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Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha

Siddhattha Gotama · सिद्धार्थ गौतम · 𑀲𑀓𑁆𑀬𑀫𑀼𑀦𑀻 (sakyamunī) · 釋迦牟尼

c. 480 BCE – c. 400 BCEAccount combining history, theology and tradition

Ascetic and teacher of northern India, born into the Sakya clan, whom tradition calls the Buddha, "the one who has awakened". The canonical sources, committed to writing centuries after his death, show him renouncing a comfortable life, reaching awakening at Bodh Gaya and teaching for forty-five years a middle way to extinguish suffering. Scholarship accepts his historical existence; almost every detail of his life belongs to a religious biography elaborated by the community.

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Buda de pie, arte de Gandhara

Buda de pie, arte de Gandhara · Public domain

In their words

«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. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.»

Dhammapada 1 (trad. inglesa de Max Müller, SBE X, 1881; texto pali en SuttaCentral)

Tipitaka, the Pali Canon ("Three Baskets") — Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha

Their central idea

The four noble truths: Formulated in the first sermon (SN 56.11), they organise the whole teaching on the model of a medical diagnosis.

See in context

Biography

5 min read

A man behind a title

"Buddha" is not a name but a participle: buddha, in Pali and Sanskrit, means "awakened", the one who has come out of sleep. The man who received it was called, according to the sources, Gotama (in Sanskrit, Gautama), the lineage name of a family of the Sakya clan; the personal name Siddhattha ("he who has achieved his aim") appears in texts later than the oldest canon, which almost always calls him Gotama, "the ascetic Gotama" or, in his disciples' mouths, Bhagavā, the Blessed One. Tradition later added the title Sakyamuni, "the sage of the Sakyas", which is precisely the word carved on the first material witness we have of him.

That witness is a stone pillar. Around 249 BCE, in the twentieth year of his reign, the emperor Ashoka visited the village of Lumbini, on today's border between Nepal and India, and had it inscribed in Brahmi script that "the Buddha, the sage of the Sakyas" had been born there, and that the village was therefore exempted from taxes. The pillar, rediscovered in 1896, is the documentary anchor of the whole biography: it does not prove the details, but it shows that, a century and a half after his death, a powerful community revered that spot as his birthplace.

When he lived

The dates are the first problem. The Theravada tradition of Sri Lanka placed his death in 544 or 543 BCE; nineteenth-century European historiography, starting from the corrected Sinhalese chronicles, proposed c. 563–483 BCE (the "long chronology"). The Göttingen symposia led by Heinz Bechert (1988–1997) shifted the consensus: most specialists now place his death around 400 BCE, give or take two or three decades, on the basis of the lineages of teachers in the Vinaya and of the interval Indian sources put between the Buddha's death and Ashoka. If he died at eighty, as the canon states, he would have been born around 480 BCE. All the dates in this record are therefore approximate and conventional.

The stuff of legend

The life of the Buddha as it is usually told—his mother Maya's dream of a white elephant, the birth in a grove at Lumbini, the newborn's seven steps, the palace where his father Suddhodana shields him from pain, the four encounters with an old man, a sick man, a corpse and an ascetic, the night flight on horseback—does not come from the ancient canon but from biographies composed between the first century BCE and the fifth century CE: the Mahavastu, the Lalitavistara, Ashvaghosha's poem Buddhacarita and the Nidanakatha of the Pali tradition. In the ancient discourses the four encounters are told of a mythical buddha of the past, Vipassi (Digha Nikaya 14), and were only later transferred to Gotama. What the canon puts in his own mouth is more sober: he recalls being delicately brought up, with three residences for the three seasons (Anguttara Nikaya 3.38), and seeing clearly that he too was subject to ageing, sickness and death.

His family was not a royal house in the strict sense. The Sakyas formed an oligarchic republic on the edge of the kingdom of Kosala, and Suddhodana was probably one of its chiefs. His mother died shortly after childbirth and he was raised by his aunt, Mahapajapati Gotami. He married and had a son, Rahula; the name of his wife, Yasodhara, appears in later literature, whereas the ancient canon simply calls her "Rahula's mother".

The search and the awakening

At about twenty-nine he left household life to become a samana, one of the wandering ascetics who, in an urbanising Ganges valley, questioned the authority of Vedic ritual. The Ariyapariyesana Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 26) has him relate that he studied with two meditation teachers, Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta, attained the absorptions they taught and left them because they did not lead to liberation. Years of extreme mortification followed—fasting, holding the breath—described starkly in the Mahasaccaka Sutta (MN 36), until he renounced these too, accepted food and recalled a state of calm he had known as a child beneath a rose-apple tree. By the Neranjara river, at Uruvela, seated under an assattha fig—the tree tradition would call bodhi—he reached what the texts describe as direct understanding of suffering, its origin, its cessation and the path leading to it. He was, according to the canon, thirty-five.

Forty-five years of teaching

He hesitated, the texts say, to teach something so subtle; then he went to the Deer Park at Isipatana, near Benares, and set out for five former companions in asceticism the "middle way" between indulgence and mortification and the four noble truths (Samyutta Nikaya 56.11). From then on he walked through the kingdoms of Magadha and Kosala, spending the rains in parks donated by kings and merchants—Bimbisara's Bamboo Grove at Rajagaha, Anathapindika's Jetavana at Savatthi. He founded an order of monks (bhikkhu) and, after a reluctance the texts record, another of nuns (bhikkhuni), headed by Mahapajapati; he had lay followers of every condition. The discourses show him as a patient dialectician who adapts the teaching to the listener, rejects metaphysical speculation that does not lead to liberation, and proposes judging doctrines by their fruit rather than by the authority of whoever teaches them. He also faced conflict: the gravest was the attempt of his cousin Devadatta to take over leadership of the community.

Death at Kusinara

The longest account of his life is precisely that of its end, the Mahaparinibbana Sutta (Digha Nikaya 16). Aged eighty and ill, he travels north; he eats at the house of the smith Cunda a dish whose name, sukaramaddava, the commentators could no longer interpret with certainty; he suffers severe dysentery and reaches a grove of sala trees at Kusinara, in the land of the Mallas. There he declines to name a successor—"the teaching and the discipline shall be your teacher"—ordains his last disciple, the ascetic Subhadda, invites the monks to put their doubts to him and utters a final exhortation to diligence. His remains were cremated and the relics divided into eight portions among the peoples of the region.

What has come down to us

The Buddha wrote nothing. His teaching was transmitted orally by specialised reciters for several centuries; according to the Sinhalese chronicles, the Pali canon was written down in Sri Lanka in the first century BCE, and the other canons—Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan—preserve parallel collections that agree on essentials and differ on much. The Mahayana sutras, composed from the last centuries BCE onwards, also put their words in the Buddha's mouth, but scholarship regards them as later compositions. Distinguishing the historical Gotama from the Buddha of faith is therefore a matter of conjecture: archaeology confirms the settings—Lumbini, Bodh Gaya, Sarnath, Kusinara—and comparison of the canons allows an ancient core of teachings to be isolated. The rest is the figure that two and a half thousand years of devotion have shaped, and that hundreds of millions of people revere today from Sri Lanka to Japan.

Sources: Walshe, Maurice (trad.). The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Dīgha Nikāya. Wisdom Publications, Boston, 1995 (DN 14 Mahāpadāna Sutta; DN 16 Mahāparinibbāna Sutta). ISBN 9780861711031. · Ñāṇamoli, Bhikkhu y Bodhi, Bhikkhu (trads.). The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikāya. Wisdom Publications, Boston, 1995 (MN 26 Ariyapariyesana; MN 36 Mahāsaccaka; MN 22 Alagaddūpama; MN 63 Cūḷamālukya). ISBN 9780861710720. · Bodhi, Bhikkhu (trad.). The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Saṃyutta Nikāya. Wisdom Publications, Boston, 2000 (SN 56.11 Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta). ISBN 9780861713318. · Gombrich, Richard F. What the Buddha Thought. Equinox (Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies Monographs), Londres y Oakville, 2009. · Bechert, Heinz (ed.). The Dating of the Historical Buddha / Die Datierung des historischen Buddha. 3 vols. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Gotinga, 1991–1997 (Symposien zur Buddhismusforschung IV, 1–3).

Timeline

A life, year by year

Each point is a documented event. Click to read it, with its source and degree of certainty.

  1. c. 480 BCE · age 0

    Birth at Lumbini

    Conventional date derived from the "short chronology" (death c. 400 BCE, at eighty). Theravada tradition gives 624 BCE and nineteenth-century historiography c. 563 BCE. The place, Lumbini, is confirmed by Ashoka's inscription. Years BCE are expressed as negative numbers.

