Manual of Indian Buddhism c3.s3.7

c3.s3.7

The Indian view of life, in the mystical and transcendental systems of the Vedānta and Buddhism, as well as in the rationalistic Sāṅkhya, Yoga, Nyāya, is not seldom considered pessimistic. That qualification is true in a restricted sense, the Indians being pessimists only halfway. Just as they have no objection to the most tragic situations in their dramas, provided the final be a happy one, so they admit of all sorts of dreariness in human life, but at the same time they believe that it is possible, and that by a comparatively easy method, to get rid of the nuisance called existence and rebirth: they have only to follow some one of the infallible teachers of the path to salvation, of whom there was no lack in India. There, too, the rule holds good that the supply is proportionate to the demand.