Buddhist thought and Western philosophy include
several interesting parallels. Before the
20th century, a few European thinkers such
as Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche
had engaged with Buddhist thought. Likewise,
in Asian nations with Buddhist populations,
there were also attempts to bring the insights
of Western thought to Buddhist philosophy,
as can be seen in the rise of Buddhist modernism.
After the post-war spread of Buddhism to the
West there has been considerable interest
by some scholars in a comparative, cross-cultural
approach between Eastern and Western philosophy.
Much of this work is now published in academic
journals such as Philosophy East and West.
== Hellenistic philosophy ==
According to Edward Conze, Greek Skepticism
(particularly that of Pyrrho) can be compared
to Buddhist philosophy, especially the Indian
Madhyamika school. The Pyrrhonian Skeptics'
goal of ataraxia (the state of being untroubled)
is a soteriological goal. The core teaching
of Pyrrho was that things are adiaphora (undifferentiated
by a logical differentia), astathmēta (unstable,
unbalanced, not measurable), and anepikrita
(unjudged, unfixed, undecidable). This is
strikingly similar to the Buddhist Three marks
of existence.They promoted withholding judgment
(Epoché) about facts of the world as a way
to reach that goal. This is similar to the
Buddha's refusal to answer certain metaphysical
questions which he saw as non-conductive to
the path of Buddhist practice and Nagarjuna's
"relinquishing of all views (drsti)". Adrian
Kuzminski argues for direct influence between
these two systems of thought. In Pyrrhonism:
How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism,
Kuzminski writes: "its origin can plausibly
be traced to the contacts between Pyrrho and
the sages he encountered in India, where he
traveled with Alexander the Great." According
to Kuzminski, both philosophies argue against
assenting to any dogmatic assertions about
an ultimate metaphysical reality behind our
sense impressions as a tactic to reach tranquility
and both also make use of logical arguments
against other philosophies in order to expose
their contradictions.
Buddhist thought can also be compared to Classical
Cynicism and Stoicism, in that all of these
world views sought to develop a set of practices
to reach a state of equanimity by the removal
of desires and passions.
== Hume and Not-Self ==
The Scottish philosopher David Hume wrote:
"When I enter most intimately into what I
call myself, I always stumble on some particular
perception or other, of heat or cold, light
or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure.
I never catch myself at any time without a
perception, and never can observe any thing
but the perception"
According to Hume then there is nothing that
is constantly stable which we could identify
as the self, only a flow of differing experiences.
Our view that there is something substantive
which binds all of these experiences together
is for Hume merely imaginary. The self is
a fiction that is attributed to the entire
flow of experiences.
Pain and pleasure, grief and joy, passions
and sensations succeed each other, and never
all exist at the same time. It cannot, therefore,
be from any of these impressions, or from
any other, that the idea of self is deriv'd;
and consequently there is no such idea...I
may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind,
that they are nothing but a bundle or collection
of different perceptions, which succeed each
other with an inconceivable rapidity, and
are in a perpetual flux and movement.
This 'Bundle theory' of personal identity
is very similar to the Buddhist notion of
not-self, which holds that the unitary self
is a fiction and that nothing exists but a
collection of five aggregates. Similarly,
both Hume and Buddhist philosophy hold that
it is perfectly acceptable to speak of personal
identity in a mundane and conventional way,
while believing that there are ultimately
no such things. Hume scholar Alison Gopnik
has even argued that Hume could have had contact
with Buddhist philosophy during his stay in
France (which coincided with his writing of
the Treatise of Human Nature) through the
well traveled Jesuit missionaries of the Royal
College of La Flèche.British philosopher
Derek Parfit has argued for a reductionist
and deflationary theory of personal identity
in his book Reasons and Persons. According
to Parfit, apart from a causally connected
stream of mental and physical events, there
are no “separately existing entities, distinct
from our brains and bodies”. Parfit concludes
that "Buddha would have agreed." Parfit also
argues that this view is liberating and leads
to increased empathy.
Is the truth depressing? Some may find it
so. But I find it liberating, and consoling.
When I believed that my existence was such
a further fact, I seemed imprisoned in myself.
My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through
which I was moving faster every year, and
at the end of which there was darkness. When
I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel
disappeared. I now live in the open air. There
is still a difference between my lives and
the lives of other people. But the difference
is less. Other people are closer. I am less
concerned about the rest of my own life, and
more concerned about the lives of others.
