Buddhist philosophy

Buddhist philosophy is the ancient Indian philosophical system that developed within the religio-philosophical tradition of Buddhism. It comprises all the philosophical investigations and systems of rational inquiry that developed among various schools of Buddhism in ancient India following the parinirvāṇa of Gautama Buddha (c. 5th century BCE), as well as the further developments which followed the spread of Buddhism throughout Asia. Buddhism combines both philosophical reasoning and the practice of meditation. The Buddhist religion presents a multitude of Buddhist paths to liberation; with the expansion of early Buddhism from ancient India to Sri Lanka and subsequently to East Asia and Southeast Asia, Buddhist thinkers have covered topics as varied as cosmology, ethics, epistemology, logic, metaphysics, ontology, phenomenology, the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of time, and soteriology in their analysis of these paths. Pre-sectarian Buddhism was based on empirical evidence gained by the sense organs (including the mind), and the Buddha seems to have retained a skeptical distance from certain metaphysical questions, refusing to answer them because they were not conducive to liberation but led instead to further speculation. However he also affirmed theories with metaphysical implications, such as dependent arising, karma, and rebirth. Particular points of Buddhist philosophy have often been the subject of disputes between different schools of Buddhism, as well as between representative thinkers of Buddhist schools and Hindu or Jaina philosophers. These elaborations and disputes gave rise to various schools in early Buddhism of Abhidharma, and to the Mahāyāna traditions such as Prajñāpāramitā, Mādhyamaka, Sautrāntika, Buddha-nature, and Yogācāra. One recurrent theme in Buddhist philosophy has been the desire to find a Middle Way between philosophical views seen as extreme.

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Mahāyāna (महायान, ˌmɑːhəˈjɑːnə ; Great Vehicle) is a term for a broad group of Buddhist traditions, texts, philosophies, and practices. Mahāyāna Buddhism developed in ancient India (1st century BCE onwards) and is considered one of the three main existing branches of Buddhism, the other being Theravāda and Vajrayāna. Mahāyāna accepts the main scriptures and teachings of early Buddhism but also recognizes various doctrines and texts that are not accepted by Theravada Buddhism as original.

_Nonduality Nonduality, also called nondualism and nondual awareness, is a fuzzy concept, originating in Indian philosophy and religion, implying that the universe forms a whole that can be experienced as such by the human mind. The Asian terms from which it is derived have specific, somewhat different meanings depending on context, but common elements are: the idea that everything is interconnected, forming a singular unity that suggests the personal self is an illusion; an awareness of this unity, without the usual strict distinction between an observer and the things observed; and thinking that lacks dualistic concepts in order to support this view and experience.