    Probable

  2. c. 480 BCE · age 0

    His mother dies; Mahapajapati raises him

    According to the canon (MN 123) and later biographies, Maya died seven days after the birth; the child was raised by her sister Mahapajapati Gotami, who would later become the first nun.

    Tradition

  3. c. 451 BCE · age 29

    The going forth: he becomes a wandering ascetic

    At twenty-nine he leaves household life "while his mother and father wept" (MN 26). The night flight on the horse Kanthaka with the charioteer Channa belongs to later biographies.

    Tradition

  4. c. 451 BCE · age 29

    Pupil of Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta

    He learns from two meditation teachers the states of "nothingness" and "neither perception nor non-perception", and abandons them because they do not lead to liberation (MN 26, MN 36).

    Tradition

  5. c. 445 BCE · age 35

    Awakening under the bodhi tree

    After six years of search and extreme asceticism, which he abandons, he attains awakening by the Neranjara river, seated beneath an assattha fig. He was thirty-five according to the canon.

    Tradition

  6. c. 445 BCE · age 35

    First sermon: setting the wheel in motion

    He sets out for five former companions in asceticism the middle way and the four noble truths (SN 56.11). Kondañña is the first to understand; the monastic community is born.

    Tradition

  7. c. 440 BCE

    Royal and merchant patronage

    King Bimbisara of Magadha donates the Bamboo Grove (Veluvana) and the merchant Anathapindika buys Jeta's park at Savatthi, where the Buddha will spend most of his rains retreats. The exact chronology is traditional.

    Tradition

  8. c. 440 BCE

    Founding of the order of nuns

    At Mahapajapati's request and through Ananda's mediation, the Buddha admits women to the order with eight special rules (AN 8.51; Vinaya, Cullavagga X). Several scholars regard the account, and especially the eight rules, as a later elaboration.

    Disputed

  9. c. 408 BCE · age 72

    Devadatta's schism

    His cousin Devadatta asks to lead the community, attempts according to the texts to take his life and provokes a split that Sariputta and Moggallana bring back (Vinaya, Cullavagga VII). Tradition places it at the beginning of Ajatasattu's reign, some eight years before the Buddha's death.

    Tradition

  10. c. 400 BCE · age 80

    Parinirvana at Kusinara

    At eighty, after a meal at the house of the smith Cunda and severe dysentery, he dies between two sala trees. He is cremated and his relics divided into eight portions (DN 16). The date is the one most widely accepted today, within a margin of several decades.

    Probable

  11. c. 400 BCE

    First council

    According to the Vinaya (Cullavagga XI), five hundred monks under Mahakassapa recite together the doctrine (Ananda) and the discipline (Upali). Many historians regard it as a later projection legitimising the canon.

    Tradition

  12. c. 249 BCE

    Ashoka marks his birthplace

    In the twentieth year of his reign the Mauryan emperor visits Lumbini, erects a pillar inscribed "hida budhe jāte sakyamunī" ("here the Buddha, the sage of the Sakyas, was born") and exempts the village from taxes. It is the first epigraphic witness to the Buddha.

    Documented

  13. c. 100 BCE

    Ashvaghosha composes the Buddhacarita

    The poet Ashvaghosha writes in Sanskrit the first complete biography of the Buddha as an epic poem, with the four encounters and the night flight.

    Probable

  14. I century BCE

    First human images of the Buddha

    After centuries of aniconic art (footprints, tree, wheel, empty throne), the Buddha appears in human form in Gandhara and Mathura. The Bimaran reliquary (British Museum, 1900,0209.1), of the first century, is among the earliest datable representations.

    Documented

  15. c. 25 BCE

    The Pali canon is written down

    According to the Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa, under King Vattagamani Abhaya (first century BCE) the monks commit to writing the canon, transmitted until then by memory.

    Tradition

  16. December 1896

    Rediscovery of the Lumbini pillar

    Alois Anton Führer and Khadga Shumsher Rana uncover Ashoka's pillar and its inscription, making it possible to identify the traditional birthplace.

    Documented

  17. 1997

    Lumbini, World Heritage Site

    UNESCO inscribes "Lumbini, the Birthplace of the Lord Buddha" on the World Heritage List.

    Documented

  18. 2013

    Excavation of the earliest shrine

    A team led by Robin Coningham documents beneath the Maya Devi temple a timber structure it dates to the sixth century BCE and interprets as a Buddhist tree shrine; the dating and its relation to the Buddha remain debated.

    Disputed

Works

Essential works

The works without which their legacy cannot be understood.

Tipitaka, the Pali Canon ("Three Baskets") — Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha

Later compilation · c. 25 BCE

Tipitaka, the Pali Canon ("Three Baskets")

Tipiṭaka

The only complete collection of early Buddhist scripture preserved in an Indic language, canonical for the Theravada tradition. It is divided into three "baskets": the Vinaya Pitaka (monastic discipline), the Sutta Pitaka (the discourses, arranged in five nikayas: Digha, Majjhima, Samyutta, Anguttara and Khuddaka) and the Abhidhamma Pitaka (systematic analysis, clearly later). Its language, Pali, is a literary Prakrit close to the dialects the Buddha may have spoken, but not identical to them. The Burmese Sixth Council edition (1954–1956) and that of the Pali Text Society are the standard ones.

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4 editions · amazon.es

Dhammapada (Verses on the Dhamma) — Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha

Later compilation · c. 25 BCE

Dhammapada (Verses on the Dhamma)

Dhammapada

The most widely read and translated Buddhist text. Its short, memorable verses condense the ethics of the path: the primacy of mind ("Phenomena are preceded by the mind"), hatred that ceases only through non-hatred, vigilance against heedlessness, the sage likened to a deep and serene lake, the summary of the teaching of all buddhas (do no evil, cultivate the good, purify the mind). It is recited in Theravada countries and was among the first Buddhist texts translated in the West (Fausbøll into Latin, 1855; Max Müller into English, 1870 and 1881).

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10 editions · amazon.com

Sutta Nipata (The Group of Discourses) — Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha

Later compilation · c. 25 BCE

Sutta Nipata (The Group of Discourses)

Suttanipāta

A collection of seventy-two poems and verse dialogues in five chapters, from the Khuddaka Nikaya. It includes the Metta Sutta on boundless goodwill, the Rhinoceros Sutta ("let one wander alone like the rhinoceros"), the account of the sage Asita's visit to the newborn and the meeting with King Bimbisara. Its ideal is the wandering sage, without possessions or opinions to cling to: an image of Buddhism before monastic institutionalisation.

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5 editions · amazon.com

The Lotus Sutra (Saddharmapundarika) — Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha

Traditional attribution · c. 100

The Lotus Sutra (Saddharmapundarika)

Saddharmapuṇḍarīka Sūtra (妙法蓮華經)

One of the most influential texts of East Asian Buddhism, the basis of the Tiantai/Tendai and Nichiren schools. It proclaims that the different vehicles are "skilful means" (upaya) of a single vehicle leading everyone to buddhahood, and reveals a Buddha whose life is immeasurably long: the Gotama who was born and died would be a pedagogical manifestation. Its parables—the burning house, the prodigal son, the phantom city—are among the most celebrated in religious literature.

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3 editions · amazon.com

Complete works (24)

Quotations

Quotations located in a specific work. Each carries its provenance and its level of confidence.

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. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.

Manopubbaṅgamā dhammā, manoseṭṭhā manomayā; manasā ce paduṭṭhena, bhāsati vā karoti vā; tato naṁ dukkhamanveti, cakkaṁva vahato padaṁ.

VerifiedDhammapada 1 (trad. inglesa de Max Müller, SBE X, 1881; texto pali en SuttaCentral)

1 / 11
Apocryphal quotes or disputed attributions (5)

  • «Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.»

    It does not appear in the canon. According to Bodhipaksa's research, it is a modern reworking of an image used by the commentator Buddhaghosa (5th century) in the Visuddhimagga, comparing the angry person to someone who picks up embers or excrement to strike another.

  • «Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.»

    It has not been located in the Pali canon or in the Mahayana texts consulted; it circulates in quotation collections with no reference to any text. Its origin could not be traced.

  • «What we think, we become.»

    It is a simplification of Max Müller's Victorian rendering of Dhammapada 1 ("All that we are is the result of what we have thought"), itself a free translation; the Pali says that phenomena are preceded by mind and that suffering follows action done with a corrupted mind.