According to The New Yorker's Larissa MacFarquhar,
passages of Reasons and Persons have been
studied and chanted at a Tibetan Buddhist
monastery.Other Western philosophers that
have attacked the view of a fixed self include
Daniel Dennett (in his paper 'The Self as
a Center of Narrative Gravity') and Thomas
Metzinger ('The Ego Tunnel').
== Idealism ==
Idealism is the group of philosophies which
assert that reality, or reality as we can
know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally
constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Some
Buddhist philosophical views have been interpreted
as having Idealistic tendencies, mainly the
cittamatra (mind-only) philosophy of Yogacara
Buddhism as outlined in the works of Vasubandhu
and Xuanzang. Metaphysical Idealism has been
the orthodox position of the Chinese Yogacara
school or Fǎxiàng-zōng. According to Buddhist
philosopher Vasubhandu "The transformation
of consciousness is imagination. What is imagined
by it does not exist. Therefore everything
is representation-only." This has been compared
to the Idealist philosophies of Bishop Berkeley
and Immanuel Kant. Kant's categories have
also been compared to the Yogacara concept
of karmic vasanas (perfumings) which condition
our mental reality.
=== Buddhism and German Idealism ===
Immanuel Kant's Transcendental Idealism has
also been compared with the Indian philosophical
approach of the Madhyamaka school by scholars
such as T. R. V. Murti. Both posit that the
world of experience is in one sense a mere
fabrication of our senses and mental faculties.
For Kant and the Madhyamikas, we do not have
access to 'things in themselves' because they
are always filtered by our mind's 'interpretative
framework'. Thus both worldviews posit that
there is an ultimate reality and that Reason
is unable to reach it. Buddhologists like
Edward Conze have also seen similarities between
Kant's antinomies and the unanswerable questions
of the Buddha in that "they are both concerned
with whether the world is finite or infinite,
etc., and in that they are both left undecided."Arthur
Schopenhauer was influenced by Indian religious
texts and later claimed that Buddhism was
the "best of all possible religions." Schopenhauer's
view that "suffering is the direct and immediate
object of life" and that this is driven by
an "restless willing and striving" are similar
to the four noble truths of the Buddha. Schopenhauer
promoted the saintly ascetic life of the Indian
sramanas as a way to renounce the Will. His
view that a single world-essence (The Will)
comes to manifest itself as a multiplicity
of individual things (principium individuationis)
has been compared to the Buddhist trikaya
doctrine as developed in Yogacara Buddhism.
Finally, Schopenhauer's ethics which are based
on universal compassion for the suffering
of others can be compared to the Buddhist
ethics of Karuṇā.
== Nietzsche ==
Friedrich Nietzsche admired Buddhism, writing
that it "Buddhism already has -- and this
distinguishes it profoundly from Christianity
-- the self-deception of moral concepts behind
it -- it stands, in my language, Beyond Good
and Evil." Nietzsche saw himself as undertaking
a similar project to the Buddha, “I could
become the Buddha of Europe,” he wrote in
1883, “though frankly I would be the antipode
of the Indian Buddha.” Nietzsche (as well
as Buddha) accepted that all is change and
becoming, and both sought to create an ethics
which was not based on a God or an Absolutist
Being. Nietzsche believed that Buddhism's
goal of Nirvana was a form of life denying
nihilism and promoted what he saw as its inversion,
life affirmation and amor fati. According
to Benjamin A. Elman, Nietzsche's interpretation
of Buddhism as pessimistic and life-denying
was probably influenced by his understanding
of Schopenhauer's views of eastern philosophy
and therefore "he was predisposed to react
to Buddhism in terms of his close reading
of Schopenhauer." Because of this writes Elman,
Nietzsche misinterprets Buddhism as promoting
"nothingness" and nihilism, all of which the
Buddha and other Buddhist philosophers such
as Nagarjuna repudiated, in favor of a subtler
understanding of Shunyata.Antoine Panaïoti
argues in Nietzsche and Buddhist philosophy
that both of these systems of thought begin
by wrestling with the problem of nihilism
and that they both develop a therapeutic outlook
for dealing with the suffering and anxiety
brought about by the crisis of nihilism. While
Nietzsche and Buddhism do diverge in some
ways, which is why Nietzsche saw himself as
an 'Anti-Buddha", Panaïoti stresses the similarity
of both systems as paths towards a “vision
of great health” that allows one to deal
with the impermanent world of becoming by
accepting it as it truly is. Ultimately both
world views have as their ideal what Panaïoti
calls "great health perfectionism" which seeks
to remove unhealthy tendencies from human
beings and reach an exceptional state of self-development.
