makes major choices in life depends almost entirely
on how one has cultivated oneself throughout one’s
life. Buddhist enlightenment, therefore, depends on
daily acts of morality and meditation on the virtues
that sustain them. This focus can be seen clearly in the
lists of virtues that function in the context of medita-
tion, including, for example, the “four immeasur-
ables” (loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy,
and equanimity) or the “six PARAMITA(PERFECTIONS)”
(generosity, morality, tolerance, effort, concentration,
and wisdom).
Philosophy and truth.The pursuit of truth in Bud-
dhist philosophy is not so much an effort to formulate
general doctrines about the world as it is to change
people’s lives, to enlighten. Philosophy is therefore not
a theoretical activity abstracted from life, but rather a
practical matter of articulating a way of living, placed
in the service of human liberation. As a form of med-
itation, theoretical thinking is linked to other forms of
spiritual practice. The link is important in Buddhism
because truth is not simply the product of logical
analysis. The quality of someone’s analysis of the world
depends for Buddhists on the purification of their
minds and characters. It is not possible, they reason,
for someone entangled in personal desires and self-
centeredness to encounter the truth, no matter how
intelligent they are. Truth in Buddhist meditative con-
texts is more a matter of how clearly someone can see
the ways in which their own minds falsify reality based
on attachments and self-absorption. Understanding
this psychological prerequisite to truth, calming and
insight meditation begin to open the mind to the pos-
sibility of truthful understanding.
Traditions and styles
Buddhist philosophy has unfolded over a two-
thousand-year history, and continues today, perhaps
as strongly as ever. Over these many centuries, nu-
merous traditions and styles of philosophy have
thrived. The following are a few of the best known and
most representative.
Abhidharma.ABHIDHARMA, meaning higher or ex-
tended dharma, is an early Buddhist philosophical lit-
erature that has scriptural status. These texts differ
from sutras in the same way that systematic philo-
sophical analysis differs from practical religious teach-
ings. Abhidharma is “extended” beyond the first
communication of dharma by pursuing a comprehen-
sive vision and analytical rigor. Abhidharma works,
such as BUDDHAGHOSA’s famous Pali text Visud-
dhimagga(Path to Purification), attempt to lay out the
underlying structures of the Buddhist dharma by pro-
viding lists, definitions, and descriptions of what might
be encountered in meditative experience. Abhidharma
breaks ordinary experience down into its component
parts—dharmas—the final building blocks of human
experience. The Abhidharma is the earliest and most
widely known form of Buddhist philosophy.Madhyamaka.NAGARJUNA, the second century C.E.
founder of the MADHYAMAKA SCHOOL, is the most fa-
mous of all Buddhist philosophers. His philosophical
tradition, which developed for many centuries in MA-
HAYANABuddhist cultures such as China and Tibet,
began as an extension and correction of Abhidharma
thinking. Nagarjuna’s philosophy of S ́UNYATA(EMPTI-
NESS) is derived from a systematic thinking through of
the earlier concept of dependent origination. From this
point of view, the Abhidharma effort to list the ulti-
mate building blocks of human experience was mis-
guided. If all things lack independence, arising
dependent on other equally dependent things, then
nothing can be found to possess the secure and per-
manent status that earlier Buddhists had sought. In this
sense, Madhyamaka extends the Buddhist analysis of
existence one step further—all existing things are
“empty” of permanent and self-constituting natures.
Although things do indeed exist, this philosophy seeks
to articulate the way in which they exist, and, like other
forms of Buddhist philosophy, to use this analysis for
the purpose of awakening.Yogacara.Often considered the culmination of Bud-
dhist philosophy in India, the YOGACARA SCHOOLrep-
resented a renewed effort to accomplish a systematic
account of experience in the style of Abhidharma, but
now employing the Madhyamaka critique. Granting
that all components of experience are “empty,”
philosophers such as ASAN ̇GA(ca. 320–390 C.E.) and
VASUBANDHU(fourth century C.E.) sought to explain
how it is that impermanent and dependent factors
come together to shape the world as it is. Their basic
thesis was that the primary factor upon which experi-
ence depends is the mind; since all experience is the
mind’s experience, understanding the complexities of
the mind was the most important philosophical task.
Well-known for their thesis that reality is “mind only,”
Yogacarins based their analysis on meditative experi-
ence. They broke the mind down into eight types of
consciousness and the three fundamental “natures” of
mind, constructing what is perhaps the most sophisti-
cated statement of Buddhist psychology.PHILOSOPHY