  • «Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.»

    A distortion of Anguttara Nikaya 3.131, which contrasts three things that shine openly (the moon, the sun and the Tathagata's teaching) with three that work in secret (women, the brahmins' hymns and wrong views). The popular version drops the second half.

  • «Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.»

    A modern paraphrase of the Kalama Sutta (AN 3.65). The text does not appeal to "one's own reason": it lists logic and inference among the insufficient criteria and proposes judging doctrines by whether they lead to harm or well-being, as confirmed by the wise.

Last words

Contradictory versions

«"Come now, mendicants, I say to you all: 'Conditions fall apart. Persist with diligence.'"»

handa dāni, bhikkhave, āmantayāmi vo: vayadhammā saṅkhārā, appamādena sampādethā

Pali version: the Mahaparinibbana Sutta (DN 16, 6.7) gives these words and adds "these were the Tathagata's last words"; before them the Buddha has asked the monks three times whether any doubt remains and declared that the teaching and the discipline will be their teacher. Chinese version: the Dirgha Agama parallel (Youxing jing, T1 no. 1, fasc. 4) presents a different scene—the Buddha uncovers his golden arm and recalls that buddhas appear as rarely as the udumbara flower—and closes with another formula: "Therefore, monks, do not be heedless: through heedfulness I attained perfect awakening by myself… None of the ten thousand things endures: this is the last thing the Tathagata said" (是故，比丘！無為放逸，我以不放逸故，自致正覺……一切萬物無常存者，此是如來末後所說). The Sanskrit parallel edited by Waldschmidt also preserves the exhortation to diligence, with variants. Finally, the Mahayana tradition places in the final days whole teachings of different content: the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra proclaims the permanence of the Tathagata and buddha-nature, and the Sutra of the Bequeathed Teaching (Yijiao jing) ascribes to him a long farewell discourse. All versions were composed by the community; none is a direct testimony.

Source: Walshe, Maurice (trad.). The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Dīgha Nikāya. Wisdom Publications, Boston, 1995 (DN 14 Mahāpadāna Sutta; DN 16 Mahāparinibbāna Sutta). ISBN 9780861711031.

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What their work answers

Twelve great human questions and what their texts allow us to answer, with references. We never put words in their mouth.

  • What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

    Liberation does not depend on a creator, nor does the question lead to it

    No creator GodStated explicitly

    In the Pali canon, the Buddha does not deny the existence of gods (devas), but places them within the cycle of rebirth, subject to impermanence. The Brahmajala Sutta (DN 1) explains, almost ironically, how the god Brahma, the first being to appear in a new cycle, comes to believe himself creator of the world, and how others give him credence. The Kevaddha Sutta (DN 11) shows Brahma unable to answer a fundamental question and sending the monk back to the Buddha. Faced with metaphysical questions — whether the world is eternal, whether the Tathagata exists after death — the Buddha keeps silent and, in the Cula-Malunkya Sutta (MN 63), compares one who demands answers to a wounded man who refuses to have the arrow removed until he knows who shot it. What matters is the end of suffering, not a creator.

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  • Who am I? Is there a true self?

    Nothing observed in oneself is «I» or «mine»

    There is no permanent selfStated explicitly

    In the Pali canon, the Buddha examines the person as five aggregates: form, feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness. In the Anattalakkhana Sutta (SN 22.59), addressed to his first five disciples, he shows that none of them can be a self, since all are impermanent, produce dissatisfaction and do not obey our will; of none can one say «this is mine, this I am, this is my self». The Alagaddupama Sutta (MN 22) explicitly rejects the idea of an eternal self identical with the world, the Upanishadic thesis. What we call a person is a process of conditioned elements arising and ceasing. Clinging to the idea of a self, whether to affirm it or to deny it with attachment, is a source of suffering; seeing the absence of self in the aggregates leads to detachment and liberation.

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  • Why do we suffer?

    Suffering has a cause, craving, and therefore an end

    Craving and attachmentStated explicitly

    In the Pali canon, the Buddha's first discourse, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (SN 56.11), formulates the four noble truths: conditioned existence is unsatisfactory (dukkha); its origin is thirst or craving (tanha), craving for pleasures, for being and for non-being; its cessation is possible when that craving is extinguished; and there is a path, the noble eightfold path, leading to it. The Mahanidana Sutta (DN 15) develops dependent origination, the chain of conditions in which ignorance, mental formations, contact, feeling and craving lead to clinging, becoming, birth, ageing and death. Suffering is neither punishment nor mystery: it has observable causes, and what has a cause can cease. That is why the Buddha presents himself as a physician rather than a theologian.

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  • What happens after death?

    As long as there is craving there is rebirth; on the liberated one after death, silence

    Rebirth according to karmaStated explicitly

    In the Pali canon the Buddha affirms rebirth as part of what he saw on the night of awakening: he recalled his former lives and saw beings dying and being reborn according to their deeds. As long as ignorance and craving persist, death gives way to a new existence in one of the possible destinations; liberation (nibbāna) is precisely the end of that cycle. But rebirth does not imply a soul passing from one body to another: the canon denies a permanent self and describes a conditioned process. And there is one question the Buddha expressly leaves unanswered: whether the Tathāgata, the liberated one, exists or does not exist after death. In the dialogues with Māluṅkyaputta and with Vacchagotta he declares that such theses do not lead to awakening and that, like an extinguished fire, the liberated one cannot be said to go in any direction.

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  • How is liberation or salvation attained?

    The Eightfold Path: ethics, concentration and wisdom extinguish the craving that causes suffering

    Through disciplined practiceStated explicitly

    In the Pali Canon, the Buddha's answer is formulated from his first discourse (Samyutta Nikaya 56.11): there is suffering, it originates in craving, it ceases with the extinction of that craving, and the path leading to cessation is the Noble Eightfold Path, a middle way between indulgence and mortification. Tradition groups it into three trainings: ethical conduct, meditative concentration and wisdom, understood as direct insight into impermanence, suffering and the absence of a permanent self. Nirvana is not received from a god nor obtained through rites: each person attains it by their own effort. According to the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, his last words urge perseverance with diligence, since all compounded things are subject to passing away.

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  • Is a teacher necessary?

    Buddhas only point the way; the effort belongs to each person

    Helpful but not indispensableStated explicitly

    In the Pali Canon, the Buddha presents himself as one who has discovered and shows a path, not as one who walks it for others: the Tathagatas only point the way, each must make the effort (Dhammapada 276). Before dying, according to the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, he urges his disciples to be an island and refuge to themselves, with the Dhamma as island and refuge, and declares that after his death the Dhamma and the discipline will be their teacher. This does not make the guide superfluous: in the Samyutta Nikaya he states that noble friendship, the company of admirable people, is not half but the whole of the holy life. The teacher and community are valuable conditions, but each person realises liberation.

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  • Is the world real?

    Neither existence nor non-existence: everything arises dependent on conditions

    A web of causes without substanceStated explicitly

    In the Pali Canon, the Buddha avoids asserting either that the world exists in an absolute sense or that it does not exist. In the Kaccanagotta Sutta (Samyutta Nikaya 12.15) he explains that whoever sees with wisdom the arising of the world does not hold to its non-existence, and whoever sees its ceasing does not hold to its existence: the Tathagata teaches by the middle, through dependent arising, the chain of conditions by which, this being, that arises. Moreover, the Buddha brings the question back to experience: in the Sabba Sutta (SN 35.23) he defines «the all» as the senses and their objects, setting aside what lies beyond as an object of useless speculation. The world is a conditioned, impermanent process without a substantial self.

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  • What is love?

    Goodwill towards all beings, like a mother towards her only child

    Boundless compassionStated explicitly

    The Pali canon carefully distinguishes two forms of love. The first is clinging affection (pema, piya), which the Dhammapada identifies as a source of grief and fear: from what is dear, sorrow is born. The second are the four sublime abidings (brahmavihāra): goodwill (mettā), compassion (karuṇā), sympathetic joy (muditā) and equanimity (upekkhā), which are cultivated in meditation by radiating them without limit in all directions. The Karaṇīya Metta Sutta asks one to wish for the well-being of all beings, seen and unseen, near and far, and to guard that goodwill as a mother guards her only child with her life. In the simile of the saw, the Buddha demands that the mind remain benevolent even if bandits were to sever one limb by limb. This love is not attachment to particular persons but a boundless disposition that frees the one who cultivates it.

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  • Are we free, or is everything determined?

