Similarities between Pyrrhonism and Buddhism


According to Edward Conze, Greek Skepticism can be compared to Buddhist philosophy, especially the Indian Madhyamika school. The Pyrrhonian Skeptics' goal of ataraxia is a soteriological goal similar to nirvana.
These similarities can be traced back to the origins of Pyrrhonism. Pyrrho, the founder of Pyrrhonism, spent about 18 months in Taxila as part of the court of Alexander the Great's conquest of the east where he studied Indian philosophy and presumably encountered Early Buddhism. Centuries later Pyrrhonism may have influenced the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka philosophy.

Mutual influences between Buddhism and Pyrrhonism

Buddhist influences on Pyrrho

Diogenes Laërtius' biography of Pyrrho reports that Pyrrho traveled with Alexander the Great's army to India and based his philosophy on what he learned there:
...he even went as far as the Gymnosophists, in India, and the Magi. Owing to which circumstance, he seems to have taken a noble line in philosophy, introducing the doctrine of incomprehensibility, and of the necessity of suspending one's judgment....

The Pyrrhonists promote suspending judgment about dogma as the way to reach ataraxia. This is similar to the Buddha's refusal to answer certain metaphysical questions which he saw as non-conductive to the path of Buddhist practice and Nagarjuna's "relinquishing of all views ".
A summary of Pyrrho's philosophy was preserved by Eusebius in Praeparatio evangelica, quoting Aristocles, quoting the Pyrrhonist philosopher Timon, quoting his teacher, Pyrrho, in what is known as the "Aristocles passage."
"Whoever wants to live well must consider these three questions: First, how are pragmata by nature? Secondly, what attitude should we adopt towards them? Thirdly, what will be the outcome for those who have this attitude?" Pyrrho's answer is that "As for pragmata they are all adiaphora, astathmēta, and anepikrita. Therefore, neither our sense-perceptions nor our doxai tell us the truth or lie; so we certainly should not rely on them. Rather, we should be adoxastoi, aklineis, and akradantoi, saying about every single one that it no more is than it is not or it both is and is not or it neither is nor is not.

According to Christopher I. Beckwith's analysis of the Aristocles Passage, adiaphora, astathmēta, and anepikrita are strikingly similar to the Buddhist three marks of existence, indicating that Pyrrho's teaching is based on Buddhism. Beckwith contends that the 18 months Pyrrho spent in India was long enough to learn a foreign language, and that the key innovative tenets of Pyrrho's skepticism were only found in Indian philosophy at the time and not in Greece.

Pyrrhonist influences on Nāgārjuna

Because of the high degree of similarity between Madhyamaka and Pyrrhonism, particularly the surviving works of Sextus Empiricus, Thomas McEvilley and Matthew Neale suspect that Nāgārjuna was influenced by Greek Pyrrhonist texts imported into India.
According to legend, Nagarjuna said he was influenced by books inaccessible to other people. He was approached by Nagas in human form. They invited him to their kingdom to see some texts they thought would be of great interest to him. Nagarjuna studied those texts and brought them back to India. According to Matthew Neale, "Nāgārjuna was a skillful diplomat concealing novel doctrines in acceptably Buddhist discourse... to conceal their doctrines’ derivation from foreign wisdom traditions."

Greek influence on Indian thought

During this era trade between India and the Roman Empire flourished and Greek ideas became influential in India. Although there is no direct proof that Nāgārjuna had access to Greek Pyrrhonist texts, there's ample evidence of other Greek texts that were imported into India and that ideas from those texts were incorporated into Indian thought.
According to David Pingree, there is substantial similarity between ancient Indian and pre-Ptolomaic Greek astronomy. Pingree believes that these similarities suggest a Greek origin for certain aspects of Indian astronomy. One of the direct proofs for this approach is the fact quoted that many Sanskrit words related to astronomy, astrology, and calendars are either direct phonetical borrowings from the Greek language, or translations, assuming complex ideas, like the names of the days of the week which presuppose a relation between those days, planets and gods.
Hellenistic astronomy profoundly influenced Indian astronomy. For example, Hellenistic astronomy is known to have been practiced near India in the Greco-Bactrian city of Ai-Khanoum from the 3rd century BCE. Various sun-dials, including an equatorial sundial adjusted to the latitude of Ujjain have been found in archaeological excavations there.
Numerous interactions with the Mauryan Empire, and the later expansion of the Indo-Greeks into India suggest that transmission of Greek astronomical ideas to India occurred during this period.
The Greek concept of a spherical earth surrounded by the spheres of planets, further influenced the astronomers like Varahamihira and Brahmagupta.
Several Greco-Roman astrological treatises are also known to have been exported to India during the first few centuries of our era. The Yavanajataka was a Sanskrit text of the 3rd century CE on Greek horoscopy and mathematical astronomy. Rudradaman's capital at Ujjain "became the Greenwich of Indian astronomers and the Arin of the Arabic and Latin astronomical treatises; for it was he and his successors who encouraged the introduction of Greek horoscopy and astronomy into India."
Later in the 6th century, the Romaka Siddhanta, and the Paulisa Siddhanta were considered as two of the five main astrological treatises, which were compiled by Varāhamihira in his Pañca-siddhāntikā, a compendium of Greek, Egyptian, Roman and Indian astronomy. Varāhamihira goes on to state that "The Greeks, indeed, are foreigners, but with them this science is in a flourishing state." Another Indian text, the Gargi-Samhita, also similarly compliments the Yavanas noting that the Yavanas though barbarians must be respected as seers for their introduction of astronomy in India. For example, Numerous interactions with the Mauryan Empire, and the later expansion of the Indo-Greeks into India suggest that transmission of Greek astronomical ideas to India occurred during this period.

