152 erik seldeslachts
incorporated much of Buddhism into his Christian Gnosticism.^104 Even
if this interpretation may be somewhat preconceived or overdrawn, it is
based on what is handed down of Basilides’ teachings. Again, however,
one should take into account that Basilides’ teachings are not known
in the original, but only through later Christian authors, principally
Clemens of Alexandria (ca. 150–215 AD), and Hippolytus of Rome
(† ca. 236 AD).^105
Suffering is a universal and fundamental fact in the world, says
Basilides. It is not caused by God, but the automatic outcome of sin.
Every living being bears the consequences of its present acts in the
following life. As a result, man is caught in an endless cycle of rebirth,
during which he may be reborn in non-human forms, even as a plant.
Notwithstanding the fatality of this causal mechanism of transmigra-
tion, destiny is self-made. The human will is free to do good things,
opening for the elect few the prospect of salvation, but the great mass
of mankind will everlastingly remain bound in the cycle of rebirth.
The way to salvation is not shown by philosophy for Basilides, but
by Christian theology. Here he clearly deviates from the Buddha,
who preached a practical mode of liberation free from theology. Still,
Basilides’ God is the most abstract God thinkable, exclusively described
through negations, in a way otherwise unknown in the West. This
unnameable God Basilides places in buthós, literally “the Depth” in
Greek. Semantically, however, one may compare the notion of nyat
“Emptiness”, which in esoteric Mdhyamika Buddhism denotes the
absolute reality or truth, in which all distinctions disappear. It is at
present not possible to more than speculate, but one may even wonder
whether buthós is not at the same time an attempt at formally rendering
the term buddhath or of bhtatathat, which are both used to refer to
the same absolute reality. Even more remarkable in this context is the
related use of buthós by another second-century gnostic, Valentinus, for
the supreme, unbegotten, invisible, self-existent Aeon (Eternal). From
the Unnameable God in Basilides’ system ve Aeons emanate: Mind
(nous), Word (logos), Prudence (phronesis), Wisdom (sophia) and Power
(^104) Kennedy 1902; also, but in a more fuzzy way, Lillie 1893, pp. 170–173, and less
explicit, Garbe 1914, p. 72. 105
Hippolytus, Refutatio omnium haeresium 7.2–15 (ed. Marcovitch 1986); Clemens
Alexandrinus, Stromata 3.1; 4.12, 24–26; 7.17 (ed. Stählin 1970; 1985); further Irenaeus,
Adversus haereses 1.24, and some minor references with the same and other Fathers of
the Church.