    Intention is karma: not everything comes from past, god or chance

    Karma and choiceStated explicitly

    In the Pali canon the Buddha explicitly rejects three doctrines that, in his view, nullify moral life: that everything experienced is due to past actions, that it is due to the creation of a supreme god, or that it happens without any cause. Were any of them true, he argues, there would be no desire or effort to do what should be done (AN 3.61). His position is that intention (*cetanā*) is karma itself (AN 6.63): the past conditions, but every present intentional act is a new cause. The simile of the salt crystal (AN 3.100) refines this: the same act weighs differently depending on who bears it; a pinch of salt makes a cup of water undrinkable, not a river.

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  • Why meditate or pray?

    Establishing mindfulness of body, feelings, mind and phenomena to see impermanence

    Seeing reality as it isStated explicitly

    In the Pali canon meditation is the central means of liberation, and its purpose is to see things as they are. The *Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta* (MN 10) presents it as the direct path for the purification of beings: establishing mindfulness of the body, feelings, mind and phenomena, observing how they arise and cease. The *Ānāpānasati Sutta* (MN 118) guides practice from the breath, in sixteen steps that end in contemplating impermanence, dispassion, cessation and relinquishment. Calm (*samatha*) prepares the mind, but what liberates is clear seeing (*vipassanā*) that everything conditioned is impermanent, unsatisfactory and without a self.

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  • Can reason know the ultimate?

    A Dhamma profound and beyond reasoning, which each one verifies

    The ultimate lies beyond the mindStated explicitly

    In the Pali canon, after the awakening, the Buddha hesitates to teach because the Dhamma he has understood is profound, hard to see, peaceful, sublime and beyond the scope of mere reasoning (*atakkāvacara*), to be experienced only by the wise (MN 26). He also rejects metaphysical speculation: whoever demands to know whether the world is eternal or whether the Tathāgata exists after death he likens to a man struck by an arrow who will not be treated until he knows who shot it (MN 63). This does not lead him to ask for blind faith. He advises the Kālāmas to accept nothing on tradition, logic or a teacher's authority, but to verify for themselves what leads to harm and what to well-being (AN 3.65). Discernment prepares; liberation is direct seeing.

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  • Withdraw from the world or transform it?

    Household life is dust; going forth into homelessness is open air

    Withdraw in order to findStated explicitly

    In the Pali canon the Buddha left his home, his wife and his son to seek awakening, and founded a community of monks and nuns (saṅgha) who renounced household life. Several discourses repeat the formula according to which domestic life is cramped, a path of dust, while going forth into homelessness is like the open air, and it is not easy, living in a house, to lead the holy life, complete and pure. Renunciation is the ideal framework of practice. But the canon does not despise the world: the Buddha teaches lay people and kings, gives in the Sigālovāda Sutta a detailed ethic for the householder — duties towards parents, teachers, wife, friends and workers — and in the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta lists the conditions for the welfare of a republic. The monastic community also depends on the laity, whom it repays with teaching.

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Affinities & tensions

Affinities and tensions

Calculated question by question from their positions. The reason for each agreement or clash, on click.

They clash onFundamental disagreement

Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha · Adi Shankara

The Self that is Brahman versus the absence of self: India's great controversy

Siddhartha Gautama, according to the Pali canon, analyses the person into five aggregates and shows in the Anattalakkhana Sutta (SN 22.59) that none of them can be a self, since all are impermanent and do not obey one's will; the Alagaddupama Sutta (MN 22) further rejects the idea of an eternal self identical with the world, close to the Upanishadic thesis. Adi Shankara affirms exactly what is denied there: the atman, unchanging witness of all states, is identical with Brahman, and the error lies in superimposing body and mind upon it (introduction to the commentary on the Brahma Sutras). They agree on the negative diagnosis, since nothing observable is the self, and on ignorance as what binds. They part over what remains: for the Buddha, a conditioned process without a core; for Shankara, consciousness without a second that was never an object.

Why: The clash is not a modern construction: Shankara devotes sutras 2.2.18–32 of his Brahma Sutra commentary to refuting the Buddhist schools, realist, idealist and those of emptiness, and concludes that the Buddha's teaching is incoherent. Some scholars argue that no-self denies the empirical self rather than the atman, so the distance would be smaller than both believed; but the canon itself rejects the eternal self in MN 22, and Shankara held that denying a permanent subject made memory and liberation impossible. The two traditions start from a similar analysis of experience and reach incompatible metaphysical conclusions, which is why they treated each other as rivals for centuries.

They clash onFundamental disagreement

Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha · Confucius

Filial piety as the root, or leaving home as open air

For Confucius filial piety and fraternal respect are the root of humaneness (Analects 1.2), and the sage does not withdraw: one cannot live with birds and beasts (18.6); wisdom is realised in the family, in ritual and in public service. The Pali canon shows the Buddha leaving home, wife and son, and repeats that household life is a dusty path while the wandering life is like open air (Samaññaphala Sutta, DN 2); the monastic community renounces the home. Both, however, teach an ethics for the householder: the Buddha devotes the Sigalovada Sutta (DN 31) to duties towards parents, teachers, wife and workers. What separates them is where the highest is fulfilled: in well-ordered relationships, for one; outside them, for the other.

Why: The contradiction is real and had historical consequences: when Buddhism reached China, Confucian scholars reproached it for centuries because monks abandoned their parents and left no descendants, and Chinese Buddhists answered by stressing the filial duties found in the canon. The two masters never met; the clash arises from their aims. Confucius seeks the harmony of a society at war and sees in the family the model of the state. The Buddha seeks the end of suffering, which arises from attachment, and sees in domestic ties one more attachment. Neither despises what the other values: one leaves renunciation as an exception; the other, the household as a stage.

They clash onFundamental disagreement

Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha · Jesus of Nazareth

Abba versus the arrow: a Father who listens and a question that leads nowhere

According to the Synoptics, Jesus presupposes the God of Israel, quotes the Shema (Mk 12:29–30), calls God Abba in Gethsemane (Mk 14:36) and teaches his followers to ask him for bread and forgiveness: the Absolute is someone who sees, listens and acts. In the Pali canon the Buddha does not deny the gods but places them within the cycle of rebirth; the Brahmajala Sutta (DN 1) describes ironically how Brahma comes to believe himself the creator of the world, and the Cula-Malunkya Sutta (MN 63) compares one who demands metaphysical answers to a wounded man who will not let the arrow be removed. For Jesus the relationship with God is the centre of life and of the Kingdom he announces; for the Buddha liberation depends on no creator. They agree in answering suffering with practice, healing and teaching, rather than with theories.

Why: The contradiction is real, but it should be framed carefully. Jesus is a first-century Jew who does not argue for God's existence but radicalises it as a filial relationship; the Buddha teaches in an India full of speculation about the creator and the atman, and deliberately sets those questions aside because they do not lead to the end of suffering. They do not, then, answer exactly the same question: one announces whom to turn to; the other, how to extinguish the cause of pain. Both reach us, moreover, through texts of faith fixed decades or centuries later. The difference over a personal God, however, is not apparent: the Buddhist tradition has always maintained it.

They clash onFundamental disagreement

Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha · Helena Blavatsky

A Theosophist who took refuge in the Buddha, and an Ego that reincarnates

Blavatsky declared herself close to Buddhism and adopted its vocabulary: The Voice of the Silence describes the path as the seven gates of the perfections, and her ultimate Principle is not a creator. But her anthropology clashes with that of the Pali canon. In The Key to Theosophy she distinguishes the personality of a single life, which disintegrates, from the individuality or higher Ego that reincarnates accumulating experience, and the third fundamental proposition of The Secret Doctrine establishes each soul's pilgrimage through the cycle of incarnation. The Buddha, in the Anattalakkhana Sutta (SN 22.59), shows that nothing in the five aggregates can be a self, and in the Alagaddupama Sutta (MN 22) rejects a permanent self. What is reborn in Blavatsky is an evolving soul; in the canon, a process without a core.

Why: The relationship is documented: in 1880, in Ceylon, Blavatsky and Henry Olcott publicly took the Buddhist refuges and precepts, and Theosophy contributed to the island's Buddhist revival. Her Buddhism, however, was esoteric: Theosophists held that what the Buddha denies is the passing personality and not a higher individuality, a reading the Theravada tradition does not accept. The tension is real because no-self, in the canon, also extends to any entity that transmigrates. It is explained by Blavatsky's project, which sought a primordial wisdom common to all traditions and read each of them through her own scheme of principles and planes.

