Philosopher · Antiquity
Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha)
c. 480–400 BC · Buddhism (the Middle Way)
Founder of Buddhism. Nostra Aetate 2 says that Buddhism “realizes the radical insufficiency of this changeable world” and teaches a way to liberation or supreme enlightenment; the Church esteems its moral and contemplative discipline.
A prince who left his palace on seeing sickness, old age and death, and after years of asceticism found a middle way: the Four Noble Truths (suffering, its origin in craving, its cessation, the Eightfold Path) and the teaching of no-self (anatta) and dependent origination. He declined to answer whether there is a God or a soul, and taught compassion for all beings and a discipline of attention that his monks have kept for twenty-five centuries.
Why he matters: The most serious non-theistic account of the human condition, and the one that the Christian contemplative tradition recognizes most readily: impermanence, detachment, the silence beyond concepts. Where he says there is no self, the Church says there is a person loved into being; where he offers cessation, she offers the beatific vision.
Where to be careful
No Creator, no soul that persists, no grace: salvation is self-effort and liberation is extinction of the self. The Church teaches creation, the immortal soul, the resurrection of the body, and a beatitude that is fullness. Dominus Iesus (2000) warns against treating all paths as one.
Reading
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The DhammapadaThe Buddha's sayings; the shortest way in.
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The Unexpected Way: On Converting from Buddhism to CatholicismPaul Williams · A Buddhist scholar on why the Cross answered what the Dharma asked.
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Zen and the Birds of AppetiteThomas Merton · A Catholic monk in conversation with Zen; read with the Church's cautions on syncretism.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.