Buddhist Philosophy
- Siddhartha Gautama was the founder of Buddhism around 550-400 BCE. Buddha refers to the ‘awaken one’ while Shakyamuni represents the ‘sage of the shakyas.’
- Buddha lived as an archetypal rather than a divinity advocating for the middle way connecting the asceticism with the hedonism.
- Buddha offered people with an insight towards the nature of suffering as well as a way to cease the cessation.
- Buddhist texts can be classified into three baskets; Sanskrit, tripiṭaka; Pali, tipiṭaka. Sutra text offers general discourses, Vinaya text providing for the monastic rules and the Abhidharma providing for higher teachings, doctrines, and commentaries.
- The three groups of scriptures gave rise to three main contemporary traditions.
- The Southern tradition extending from Theravada to SE Asia, Eastern culture extending from Mahayana to Japan and the Northern tradition stretching from Kanjur to Tibet, Mongolia.
- The Buddhist Philosophical thought can be related to Indian thought in terms of:
- Role of the Sanskrit language – Heterodox tradition.
- Eternalists (spiritual realism) and Annihilationists (materialist realism, Cārvāka School); Middle Way (Madhyamaka) between them.
- Philosophical issues of God, Self, Afterlife, Justice, Causality
Work Cited
Gethin, Rupert, 1998, The Foundations of Buddhism. Ch. 2: ‘The Word of the Buddha: Buddhist Scriptures and Schools’