Einstein and Buddhism

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Buddhism is in vogue. 

I've grown sceptical of it. 

Buddhism strkes me as a form of escapism for centuries carefully nurtured by those in power and unwisely observed by the desparate.  (Consider the brutally repressive and inhumanely stratified nature of the societies in which Buddhism has developed.)

If you're going to be reasonably happy in life, you will have to strive for contentment in ways that the Buddhist denigrates as being "illusory" and unadvisedly down to earth.

In short: Buddhism('s promise of deliverance) is an illusion. 

No doubt, a reasonably satisfied life does depend on a lot of luck, all the same it will hardly happen unless you add a lot of worldly effort to the luck that comes your way.

My thoughts are inspired by this quote:

In another passage from 1934, Einstein talks about the value of a human being, reflecting a Buddhist-like approach:

“The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self”.

I don't know where Einstein gets his license to determine "the true value of a human being" and an objective and indiputable standard of "liberation", and one, into the bargain, that jettisons the self.

We may be part of a larger whole, however the conditions of human contentment are merely a small part of that whole. Human happiness doesn't partake in that whole, for it simply isn't linked to the larger multitude of the universum — like the fish in my pond that isn't linked to the chess game that I am playing while incidentally taking a look at it. And any claim of the existence of such linakge is an idle, highly implausible and unprovable assertion.  

Hence, similarly dubious is Einstein's below advice:

This theme of liberating the self is also echoed by Einstein later in life, in a 1950 letter to console a grieving father Robert S. Marcus:

“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish it but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.”

 The source.