Bridge Over Samsaric Waters: The Pragmatism in Skillful Means

Bridge Over Samsaric Waters is a paper that argues that Buddhism is pragmatic insofar as it provides a solution to an existential crisis. The pedagogy of Siddhattha Gotama understood as skillful means is used to outline ways in which the Buddha sought to alleviate the suffering of several of his interlocutors, particularly in the story of Gotami and the Mustard Seed wherein she seeks the Buddha to help her revive her dead child. The Buddha’s teaching, often casually described as pragmatic by many scholars, is described here through the pragmatic method of William James. Similarities between the two thinkers are outlined including the bridging of two extremes in Gotama between the annihilationists and the eternalists and in James between the tender-minded rationalists and the tough-minded empiricists. James’ conception of truth as helping bring old opinions harmoniously into new facts is of particular focus in this paper as this concept, I argue, is largely part of what Gotama uses to teach his interlocutors the four noble truths but especially dukkha and the overcoming of dukkha. This teaching offers a fundamental reorientation to the world of experience that views the world as shot through with relations (James’ pluralism and psychology lend a hand here as well). While this paper does not argue that Buddhism itself is pragmatic per se, it does argue that the compassionate teaching of the Buddha Gotama itself has strong correlations with the pragmatic method of Willliam James insofar as it provides a solution to an existential crisis.