School · 600 BCE–660 CE
Indian Buddhist philosophy
Buddhist philosophical traditions joined practical paths of liberation to sustained analysis of suffering, personhood, cognition, causation, language, and the status of things.
Shared questions
- How can insight into impermanence, dependent arising, and non-self end suffering?
Internal disagreements
- How persons and phenomena exist, what kinds of knowledge are reliable, and how liberating claims should be expressed.
Key texts
- Pāli Nikāyas — The discourses attributed to the Buddha were transmitted orally for centuries before being written down.
- Mūlamadhyamakakārikā — Nāgārjuna's verses on the middle way are the securely attributed core of a much larger disputed corpus.
- Abhidharmakośa — Vasubandhu's verses and his own commentary on them set out and then criticise the Abhidharma system.