Pragmatic Buddha: Non-religious Buddhism

At that time "the world was so recent that many things still lacked names, and in order to mention them it was necessary to point". With this imaginative metaphor Gabriel Garcia Marquez describes the immemorial remoteness of his One Hundred Years of Solitude’s early days. In the same way, the fingers of modern scholars are now pointing to the Buddha’s pragmatism, twenty four centuries before such word entered languages after being coined by North American philosopher Charles S. Peirce.
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Two paragraphs, appearing in many Buddha’s discourses, corroborate this assertion. The first one, a summary of his Teachings in itself, is Siddhattha Gotama’s recurrent repetition of his four noble truths: “I only explain the reality of suffering, the origin of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path to the cessation of suffering". The second one are the Buddha’s answers to a disciple who was requesting clarity on a number of uncertain questions related to the nature of the cosmos, the immanence of the soul and the existence of the buddhas after their death. Says Siddhattha Gotama: “In the discussion of any hypothesis about supernatural matters—be them the eternity or finitude of the universe, the existence or nonexistence of the soul, its immortality or its disappearance, rebirth or reincarnation—the affirmation or negation of any position about such issues is only a bunch of opinions, a desert of opinions, a manipulation of opinions that in no way leads to the cessation of suffering.” In other words, the only notions of importance for the Buddha are those few things that lead to the end of suffering; any action or discussion that does not help in that respect is merely a complete waste of time.
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Pragmatic is the person who uses a practical approach to problems and matters of everyday life; for such person, the truth is whatever works and produces results. Rules and behaviors must go together and have beneficial consequences; therefore, theory and practice should not belong to different domains. (Pragmatic comes from Greek pragmatikos meaning “versed in matters of business"). The Teachings of Buddha are pragmatic, says Anglo-German Buddhist scholar Edward Conze, because they avoid speculation and aim only to the habits and practices that lead to the cessation of suffering. The four noble truths are the only the only necessary truths. The end of suffering results from knowing them, recognizing their imperative need and actually experiencing them. Knowledge needs to be lived if it is to become wisdom.
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The pragmatic vision of the Buddha is most appropriate for the modern individuals interested in putting an end to their anguish—the Henry D. Thoreau’s “mass of men who live lives of quiet desperation”—by some practical approach that excludes abstract concepts and unexplainable dogmas. When an approach works for someone, it will definitely be the “truth” for him or her.