Robert G. Morrison has also written on the
"ironic affinities" between Nietzsche and
Pali Buddhism through close textual comparison,
such as that between Nietzsche's 'self-overcoming'
(Selbstüberwindung) and the Buddhist concept
of mental development (citta-bhavana). Morrison
also sees an affinity between the Buddhist
concept of tanha, or craving and Nietzsche's
view of the Will to Power as well as in their
understandings of personality as a flux of
different psycho-physical forces. The similarity
between Nietzsche's view of the Ego as flux
and the Buddhist concept of anatta is also
noted by Benjamin Elman.David Loy also quotes
Nietzsche's views on the subject as "something
added and invented and projected behind what
there is" (Will to Power 481) and on substance
("The properties of a thing are effects on
other 'things' ... there is no 'thing-in-itself.'"
WP 557), which are similar to Buddhist nominalist
views. Loy however sees Nietzsche as failing
to understand that his promotion of heroic
aristocratic values and affirmation of will
to power is just as much of a reaction to
the 'sense of lack' which arises from the
impermanence of the subject as what he calls
slave morality.Comparative work has also been
done by Japanese interpreters of Nietzsche
and Buddhism, such as Nishitani Keiji, in
his The Self Overcoming Nihilism (Albany,
N.Y., 1990), and Abe Masao in his essays on
Nietzsche. In his "A History of Western Philosophy",
Bertrand Russell pitted Nietzsche against
the Buddha, ultimately criticizing Nietzsche
for his promotion of violence, elitism and
hatred of compassionate love.
== Phenomenology and Existentialism ==
The German Buddhist monk Nyanaponika Thera
wrote that the Buddhist Abhidhamma philosophy
"doubtlessly belongs" to Phenomenology and
that the Buddhist term dhamma could be rendered
as "phenomena". Likewise, Alexander Piatigorsky
sees early Buddhist Abhidhamma philosophy
as being a "phenomenological approach".According
to Dan Lusthaus, Buddhism "is a type of phenomenology;
Yogacara even moreso." Some scholars reject
the idealist interpretation of Yogacara Buddhist
philosophy and instead interpret it through
the lens of Western Phenomenology which is
the study of conscious processes from the
subjective point of view.Christian Coseru
argues in his monograph "Perceiving reality"
that Buddhist philosophers such as Dharmakirti,
Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla "share a
common ground with phenomenologists in the
tradition of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty."
That common ground is the notion of the intentionality
of consciousness. Coseru compares the concepts
of the object aspect (grāhyākāra) and the
subject aspect (grāhakākāra) of consciousness
to the Husserlian concepts of Noesis and Noema.
Modern Buddhist thinkers who have been influenced
by Western Phenomenology and Existentialism
include Ñāṇavīra Thera, Nanamoli Bhikkhu,
R. G. de S. Wettimuny, Samanera Bodhesako
and Ninoslav Ñāṇamoli.
=== Husserl ===
Edmund Husserl, the founder of Phenomenology,
wrote that "I could not tear myself away"
while reading the Buddhist Sutta Pitaka in
the German translation of Karl Eugen Neumann.
Husserl held that the Buddha's method as he
understood it was very similar to his own.
Eugen Fink, who was Husserl's chief assistant
and whom Husserl considered to be his most
trusted interpreter said that: "the various
phases of Buddhistic self-discipline were
essentially phases of phenomenological reduction."
After reading the Buddhist texts, Husserl
wrote a short essay entitled 'On the discourses
of Gautama Buddha' (Über die Reden Gotomo
Buddhos) which states:
Complete linguistic analysis of the Buddhist
canonical writings provides us with a perfect
opportunity of becoming acquainted with this
means of seeing the world which is completely
opposite of our European manner of observation,
of setting ourselves in its perspective, and
of making its dynamic results truly comprehensive
through experience and understanding. For
us, for anyone, who lives in this time of
the collapse of our own exploited, decadent
culture and has had a look around to see where
spiritual purity and truth, where joyous mastery
of the world manifests itself, this manner
of seeing means a great adventure.