They agree on

Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha · Jiddu Krishnamurti

A bundle of processes without a centre: no-self and the observer who is the observed

Both deny that a substantial self exists behind experience. In the Pali canon the Buddha analyses the person into five aggregates and shows that none of them can be a self (Anattalakkhana Sutta, SN 22.59); what we call a person is a process of conditioned elements, and the world a network of dependent arising (SN 12.15). Krishnamurti holds that the psychological self is a bundle of memories, images and wounds to which thought attributes a central entity, and that the observer is not separate from the observed (Freedom from the Known). Both see clinging to that self as the root of conflict and suffering, and both propose seeing its structure directly, without speculating on what lies beyond: the Buddha keeps silent before metaphysical questions; Krishnamurti refuses to name the immeasurable.

Why: The relationship is documented in a precise sense: in the late 1970s Krishnamurti held conversations at Brockwood Park with the monk and scholar Walpola Rahula and other Buddhists, later published as Can Humanity Change?, in which they discussed whether his teaching coincided with the Buddha's. Rahula saw a great affinity; Krishnamurti declined any comparison, because comparing seemed to him another form of authority. The real difference lies in the path: the canon proposes a gradual path of ethics, concentration and wisdom, with teacher and community, while Krishnamurti rejects every method. The diagnosis of the self brings them close; pedagogy separates them.

Anecdotes and stories

Anecdotes and stories

Hagiographic accounts. V a. C. (tradicional)

Kisa Gotami and the mustard seed

Kisa Gotami, a poor young woman of Savatthi, loses her only son when he has barely begun to walk. Maddened by grief, she goes through the city with the body in her arms asking for a medicine to bring him back to life, until someone sends her to the Buddha. He promises to cure him if she brings a handful of mustard seeds, on one condition: that they come from a house where no one has ever died. Gotami goes from door to door; in every house she is offered mustard and in every house she is told of their dead—a father, a wife, a child. By evening she understands that death is not a misfortune that has singled her out, but the common condition of all that lives. She buries the child, returns to the Buddha and asks for ordination. Tradition counts her among the nuns who attained liberation, and the Therigatha preserves verses attributed to her.

Origin of the story: The mustard episode is not in the canon: it comes from the fifth-century Pali commentaries, chiefly the Dhammapada commentary (story of verse 114) and the Therigatha commentary ascribed to Dhammapala. Kisa Gotami's verses (Therigatha 213–223) speak of the loss of her children but do not mention mustard.

Source: Buddhaghosa (atrib.). Dhammapada-aṭṭhakathā (comentario al Dhammapada, s. V). Trad. E. W. Burlingame, Buddhist Legends, 3 vols., Harvard Oriental Series 28–30, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 1921. Dominio público.

Oral traditions. V a. C. (tradicional)

Angulimala: "I have stopped"

In the kingdom of Kosala a bandit called Angulimala, "he of the finger necklace", terrorises the region and wears round his neck the fingers of his victims. Despite the warnings of herdsmen and farmers, the Buddha takes the forest road where he hides. Angulimala sees him and runs after him with his sword, but however hard he tries he cannot catch up with a monk walking at a normal pace. Exhausted, he shouts at him to stop. The Buddha answers: "I have stopped, Angulimala; you stop too." When the bandit asks for an explanation, he says that he has given up violence against living beings for ever, whereas Angulimala has not. The bandit throws down his weapons and becomes a monk. Later King Pasenadi, who had come to capture him, finds him shaven-headed and at peace. The account ends with Angulimala stoned in the town, accepting the consequences of his deeds.

Origin of the story: Majjhima Nikaya 86 (Angulimala Sutta), with parallels in the Chinese Samyukta Agama (SA 1077) and Ekottarika Agama (EA 38.6); the commentaries add the backstory (the teacher who demands a thousand fingers). It is a canonical narrative of oral transmission; the details cannot be verified.

Source: Ñāṇamoli, Bhikkhu y Bodhi, Bhikkhu (trads.). The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikāya. Wisdom Publications, Boston, 1995 (MN 26 Ariyapariyesana; MN 36 Mahāsaccaka; MN 22 Alagaddūpama; MN 63 Cūḷamālukya). ISBN 9780861710720.

Hagiographic accounts. V a. C. (tradicional)

The four encounters

The prince has grown up in a palace where his father, warned by a soothsayer that the child might become an ascetic, has removed every sight of pain. One day he goes out in his chariot and sees a bent old man; the charioteer explains that old age awaits everyone. On other outings he sees a sick man and a funeral procession, and understands that he too will not escape sickness or death. On the fourth he sees a wandering ascetic, serene, and in him discovers a way out. That same night he leaves the palace. The scene, which has shaped the iconography and the Western imagination of the Buddha, is in fact a literary construction: the ancient canon tells it of a buddha of the past, Vipassi, as a pattern all buddhas repeat.

Origin of the story: In the canon, Digha Nikaya 14 (Mahapadana Sutta) applies the four encounters to the buddha Vipassi. Referred to Gotama they appear in later biographies: Mahavastu, Lalitavistara, Ashvaghosha's Buddhacarita (cantos 3–5) and the Nidanakatha. In AN 3.38 the Buddha only recalls his comfortable life and his reflection on ageing, sickness and death.

Source: Walshe, Maurice (trad.). The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Dīgha Nikāya. Wisdom Publications, Boston, 1995 (DN 14 Mahāpadāna Sutta; DN 16 Mahāparinibbāna Sutta). ISBN 9780861711031.

Hagiographic accountc. 445 a. C. (tradicional)

Mara and the earth as witness

On the night of awakening, Mara—the tempter, lord of desire and death—tries to turn the ascetic from his purpose. Late biographies describe him with an army of demons whose weapons turn into flowers and with his daughters, who try to seduce him. When Mara disputes his right to sit at the place of awakening and demands witnesses, the Bodhisattva touches the ground with the fingertips of his right hand and the earth itself answers. Mara flees. That hand reaching to the ground, the bhumisparsha mudra, is the gesture of most images at Bodh Gaya and in Southeast Asia. The ancient canon preserves a much soberer version, in verse, in which Mara advises the weakened ascetic to give up and make merit, and he replies that Mara's "armies" are desire, discontent, hunger, thirst, sloth, fear and doubt.

Origin of the story: Canonical version: Padhana Sutta (Sutta Nipata 3.2, vv. 425–449). The assault of the armies and the earth's testimony appear in the Lalitavistara, the Buddhacarita (canto 13) and the Nidanakatha; the gesture becomes fixed in Gandharan art and widespread in Gupta and Pala sculpture.

Source: Max Müller, F. (trad. Dhammapada) y Fausbøll, V. (trad. Sutta-Nipāta). The Dhammapada and the Sutta-Nipāta. Sacred Books of the East, vol. X. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1881. Dominio público.

Oral traditions. V a. C. (tradicional)

The poisoned arrow

The monk Malunkyaputta comes to the Buddha with an ultimatum: he will leave monastic life unless he answers ten questions—whether the world is eternal or not, finite or infinite, whether the soul is the same as the body, whether the Tathagata exists or not after death. The Buddha reminds him that he never promised to answer them and offers an image: a man wounded by a poisoned arrow who will not let the surgeon remove it until he knows who shot it, of what caste he was, what his name was, whether he was tall or short, what wood the bow was made of and what feather the arrow. That man will die before he finds out. In the same way, he concludes, those questions do not lead to disenchantment, peace or awakening; that is why he has not declared them. What he has declared is suffering, its origin, its cessation and the path.

Origin of the story: Majjhima Nikaya 63 (Culamalunkya Sutta), with a parallel in the Chinese Madhyama Agama (MA 221). It is one of the classic sources for the Buddha's attitude to metaphysical speculation.

Source: Ñāṇamoli, Bhikkhu y Bodhi, Bhikkhu (trads.). The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikāya. Wisdom Publications, Boston, 1995 (MN 26 Ariyapariyesana; MN 36 Mahāsaccaka; MN 22 Alagaddūpama; MN 63 Cūḷamālukya). ISBN 9780861710720.

Oral traditions. V a. C. (tradicional)

The blind men and the elephant

Some monks tell the Buddha that in Savatthi ascetics of different schools are locked in disputes over whether the world is eternal or not, whether the soul is the body or not, each convinced that only his view is true. The Buddha answers with a story. A king of old had all the city's men blind from birth gathered and presented them with an elephant: some he had touch the head, others the ear, the tusk, the trunk, the back, the foot, the tail. Then he asked them what an elephant was like. The one who touched the head said it was like a water jar; the one with the ear, like a winnowing basket; the one with the tusk, like a ploughshare; the one with the tail, like a broom. They ended up coming to blows, while the king was amused. So are those, says the Buddha, who see only one part and quarrel over it.

