Did the Greek Philosophers Study Buddhism?

What Happens when East meets West? Exploring the History of Cultural and Philosophical Exchange between Ancient Greece and Ancient India.

In last part of the series we discussed Indian and Greek Pantheism. This week we take a look at some points of historical and conceptual contact between these two great civilizations.

Key words: Buddhist influences on Pyrrhonism, Greek influence on Indian thought. Three Marks of Existence, Deconstructing Personhood, Epoché, Ataraxia and Nirvana, Undifferentiated Nature, Two Truths Doctrine, Dependent Origination, Tetralemma and Catuṣkoṭi Logic. Scepticism, Pyrrho, Pyrrhonism and Nāgārjuna, Madhyamaka, Mahayana, Buddhism.

00:00 Intro
03:12 Eastern or Western?
04:59 Pythagoras
06:24 Clearchus
07:21 Hegesias of Cyrene
08:08 Alexander the Great
08:46 Onesicritus
09:36 Gymnosophist, Kalanos, Dandamis
14:06 Anaxarchus
15:12 Pyrrho and Nāgārjuna, Pyrrhonism and Buddhism
32:43 Sources and Rebuttal
33:59 Closing Quote
34:26 Summary and Conclusion

#East&West #Buddhism #Greeks

“The records of caravan and maritime routes are like the philosophical skeleton of history, the trails of oral discourses moving through communities - of texts copied from texts, and what they reveal is not a structure of parallel straight lines - one labelled Greece and other Persia another India - but a tangled web in which an element in one culture often leads to elements in others.”
- Thomas McEvilley on The Shape of Ancient Thought

Sources:
Christopher I. Beckwith, Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia, 2015.
Adrian Kuzminski, Pyrrhonism: How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism, 2008.
Thomas McEvilley, The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies, 2002.
Everard Flintoff, “Pyrrho and India,” Phronesis 25: 88-108, 1980.
Adrian Kuzminski, Pyrrhonism and the Mādhyamaka, Philosophy East and West 57 (4):482-511, 2007.
Thomas McEvilley, Pyrrhonism and Mādhyamika, Philosophy East and West 32(1):3–35, 1982.
Richard Stoneman, The Legends of Alexander the Great, 2012.
Gurtej Jassar, The Interactions of Greek and non-Greek Populations in Bactria-Sogdiana during the Hellenistic Period, 1997.

Rebuttals:
Neither Scythian nor Greek: A Response to Beckwith's Greek Buddha and Kuzminski's "Early Buddhism Reconsidered," Charles Goodman, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 68, No. 3, July 2018, pp. 984-1006
Early Pyrrhonism as a Sect of Buddhism? A Case Study in The Methodology of Comparative Philosophy, Monte Ransome Johnson and Brett Shults, Comparative Philosophy, Vol. 9, No. 2 (2018): 1-40
Greek Buddha: Pyrrho’s Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia, Review by Stephen Batchelor, 2016, pp. 195-215.

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