That Buddhism - insofar as it speaks to us
from pure original sources - is a religio-ethical
discipline for spiritual purification and
fulfillment of the highest stature - conceived
of and dedicated to an inner result of a vigorous
and unparalleled, elevated frame of mind,
will soon become clear to every reader who
devotes themselves to the work. Buddhism is
comparable only with the highest form of the
philosophy and religious spirit of our European
culture. It is now our task to utilize this
(to us) completely new Indian spiritual discipline
which has been revitalized and strengthened
by the contrast.
Fred J Hanna and Lau Kwok Ying both note that
when Husserl calls Buddhism "transcendental"
he is placing it on the same level as his
own transcendental phenomenology. Also, that
Husserl called Buddhism a "great adventure"
is significant, since he referred to his own
philosophy in that way as well - as a methodology
which changes the way one views reality which
also brings about personal transformation.
Husserl also wrote about Buddhist philosophy
in an unpublished manuscript "Sokrates - Buddha"
in which he compared the Buddhist philosophical
attitude with the Western tradition. Husserl
saw a similarity between the Socratic good
life lived under the maxim "Know yourself"
and the Buddhist philosophy, he argues that
they both have the same attitude, which is
a combination of the pure theoretical attitude
of the sciences and the pragmatic attitudes
of everyday life. This third attitude is based
on "a praxis whose aim is to elevate humankind
through universal scientific reason."Husserl
also saw a similarity between Buddhist analysis
of experience and his own method of epoche
which is a suspension of judgment about metaphysical
assumptions and presuppositions about the
'external' world (assumptions he termed 'the
naturalistic attitude). However Husserl also
thought that Buddhism has not developed into
a unifying science which can unite all knowledge
since it remains a religious-ethical system
and hence it is not able to qualify as a full
transcendental phenomenology.According to
Aaron Prosser, "The phenomenological investigations
of Siddhartha Gautama and Edmund Husserl arrive
at the exact same conclusion concerning a
fundamental and invariant structure of consciousness.
Namely, that object-directed consciousness
has a transcendental correlational intentional
structure, and that this is fundamental -- in
the sense of basic and necessary--to all object-directed
experiences."
=== Heidegger ===
According to Reinhard May and Graham Parkes,
Heidegger may have been influenced by Zen
and Daoist texts. Some of Martin Heidegger's
philosophical terms, such as Ab-grund (void),
Das Nichts (the Nothing) and Dasein have been
considered in light of Buddhist terms which
express similar ideas such as Emptiness. Heidegger
wrote that: “As void [Ab-grund], Being ‘is’
at once the nothing [das Nichts] as well as
the ground.” Heidegger's "Dialogue on Language",
has a Japanese friend (Tezuka Tomio) state
that "to us [Japanese] emptiness is the loftiest
name for what you mean to say with the word
‘Being’” Heidegger's critique of metaphysics
has also been compared to Zen's radical anti-metaphysical
attitude. William Barrett held that Heidegger's
philosophy was similar to Zen Buddhism and
that Heidegger himself had confirmed this
after reading the works of DT Suzuki.
=== Existentialism ===
Jean-Paul Sartre believed that consciousness
lacks an essence or any fixed characteristics
and that insight into this caused a strong
sense of Existential angst or Nausea. Sartre
saw consciousness as defined by its ability
of negation, this happens because whenever
consciousness becomes conscious of something
it is aware of itself not being that intentional
object. Consciousness is nothingness because
all being-in-itself - the entire world of
objects - is outside of it. Furthermore, for
Sartre, being-in-itself is also nothing more
than appearance, it has no essence. This conception
of the self as nothingness and of reality
as lacking any inherent essence has been compared
to the Buddhist concept of Emptiness and Not-self.
Just like the Buddhists rejected the Hindu
concept of Atman, Sartre rejected Husserl's
concept of the transcendental ego.
Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology has been said
to be similar to Zen Buddhism and Madhyamaka
in that they all hold to the interconnection
of the self, body and the world (the "lifeworld").