Origin of the story: Udana 6.4 (Titthasutta). The parable also exists in Jain and Hindu sources and spread in the Islamic world (Sanai, Rumi), so its Buddhist origin cannot be established.

Source: SuttaCentral. Textos pali con traducciones de Bhikkhu Sujato (CC0) y paralelos en chino, sánscrito y tibetano. Consultados: DN 16, MN 22, MN 26, MN 63, SN 56.11, AN 3.38, AN 3.65, AN 3.131, Ud 1.10, Dhp, Snp 1.8.

Hagiographic accounts. V a. C. (tradicional); relato del s. XI d. C.

Mahakasyapa's smile

On Vulture Peak, before a great assembly, the Buddha gives no sermon: he simply raises a flower and twirls it between his fingers. No one understands the gesture except his disciple Mahakasyapa, who smiles. Then the Buddha declares: "I possess the treasury of the true Dharma eye, the wondrous mind of nirvana, the formless form, the subtle Dharma gate that does not rest on words or letters and is transmitted outside the scriptures. I entrust it to Mahakasyapa." For the Chan and Zen tradition this is the first mind-to-mind transmission, the origin of a lineage passing from master to disciple down to Bodhidharma and from him to China.

Origin of the story: It exists in no Indian source nor in the early canons. It appears in Chinese texts of the Song dynasty: first in the Tiansheng guangdeng lu (1036) and then, in its classic form, in the Wumenguan (1228, case 6). Albert Welter has studied its formation as the founding myth of the Chan school.

Source: Welter, Albert. «Mahākāśyapa's Smile: Silent Transmission and the Kung-an (Kōan) Tradition», en S. Heine y D. S. Wright (eds.), The Kōan: Texts and Contexts in Zen Buddhism, Oxford University Press, Nueva York, 2000.

Teachings

Teachings

The notions that structure their thought, explained in context.

The four noble truthscuatro-nobles-verdades
Formulated in the first sermon (SN 56.11), they organise the whole teaching on the model of a medical diagnosis. The first is suffering (dukkha): birth, ageing, sickness and death, union with what is disliked and separation from what is loved, and, in short, the five aggregates of clinging. Dukkha does not mean only pain but also the unsatisfactoriness inherent in what changes. The second is its origin: thirst or craving (tanha) for sensual pleasures, for existence and for non-existence. The third is its cessation, the complete fading of that thirst, which tradition calls nirvana. The fourth is the path leading to that cessation, the noble eightfold path. The text adds that each truth demands a task—to understand suffering, abandon its origin, realise its cessation, cultivate the path—and that the Buddha declared himself awakened only when he had fulfilled the resulting twelve phases. Whether the scheme belongs to the Buddha or to an early systematisation is debated; in any case, it appears in all the canons.

Doctrinal core shared by all Buddhist schools; the Mahayana reinterprets it from emptiness (the Heart Sutra goes so far as to deny its own-existence).

Source: Bodhi, Bhikkhu (trad.). The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Saṃyutta Nikāya. Wisdom Publications, Boston, 2000 (SN 56.11 Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta). ISBN 9780861713318.

The middle way and the eightfold pathsendero-octuple
The first sermon begins by rejecting two extremes: the pursuit of sensual pleasure, "low, vulgar, the way of ordinary people", and self-mortification, "painful, ignoble, useless". Between them the Buddha proposes a middle way that he identifies with the noble eightfold path: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. The word translated as "right", samma, also means "complete" or "whole". The commentators group the eight factors into three trainings: ethics (speech, action, livelihood), meditation (effort, mindfulness, concentration) and wisdom (view and intention). They are not successive stages but mutually reinforcing aspects. The middle way also has a philosophical sense, later developed by Nagarjuna: the path between the claim that everything exists and the claim that nothing exists, between eternalism and annihilationism.

It is the fourth noble truth and the practical scheme of all early Buddhism; tradition links it to the Buddha's biography, since he is said to have tried both extremes.

Source: Bodhi, Bhikkhu (trad.). The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Saṃyutta Nikāya. Wisdom Publications, Boston, 2000 (SN 56.11 Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta). ISBN 9780861713318.

Not-self (anatta) and the three characteristicsanatta
Early Buddhism teaches that all conditioned experience has three characteristics: it is impermanent (anicca), unsatisfactory (dukkha) and without self (anatta). The second discourse at Benares (SN 22.59) applies this analysis to the five aggregates—bodily form, feeling, perception, volitional formations and consciousness: since they change and are not under our control, of none of them can it be said "this is mine, this I am, this is my self". The teaching is directed against the Brahmanical notion of an eternal atman identical with the absolute, but the Buddha also avoids asserting that "there is no self", which he regards as another view to cling to; it is a method of disidentification rather than a metaphysical thesis. Later schools debated intensely how to explain without a self the continuity of karma and rebirth: the Pudgalavadins admitted an inexpressible "person" and the Mahayana extended the absence of essence to all phenomena (emptiness).

A distinctive feature of Buddhism compared with contemporary Brahmanical and Jain traditions.

Source: Gombrich, Richard F. What the Buddha Thought. Equinox (Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies Monographs), Londres y Oakville, 2009.

Dependent origination (paticca-samuppada)paticca-samuppada
The principle by which every phenomenon arises in dependence on conditions and ceases when they cease: "When this exists, that exists; when this arises, that arises; when this does not exist, that does not exist; when this ceases, that ceases." The canon applies it above all to the genesis of suffering through a chain of twelve links: ignorance, volitional formations, consciousness, name-and-form, the six sense bases, contact, feeling, craving, clinging, becoming, birth, and ageing-and-death. Traversed in reverse, the chain shows how the cessation of ignorance leads to the cessation of suffering. A famous saying attributed to Sariputta states that "whoever sees dependent origination sees the Dhamma, and whoever sees the Dhamma sees dependent origination" (MN 28). Specialists debate whether the list of twelve is original or the result of combining shorter lists; Richard Gombrich has proposed reading it partly as a parody of Vedic cosmogonies. In the Mahayana, Nagarjuna will identify dependent origination with emptiness.

A causal formulation underpinning the not-self doctrine and the possibility of liberation.

Source: Gombrich, Richard F. What the Buddha Thought. Equinox (Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies Monographs), Londres y Oakville, 2009.

Nirvana (nibbana)nirvana
Nibbana, in Pali, literally means "extinguishing", like a flame that runs out of fuel. It designates the goal of the path: the extinction of the three fires—greed, hatred and delusion—and, with them, of suffering and the cycle of rebirths. The texts distinguish nirvana attained in life, "with residue" of the aggregates, from that which follows the death of the liberated one, parinirvana, "without residue". On the nature of the latter the Buddha refused to pronounce: asking whether the Tathagata exists after death is, according to the fire simile (MN 72), like asking in which direction an extinguished flame has gone. When the canon describes it, it does so mainly by negation—the unborn, the uncompounded, the unconditioned (Ud 8.3)—which has fed two readings: one understanding it as mere cessation and another seeing in it a transcendent reality. Mahayana schools added the idea of a "non-abiding" nirvana, compatible with the compassionate activity of the bodhisattva.

Soteriological goal of all Buddhist schools; in the West, since the nineteenth century, the subject of debate over whether Buddhism was a nihilism.

Source: Gombrich, Richard F. What the Buddha Thought. Equinox (Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies Monographs), Londres y Oakville, 2009.

Karma as intentionkarma
The Buddha inherited from Indian thought the idea that actions (karma) bear fruit in this life and the next, but transformed it in an ethical and inward sense: "Intention, monks, is what I call karma; having intended, one acts by body, speech and mind" (AN 6.63). Against Brahmanical ritualism, for which the effective act was the correctly performed sacrifice, and against Jainism, which ascribed karmic consequences even to involuntary acts, what counts is the motivation behind the act: the wholesome root (generosity, goodwill, understanding) or the unwholesome (greed, hatred, delusion). Hence early Buddhism also criticises the value of caste by birth: the true brahmin is the one who acts with purity (Sutta Nipata 3.9). Richard Gombrich has regarded this "ethicisation" of karma as one of the Buddha's most radical innovations. Karma is not fate: it is the continuity of intentions, which practice can redirect.

A concept shared with Hinduism and Jainism, reinterpreted by the Buddha in terms of intention.

Source: Gombrich, Richard F. What the Buddha Thought. Equinox (Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies Monographs), Londres y Oakville, 2009.