Parallels between Pyrrhonism and Buddhism

Catuṣkoṭi

is a logical argument that is important in the Buddhist logico-epistemological traditions, particularly those of the Madhyamaka school, and in the skeptical Greek philosophy of Pyrrhonism. McEvilley argues for mutual iteration and pervasion between Pyrrhonism and Madhyamika:

An extraordinary similarity, that has long been noticed, between Pyrrhonism and Mādhyamika is the formula known in connection with Buddhism as the fourfold negation and which in Pyrrhonic form might be called the fourfold indeterminacy.

In Pyrrhonism the fourfold indeterminacy is used as a maxim for practice. This maxim is also related to the shorter, "nothing more" maxim used by Democritus.

Two truths doctrine

notes a correspondence between the Pyrrhonist and Madhyamaka views about truth:
Thus in Pyrrhonism "absolute truth" corresponds to acatalepsy and "conventional truth" to phantasiai.

Causation

Buddhist philosopher Jan Westerhoff says "many of Nāgārjuna’s arguments concerning causation bear strong similarities to classical sceptical arguments as presented in the third book of Sextus Empiricus’s Outlines of Pyrrhonism."

Dependent origination

described the Pyrrhonist view which corresponds with the Buddhist view of dependent origination as follows:
...they say that appearances, which they call φαντασίαι, are produced from all objects, not according to the nature of the objects themselves, but according to the condition of mind or body of those to whom these appearances come. Therefore they call absolutely all things that affect men's sense τὰ πρός τι This expression means that there is nothing at all that is self-dependent or which has its own power and nature, but that absolutely all things have "reference to something else" and seem to be such as their is appearance is while they are seen, and such as they are formed by our senses, to whom they come, not by the things themselves, from which they have proceeded.

Similarly, the ancient Anonymous Commentary on Plato's Theaetetus says, with a notable parallel with the terms from the Heart Sutra :
The Pyrrhonists say that everything is relative in a different sense, according to which nothing is in itself, but everything is viewed relative to other things. Neither colour nor shape nor sound nor taste nor smells nor textures nor any other object of perception has an intrinsic character....

Suspension of belief

Suspension of belief is the principle practice of Pyrrhonism. Nāgārjuna describes the corresponding practice in Buddhism as, “When one affirms being, there is a seizing of awful and vicious beliefs, which arise from desire and hatred, and from that contentions arise,”, “By taking any standpoint whatsoever, one is attacked by the writhing snakes of the afflictions. But those whose mind has no standpoint are not caught.”

Arguments against personhood

Sextus Empiricus argued that "person" could not be precisely defined. He debunks various definitions of “human” given by philosophical schools, by showing that they are speculative and disagree with each other, that they identify properties rather than the property-holder, and that none of these definitions seem to include every human and exclude every non-human. This debunking is similar to the Buddhist arguments against the existence of the “person.” The person is said to lack identifiable entity-hood. A large section of Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā is devoted to demonstrating that the experiencing person cannot be established as existing itself.

Good and evil do not exist by nature

Sextus Empiricus argued that by realizing that nothing is by nature more to be striven for than avoided or vice versa, but is instead contingent on occasion and circumstances, that one can live well-spirited and untroubled, not elated and not depressed, and thus accepting occurrences which take place of necessity, be liberated from the distress of beliefs, be they beliefs that something bad is at hand or something good. Nāgārjuna made a nearly identical claim: “By seeing lack of existence by nature, the thirst for conjoining with the good and the thirst for disjoining from difficulty are destroyed. Thus there is release.”

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