The unity of body and mind (shēnxīn, 身心)
expressed by the Buddhism of Dogen and Zhanran
and Merleau-Ponty's view of the corporeity
of consciousness seem to be in agreement.
They both hold that the conscious mind is
inherently connected to the body and the external
world and that the lifeworld is experienced
dynamically through the body, denying any
independent Cartesian Cogito.The German existentialist
Karl Jaspers also wrote on the philosophy
of the Buddha in his "The Great Philosophers"
(1975). He recommended that Western Christians
could learn from the Buddha, praised his cosmopolitanism
and the flexibility and relatively non-dogmatic
worldview of Buddhism.
== Kyoto School ==
The Kyoto School was a Japanese philosophical
movement centered around Kyoto University
that assimilated western philosophical influences
(such as Kant and Heidegger) and Mahayana
Buddhist ideas to create a new original philosophical
synthesis. Its founder, Nishida Kitaro (1870–1945)
developed the central concept associated with
the Kyoto school, that is the concept of “Absolute
Nothingness” (zettai-mu) which is related
to the Zen Buddhist term Mu (無) as well
as Shunyata. Nishida saw the Absolute nature
of reality as Nothingness, a "formless", "groundless
ground" which envelops all beings and allows
them to undergo change and pass away.
== Buddhism and Process philosophy ==
The process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead
has several convergent points with Buddhist
philosophy. Whitehead saw reality as an impermanent
constant process of flux and denied that objects
had any real substance within them, but rather
were ever changing occasions. This is similar
to the Buddhist concepts of the impermanence
and emptiness. Whitehead also held that each
one of these processes was never independent,
but was interrelated and dependent all prior
occasions, and this feature of reality which
he called 'creativity' has been compared to
dependent origination which holds that all
events are conditioned by multiple past causes.
Like Buddhism, Whitehead also held that our
understanding of the world is usually mistaken
because we hold to the ‘fallacy of misplaced
concreteness’ in seeing constantly changing
processes as having fixed substances. Buddhism
teaches that suffering and stress arises from
our ignorance to the true nature of the world.
Likewise, Whitehead held that the world is
"haunted by terror" at this process of change.
"The ultimate evil in the temporal world...lies
in the fact that the past fades, that time
is a ‘perpetual perishing’" (PR, p. 340).
In this sense, Whitehead's concept of "evil"
is similar to the Buddhist viparinama-dukkha,
suffering caused by change. Whitehead also
had a view of God which has been likened to
the Mahayana theory of the Trikaya as well
as the Bodhisattva ideal.
== Panpsychism and Buddha-nature ==
Panpsychism is the view that mind or soul
is a universal feature of all things, this
has been a common view in western philosophy
going back to the Presocratics and Plato.
According to D. S. Clarke, panpsychist and
panexperientialist aspects can be found in
the Huayan and Tiantai (Jpn. Tendai) Buddhist
doctrines of Buddha nature, which was often
attributed to inanimate objects such as lotus
flowers and mountains.
== Wittgenstein ==
Ludwig Wittgenstein held a therapeutic view
of philosophy which according to K.T. Fann
has "striking resemblances" to the Zen Buddhist
conception of the dharma as a medicine for
abstract linguistic and philosophical confusion.
C. Gudmunsen in his Wittgenstein and Buddhism
argues that "much of what the later Wittgenstein
had to say was anticipated about 1,800 years
ago in India." In his book, Gudmunsen mainly
compares Wittgenstein's later philosophy with
Madhyamaka views on the emptiness of thought
and words. One of Wittgenstein's students,
the Sri Lankan philosopher KN Jayatilleke,
wrote Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge which
interpreted the epistemology of the early
Buddhist texts analytically.
Many modern interpreters of Nagarjuna (Jay
Garfield, CW Huntington) take a Wittgensteinian
or Post-Wittgensteinian critical model in
their work on Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophy.
Ives Waldo writes that Nagarjuna's criticism
of the idea of svabhava (own-being) "directly
parallels Wittgenstein's argument that a private
language (an empiricist language) is impossible.
Having no logical links (criteria) to anything
outside their defining situation, its words
must be empty of significance or use."
== 
See also ==
Buddhist philosophy
Buddhism and psychology
Buddhism in the West
Buddhism and Christianity
Buddhism and science- [1] Buddhism and Whitehed
== References ==