Retreats

Retreats and centres

Places and gatherings linked to their teaching. We put you in touch with the organisers.

  • Centros en todos los continentes (sede histórica: Dhamma Giri, Igatpuri, India) · Internacional

    Vipassana meditation courses (Dhamma.org)

    Vipassana Meditation – centros de la tradición de S. N. Goenka

    The Vipassana courses taught by S. N. Goenka, in the line of Sayagyi U Ba Khin, pass on a technique of observing bodily sensations that this tradition traces back to the Buddha himself. The format is demanding and sober: ten residential days of silence, with a daily discipline of many hours of meditation and recorded talks explaining the method. Nothing is charged, not even food or lodging; everything is sustained by donations from those who have already completed a course. There are centres on every continent, and the website, in dozens of languages, lists each centre's calendar.

    Request information

  • Lumbini, provincia de Lumbini · Nepal

    Lumbini, birthplace of the Buddha

    Lumbini Development Trust (Gobierno de Nepal)

    Lumbini, on the plains of southern Nepal, is where tradition places the birth of Siddhartha Gautama. The Maya Devi Temple shelters the archaeological remains associated with that moment, beside the sacred pool and the pillar the emperor Ashoka had raised in the third century BCE with an inscription commemorating it. The World Heritage site is managed by the Lumbini Development Trust, a Nepali government body that also looks after the monastic zone, where various Buddhist countries have built monasteries, and other places linked to the Buddha's life such as Kapilvastu, Ramagrama and Devadaha.

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  • Bodh Gaya, Bihar · India

    Bodh Gaya: the Mahabodhi Temple

    Bodhgaya Temple Management Committee

    Bodh Gaya is the place where, according to tradition, Siddhartha Gautama attained awakening beneath the Bodhi tree, and the most important of the four great Buddhist pilgrimage sites. The Mahabodhi Temple, a World Heritage Site, stands beside a descendant of that tree and the stone platform marking the Buddha's seat. It is run by a management committee that holds daily sessions of chanting and meditation at dawn and evening chanting, in Pali and in the Mahayana tradition. Around the temple, monasteries from many Buddhist countries welcome pilgrims and students throughout the year.

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Videos

Videos

Recordings, interviews and documentaries. Videos play from YouTube; they are not hosted here.

  • Towards a sustainable Lumbini, the birthplace of Lord Buddha

    Documentary· EN· 2014· 20 min

    UNESCOOfficial channel

  • The oldest, dateable depiction of the Buddha in human form | Curator's Corner S4 Ep7

    Analysis· EN· 2018· 8 min

    The British MuseumOfficial channel

  • Curators' tour of Ancient India: living traditions

    Analysis· EN· 2025· 17 min

    The British MuseumOfficial channel

  • A Short Introduction to Buddhism Course by Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi - 1 (July 15th, 2018)

    Lecture· EN· 2018· 56 min

    BAUS Chuang Yen MonasteryOfficial channel

  • Distinguished Lecture by Richard Francis Gombrich

    Lecture· EN· 2013· 104 min

    UoH VisualDossiersOfficial channel

  • New Discoveries about the Origins of the Buddhist Order of Nuns

    Lecture· EN· 2017· 66 min

    Oxford Centre for Buddhist StudiesOfficial channel

  • Buda, su enseñanza y la comunidad con Agustín Pániker

    Lecture· ES· 2020· 55 min

    Librería PorrúaOfficial channel

  • [PHILO] Bouddha et le Bouddhisme avec Frédéric Lenoir

    Lecture· FR· 2017· 61 min

    PhiloCloud

  • Documentary - The Buddha - PBS Documentary (Narrated by Richard Gere)

    Documentary· EN· 2010· 161 min

    Dhamma in English

Gallery

Gallery

Images with verified licences. Each keeps its authorship and attribution.

Manuscripts

Manuscripts

Manuscript witnesses and ancient texts, with their custodian and conditions of access.

  • PRA · Brahmi · c. 249 a. C. (vigésimo año de reinado de Ashoka)

    Lumbini (Rummindei) pillar inscription

    Surviving witness
    Inscripción de cinco líneas grabada en el fuste de una columna de arenisca pulida
    Custodian
    Departamento de Arqueología del Gobierno de Nepal / Lumbini Development Trust (in situ)
    Digitisation
    commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lumbini_inscript…

  • PGD · Kharoshthi · primera mitad del s. I d. C. (copia)

    Khaggavisāṇa-sutra (Gandhari)

    Surviving witness
    Fragmento de rollo de corteza de abedul, parte de un conjunto de unos ochenta fragmentos conservados en vasijas de barro
    Custodian
    British Library, Londres · British Library Kharoṣṭhī Fragment 5B

  • ZH · Han (impresión xilográfica) · Colofón fechado el 11 de mayo de 868

    金剛般若波羅蜜經 (Vajracchedikā, versión de Kumarajiva)

    Surviving witness
    Rollo impreso de unos cinco metros, con frontispicio grabado del Buda predicando a Subhuti; el libro impreso fechado más antiguo que se conserva
    Custodian
    British Library, Londres · Or.8210/P.2
    Digitisation
    www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-diamond-sutra…
Manuscripts →

Connections

Connections

Influences, discipleships and affinities. Documented relations are distinguished from similarities identified by analysis.

  • Contemporary of

    Mahāvīra

    The Pali canon mentions Nigantha Nataputta, identified with Mahavira, as a contemporary rival teacher and relates the quarrel among his followers after his death (DN 29, DN 33). There is no record of their meeting.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced

    Nāgārjuna

    Nagarjuna opens his Verses on the Middle Way with homage to the Buddha as teacher of dependent origination and develops his doctrine of emptiness as an interpretation of the Buddha's teaching.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced

    Bodhidharma

    Chan tradition makes Bodhidharma the twenty-eighth patriarch of a lineage beginning with the Buddha's transmission to Mahakasyapa; the lineage is a construction of the school.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Influenced

    Thich Nhat Hanh

    Thich Nhat Hanh wrote a biography of the Buddha based on the canonical sources, Old Path White Clouds (1991), and presented his teaching as a continuation of the Buddha's.

    Documented relation

  • Ideas akin to

    Jesus of Nazareth

    Since the nineteenth century their teachings on renunciation, compassion and love of enemies have been compared; there is no documented historical link between them.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Ideas akin to

    Laozi

    Chinese Buddhism often read the Dao in the light of emptiness and vice versa; the Taoist legend of the "conversion of the barbarians" even claimed that Laozi had taught in India. It is a late polemic, not a historical link.

    Similarity identified by analysis

Linked from other profiles

Sources

Sources

Bibliography and catalogues consulted for this profile.

