Buddhism
Making a practical inquiry: seeking out its causes so as to undo them, through ethics, attention and meditation.
500 BCE – …
Buddhism arises from the awakening of , around the fifth century BCE in the Ganges plain, and from the community of practitioners, the monastic community (saṅgha), that he gathered around him. The tradition is carried by the Three Jewels, the Buddha, his teaching (the Dharma), and the saṅgha, and by a vast canon of discourses first recited and later written down. Addressing one underlying problem, the that pervades every existence bound to the cycle of rebirth, the teaching spread across Asia and branched into great vehicles: the Theravāda of the South, the Mahāyāna of China, Korea, and Japan, and the Tibetan Vajrayāna. It was deepened by , thinker of emptiness, and , master of Zen, while keeping a shared doctrinal and practical core.
There is no self: what you take for a permanent ego is only a flux of impermanent aggregates, with no bearing them.
is a dis-ease to be cured, never a trial to be sanctified: the whole teaching aims at its complete cessation.
The root of suffering is : to be freed is not to satisfy desire but to extinguish its very grasping.
The meaning of existence is neither invented nor decreed by a God: it is , an end discovered as the very nature of things.
It is sustained attention that undoes the illusion of the self: makes directly observable.
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Justification
Buddhism makes personal examination and direct experience, not authority or tradition, the source of liberating knowledge. Decisive knowledge proceeds from a perception refined by meditation, more than from a priori intellection: one tests for oneself the root of suffering and its cessation, as one verifies a remedy by applying it.
Do not go by hearsay or tradition, but when you know for yourselves: this is wholesome, then take it up.Kalama Sutta
Kalama Sutta (Anguttara Nikaya III.65) · Satipatthana Sutta
Justification
The Buddha turns away from metaphysical speculation: to questions about the eternity of the world or the hereafter he opposes silence, just as the wounded man need not know the archer before the arrow is drawn from the wound. Truth is not established by authority, tradition or reasoning alone, but tested in direct experience, come and see. The stance is more pragmatic than skeptical: no certain dogma to embrace, but a path whose efficacy each verifies for oneself, the Dharma realized in meditative insight.
Kalama Sutta (Anguttara Nikaya) · Cula-Malunkyovada Sutta (the parable of the arrow)
Justification
Look for the self among the five aggregates (form, feeling, perception, formations, consciousness) and you find only their shifting flux: none of them is stable, none is yours, none is a subject bearing them. From this analysis Buddhism draws against the of the Upaniṣads, that permanent Self identified with : where posits an unchanging subject beneath becoming, the Buddha holds that positing such a substrate is precisely the delusion (avidyā) that feeds attachment. The subject is only a bundle of impermanent processes, which makes Buddhism the great historical instance of bundle theory.
Form is not-self, feeling is not-self, perception is not-self, formations are not-self, consciousness is not-self.Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta (Saṃyutta Nikāya 22.59)
Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta (the discourse on the not-self characteristic) · Nāgārjuna, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way)
Justification
If suffering has a locatable cause, it can be removed by addressing that cause: through , the second Noble Truth traces suffering back to , the grasping thirst that clings to pleasures, to existence, or to non-existence and keeps the wheel of rebirth turning. It follows that liberation requires neither satisfying desire nor forcibly repressing it, but extinguishing its root, the thirst itself: Buddhism thus falls squarely on the side of detachment, not from contempt for pleasure but because craving is the very engine of dis-ease.
This is the noble truth of the origin of suffering: it is this craving which leads to renewed existence.Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (Saṃyutta Nikāya 56.11)
Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (the sermon at Benares) · Dhammapada, ch. XXIV (Craving)
Justification
The Buddha proceeds like a physician, and it is this schema that drives the position: the state the disease (), its cause (craving), its prognosis (cessation is possible), and its cure (the path). Once suffering is treated as a curable symptom, it can carry no redemptive value: to exalt it as a sanctifying trial would be to cling to the disease rather than treat it. Against every spirituality of sacrifice, the declared goal is the complete extinction of suffering, which places Buddhism on the abolitionist side.
Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (the sermon at Benares) · Dhammapada, ch. XX (The Path)
Justification
If the self is an illusion born of inattention, it is sustained attention that undoes it: (sati, continuous present attention) is no mere relaxation but the instrument of knowledge that makes and directly observable in experience. A limb of the , it is exercised, according to the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, upon the body, feelings, mind, and phenomena, against scattering. Recollection is thus not an end in itself but the very means by which liberating understanding takes hold, which makes Buddhism a discipline of recollection par excellence.
Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta (the discourse on the foundations of mindfulness) · Dhammapada, ch. II (Heedfulness)
Justification
Buddhism places the highest good in nirvana, the cessation of craving and suffering, a supreme peace beyond pleasure and pain. It is won through the eightfold path, which unites wisdom, ethical conduct and meditation: a liberating perfection, not a happiness of enjoyment nor a mere moral uprightness.
Sermon at Benares (the four noble truths) · Dhammapada, XXV
Justification
The sermon at Benares sets aside two extremes, the pursuit of sensual pleasures and self-mortification, in favor of the . Without condemning the body, Buddhism treats sensory pleasures as attachments that feed craving, and commends measured sobriety: the tendency is ascetic, but moderate and free of harsh rigor.
Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (the sermon at Benares)
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Justification
Since the cessation of suffering is possible, it gives existence an end toward which everything is ordered: to be freed from the cycle of rebirths so as to reach (the going-out of greed, hatred, and delusion). Meaning is therefore neither invented by each person nor decreed by a creator, unlike ends fixed by a God: it is discovered as the very nature of things, which gives Buddhism a teleological structure without transcendence, the goal lying in the possibility of extinction rather than in any external will.
Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (the sermon at Benares) · Dhammapada, ch. XXVI (The Brahmin)
Justification
For Buddhism, death is neither the annihilation of a self nor the survival of a soul, but a passage within the cycle of rebirths governed by karma: a mere stage, yet one to be carefully prepared, since the dying person's state of mind orients the rebirth, and something continues without any permanent soul remaining. A balanced position, until the liberation that alone halts the cycle.
Bardo Thödol (Tibetan Book of the Dead) · Suttas on rebirth
Justification
Buddhism denies any permanent essence: there is no self (anatta), only a flux of impermanent, conditioned aggregates, with no substantial core that would persist. The denial of essence is radical, but it issues in no freedom of self-creation: it is the very idea of a fixed self that dissolves.
Samyutta Nikaya, XXII (the aggregates) · Milindapañha (the parable of the chariot)
Justification
Buddhism holds every phenomenon to be dependently arisen: there is no uncaused will of a substantial self, and the sense of being a free author proceeds from ignorance. But far from fatalism, intention (cetana) is the karmic act par excellence, and it can be trained: the path is a real effort to transform one's own conditioning, between determinism and free will.
Samyutta Nikaya, XII · Dhammapada, I
Justification
The transformation aimed at proceeds first through inner examination: observing one's own mental states, , and perceptions in meditation and introspection. The good life turns on work upon the mind more than on outward action, even though ethical conduct (sīla) is its support.
All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts.Dhammapada, I, 1
Dhammapada, ch. I (The Pairs) · Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta (the discourse on the foundations of mindfulness)
Justification
Loving-kindness (mettā) and compassion (karuṇā) are cultivated toward all beings without distinction: the practice consists precisely in extending loving-kindness beyond loved ones, to the indifferent and then to the enemy. Dissolving the separate self removes the basis of partial preference, orienting Buddhism toward a benevolent impartialism.
Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta (the discourse on loving-kindness) · Dhammapada, ch. I (The Pairs)
Justification
Non-harming (ahiṃsā) and the first precept extend moral consideration to all sentient beings capable of suffering, not to humans alone. Compassion expressly takes in the whole of living beings caught in the cycle of rebirth, which places Buddhism on the pathocentric side.
Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta (the discourse on loving-kindness) · Dhammapada, ch. X (Violence)
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Justification
Buddhism grounds morality on the cultivation of virtue (sila) and on compassion (karuna) and loving-kindness toward all sentient beings, down to animals. Merit lies in the quality of intention and the transformation of the mind more than in obedience to a law; consequences count through the karmic fruits they carry.
Dhammapada · Metta Sutta
Justification
Impermanence (anicca) is the first of the three marks of existence: every conditioned phenomenon arises, transforms, and ceases, with no substance subsisting beneath the flux, neither in things nor in us (anattā, non-self). Taking things to be stable is precisely the illusion that breeds attachment and suffering; wisdom consists in seeing arising and ceasing.
Whatever is subject to arising is subject to ceasing.SN 56.11, Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta
Dhammapada, 277-279 (the three marks) · Samyutta Nikāya, 56.11
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Justification
The ultimate root of suffering and afflictive emotions is ignorance (avidyā), the misapprehension of the impermanent, selfless nature of reality. Greed, hatred, and delusion dissolve through right view and penetrating understanding: it is by knowledge that affect is transformed, which aligns Buddhism with a therapeutic intellectualism, tempered by the central role of meditative practice.
Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (the sermon at Benares) · Dhammapada, ch. XX (The Path)
Justification
A being itself subject to becoming and suffering cannot be the source of salvation: this is why Buddhism is non-theist. Deities (devas) do populate the cosmology, but they are caught in the cycle of rebirth and hence powerless to liberate, and a creator God would not account for the suffering he would have brought into being. Against Brahmanical theism, liberation therefore depends on no grace but on one's own effort and understanding; this absence of a creator is held serenely, without militant polemic against belief.
Brahmajāla Sutta (the discourse on the all-embracing net) · Aggañña Sutta (the discourse on origins)
Right speechRuleAttested · Buddhism
Say only what is true, useful and kind, at the right time; otherwise, stay silent.
Right speech (sammā vācā) is one of the eight limbs of the taught by : to say only what is true, useful, kind, and spoken at the right time. A statement exact but useless and hurtful, the Buddha refrained from uttering. This exercise trains you to weigh not only the truth of what you say, but its usefulness and its timing, and to prefer silence to a frankness that would only harm. Today it helps you speak with care in delicate moments, without betraying the truth.
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