faithful to the realistic arc of his biography, ensuring his psychotherapy is responsive and effective.

Humanistic Meaning

Positioning the realm of meaning and spirituality without God, mental tranquility without religion, and humanistic meaning (Humanismus), emphasizing the authentic dignity of humanity and commitment to human meaningful desires—either through extreme individualism in liberalism or extreme collectivism in Marxism—in place of religious and divine spirituality, is a tactic of politically driven philosophies post-Renaissance. The West, through its comprehensive propaganda, seeks to replace divine religion and revelatory ideology with humanism, humanistic meaning, or even a humanistic religion, establishing it as a strategic principle to bring all scientific and rational humans under the global culture of humanism, subjugating them to its influence.

Colonialism, through humanistic meaning, obstructs human servitude to God and divine freedom, diverting it through its colonial path. By rejecting God and revelatory intermediaries, humanistic meaning substitutes religion and faith with human uniqueness, rationalism, and the scientific method, imposing its profiteering culture on societies under the guise of universal compassion, tolerance, love, pity, and beauty. When unable, it sparks religious reform movements in religious societies, fundamentally distorting and transforming religions under the pretext of reformation.

The colonial world adopted two strategies to combat religions, particularly Islam: first, eradicating fundamentalism, especially the Islamic caliphate, exemplified by the Ottoman Caliphate during the colonial era; second, reviving the caliphate in a Salafist interpretation to stagnate Muslim societies, particularly their philosophical rationality and mystical spirituality, while promoting humanism, godless spirituality, and religion without faith in their stead.

With the Industrial Revolution and the intoxication of economic growth, the West, to secure free or cheap raw materials for its industrial economy, encroached on resource-rich territories, leveraging its industrial might and profiteering ethos to usher in the colonial era. Colonialism, driven by Western industrial power and later Tsarist Eastern Bloc ambitions, developed controlled movements of pseudo-spirituality, religiosity, and freedom to counter resistance from freedom-seeking nations, managing uprisings, especially among the masses, through these movements.

These movements, designed to attract diverse masses, took three forms: anti-Westernism, Western-avoidance, and Westernism (Western obsession). Anti-Western movements were tainted with violence and cruelty to repel societies from their restrictive pressures, pushing them toward Western-avoidance, which advocated withdrawal rather than confrontation or dependence, rendering Western opponents stagnant and inert, or toward Western-obsessed groups that promoted humanism as the salvation for third-world nations or served as Tsarist infiltrators promoting socialism. Alongside suppressing extreme anti-colonial movements by absorbing them into fabricated freedom movements, colonial powers also supported Western-obsessed or Tsarist-leaning groups, leveraging their fascination with Western or Russian culture, technology, and industry to turn cultural interactions into clashes. By amplifying these groups in culture, art, literature, and philosophy, alongside violent caliphate-seeking movements that tarnished religion’s image through harshness and violence, they constrained the space for moderate advocates of selective progress and positive cultural interaction with the West or Russia.

Given the highly insidious and subtle influence of Western and Russian powers in the political and decision-making centers of other nations, one cannot adopt an optimistic view of anti-colonial movements. Caution is warranted, assuming their dependence and inauthenticity unless their integrity, clarity, and successful outcome are proven with unambiguous evidence.

The Future of Buddhism

Although Buddhism is currently a global religion with a large community, its lack of cohesive knowledge about God renders it neither comprehensive nor responsive. Its extreme asceticism and world-renunciation make its societies, if left free, highly prone to migrating to other religions. This, coupled with its non-proselytizing nature, confines it to its traditional societies, limiting its future, except in cases where romantic and colonial policies promote spirituality detached from religion, living through mental focus on personal possessions and pure, unconditional love devoid of faith and religious cultivation, under the banner of peace, transcendence, and truth as a dominant culture.

In contrast, the two dominant religions, Islam and Christianity, with their emphasis on jihad against unbelievers and their powerful missionary appeal, are rapidly and aggressively expanding their influence and communities, conquering the hearts of followers of other religions, including Buddhism, and fundamentally transforming them.