  1. Wikidata, entidad Q9441 «The Buddha / Buda Gautama» (P31=Q5; 277 enlaces entre wikis). Registra como nacimiento -563, -623 y c. -500, y como muerte -483, -543 y c. -500; lugar de nacimiento Q9213 (Lumbini), de muerte Q825673 (Kushinagar).
  2. Walshe, Maurice (trad.). The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Dīgha Nikāya. Wisdom Publications, Boston, 1995 (DN 14 Mahāpadāna Sutta; DN 16 Mahāparinibbāna Sutta). ISBN 9780861711031.
  3. Ñāṇamoli, Bhikkhu y Bodhi, Bhikkhu (trads.). The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikāya. Wisdom Publications, Boston, 1995 (MN 26 Ariyapariyesana; MN 36 Mahāsaccaka; MN 22 Alagaddūpama; MN 63 Cūḷamālukya). ISBN 9780861710720.
  4. Bodhi, Bhikkhu (trad.). The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Saṃyutta Nikāya. Wisdom Publications, Boston, 2000 (SN 56.11 Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta). ISBN 9780861713318.
  5. Gombrich, Richard F. What the Buddha Thought. Equinox (Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies Monographs), Londres y Oakville, 2009.
  6. Bechert, Heinz (ed.). The Dating of the Historical Buddha / Die Datierung des historischen Buddha. 3 vols. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Gotinga, 1991–1997 (Symposien zur Buddhismusforschung IV, 1–3).
  7. Hultzsch, E. Inscriptions of Asoka (Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. I). Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1925: «Rummindei pillar inscription», pp. 164–165.
  8. Strong, John S. The Buddha: A Short Biography. Oneworld, Oxford, 2001.
  9. Ñāṇamoli, Bhikkhu. The Life of the Buddha according to the Pali Canon. Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy, 1972 (reed. Pariyatti, 2001).
  10. Carrithers, Michael. The Buddha. Oxford University Press (Past Masters), Oxford, 1983 (trad. esp.: Buda, Alianza Editorial).
  11. Coningham, R. A. E., Acharya, K. P., Strickland, K. M., et al. «The earliest Buddhist shrine: excavating the birthplace of the Buddha, Lumbini (Nepal)». Antiquity 87 (338), 2013, pp. 1104–1123.
  12. Waldschmidt, Ernst. Das Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra: Text in Sanskrit und Tibetisch, verglichen mit dem Pāli nebst einer Übersetzung der chinesischen Entsprechung im Vinaya der Mūlasarvāstivādins. 3 vols. Akademie-Verlag, Berlín, 1950–1951.
  13. Max Müller, F. (trad. Dhammapada) y Fausbøll, V. (trad. Sutta-Nipāta). The Dhammapada and the Sutta-Nipāta. Sacred Books of the East, vol. X. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1881. Dominio público.
  14. Rhys Davids, T. W. (trad.). Buddhist Suttas. Sacred Books of the East, vol. XI. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1881 (incluye Mahāparinibbāna Suttanta y Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta). Dominio público.
  15. Kern, H. (trad.). The Saddharma-puṇḍarîka, or The Lotus of the True Law. Sacred Books of the East, vol. XXI. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1884. Dominio público.
  16. Cowell, E. B., Max Müller, F. y Takakusu, J. (trads.). Buddhist Mahâyâna Texts. Sacred Books of the East, vol. XLIX. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1894 (Buddhacarita de Aśvaghoṣa; Vajracchedikā; Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya; Sukhāvatīvyūha). Dominio público.
  17. SuttaCentral. Textos pali con traducciones de Bhikkhu Sujato (CC0) y paralelos en chino, sánscrito y tibetano. Consultados: DN 16, MN 22, MN 26, MN 63, SN 56.11, AN 3.38, AN 3.65, AN 3.131, Ud 1.10, Dhp, Snp 1.8.
  18. UNESCO, Centro del Patrimonio Mundial. «Lumbini, the Birthplace of the Lord Buddha» (inscrito en 1997, n.º 666).
  19. Bodhipaksa. Fake Buddha Quotes (base de datos de citas falsamente atribuidas al Buda, con su origen documentado).
  20. Norman, K. R. Pāli Literature, Including the Canonical Literature in Prakrit and Sanskrit of All the Hīnayāna Schools of Buddhism. A History of Indian Literature, vol. VII, fasc. 2. Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 1983.
  21. Williams, Paul. Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations. Routledge, Londres, 1989 (2.ª ed. 2009).
  22. Pániker, Agustín. El budismo: historia, doctrinas, prácticas. Kairós, Barcelona, 2018.
  23. British Museum. Ficha de colección: «Bimaran casket» (n.º de registro 1900,0209.1), Gandhara, s. I d. C.
  24. Ashvaghosha. Buddhacarita (Acts of the Buddha). Ed. y trad. E. H. Johnston, 3 partes, Lahore, 1935–1936; trad. Patrick Olivelle, Life of the Buddha, Clay Sanskrit Library, New York University Press, 2008.
  25. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō, vol. 1, n.º 1: Chang ahan jing (Dirgha Agama), trad. Buddhayaśas y Zhu Fonian (413), fasc. 2–4, «Youxing jing» (paralelo chino del Mahaparinibbana Sutta). Texto digital CBETA.
  26. Buddhaghosa (atrib.). Dhammapada-aṭṭhakathā (comentario al Dhammapada, s. V). Trad. E. W. Burlingame, Buddhist Legends, 3 vols., Harvard Oriental Series 28–30, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 1921. Dominio público.
  27. Welter, Albert. «Mahākāśyapa's Smile: Silent Transmission and the Kung-an (Kōan) Tradition», en S. Heine y D. S. Wright (eds.), The Kōan: Texts and Contexts in Zen Buddhism, Oxford University Press, Nueva York, 2000.
  28. Nhat Hanh, Thich. Old Path White Clouds: Walking in the Footsteps of the Buddha. Parallax Press, Berkeley, 1991 (trad. esp.: Camino viejo, nubes blancas, Oniro).
  29. Salomon, Richard. Ancient Buddhist Scrolls from Gandhāra: The British Library Kharoṣṭhī Fragments. University of Washington Press / British Library, Seattle y Londres, 1999; y A Gāndhārī Version of the Rhinoceros Sūtra: British Library Kharoṣṭhī Fragment 5B, University of Washington Press, 2000.
  30. British Library. «The Diamond Sutra» (Or.8210/P.2), ficha de la colección, Dunhuang, 868.
Rights holder
Textos antiguos en dominio público; cada traducción pertenece a su traductor o editorial (las de Bhikkhu Sujato en SuttaCentral, CC0)

Pending confirmation

What this profile has not yet been able to settle. We would rather say so than fill it in.

  • No se ha encontrado ninguna traducción española del Sutta Nipata con ISBN en Open Library (Google Books no estaba disponible: cuota agotada). Buscar en el catálogo de ISBN de España y en editoriales como Kairós, Trotta, Etnos o Dharma.
  • Sutra del diamante y Sutra Lankavatara: falta una edición española con ISBN verificado.
  • Ediciones francesas e italianas del Dhammapada: Open Library solo ofrece ediciones antiguas sin ISBN o autoediciones; no se han incluido. Revisar catálogos de Gallimard, Seuil, Adelphi.
  • Trotta, «Diálogos mayores de Buda» (2010): la ficha de la editorial no permitió confirmar si traduce el Dīgha Nikāya completo o una selección.
  • Confirmar la signatura de la colección de fragmentos gandhari de la British Library (citada en una leyenda como Or. 14915) y si existe digitalización pública del Fragmento 5B.
  • La fecha de nacimiento (c. 480 a. C.) es convencional, derivada de la cronología corta; Wikidata recoge -563, -623 y c. -500. La de muerte (c. 400 a. C.) es la más aceptada hoy, con un margen de unas tres décadas.
  • Programas de afiliación: ninguno verificado (Wisdom Publications, Trotta, Kairós, Penguin no publican uno accesible). Lista vacía.
  • El documental de PBS «The Buddha» (2010) solo se ha encontrado en subidas de terceros; buscar una versión oficial de PBS insertable.
  • Sala de lectura: no hay en línea ninguna traducción española de dominio público comprobable del Dhammapada ni de otros textos del canon pali (búsqueda en Gutenberg, Wikisource e Internet Archive, 2026-10-25).
  • Sala de lectura: la traducción francesa del Dhammapada de Fernand Hû (Leroux, 1878) está en Wikisource por capítulos, pero no se ha podido acreditar la fecha de muerte del traductor (Wikidata trae un dato erróneo); la del Sutra del diamante de William Gemmell (Kegan Paul, 1912; Gutenberg #64623), tampoco. Registrarlas cuando se confirme.
  • Sala de lectura: las traducciones de dominio público del Mahaparinibbana Sutta y del Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (Rhys Davids, SBE XI, 1881), del Sutta Nipata (Fausbøll, SBE X, 1881; Chalmers, 1932), del Udana (Strong, 1902) y del Sutra del diamante y del Corazón (Max Müller, SBE XLIX) solo están en Internet Archive como volúmenes enteros o con OCR defectuoso (el control de calidad del ingestor rechaza el Sutta Nipata de Chalmers y el de Coomaraswamy). El Sutra del loto íntegro de Kern (SBE XXI) está en Wikisource, pero sus subpáginas se ordenan alfabéticamente (1, 10, 11…) y los versos numerados se parten; por eso se ha registrado la versión abreviada de Soothill.
  • Sala de lectura: Dialogues of the Buddha (Rhys Davids, 1899–1921, Digha) y Further Dialogues (Chalmers, 1926–27, Majjhima) están en Internet Archive en varios volúmenes; el ingestor guarda un solo texto por obra e idioma, así que no se registran hasta poder unir volúmenes. Lo mismo con Die Reden Gotamo Buddhos de K. E. Neumann (Gutenberg #48345, #48901, #49044).
  • Obras: el inventario de sutras mahayana atribuidos al Buda es inabarcable (miles de textos en los cánones chino y tibetano); se registran los de mayor difusión (Loto, Diamante, Corazón, Lankavatara, Tierra Pura, Avatamsaka). Faltan, entre otros, el Mahaparinirvana Sutra mahayana, el Sutra de la luz dorada y el Sutra del Buda de la Medicina.

Researched on 2026-10-23