The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy

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Jan Westerhoff unfolds the story of one of the richest episodes in the history of Indian thought, the development of Buddhist philosophy during the first millennium CE. The book covers the period beginning with the composition of the Abhidharma works before the beginning of the Common Era and continues up to the time of Dharmakirti in the sixth century, focusing on Abhidharma scholasticism, the Madhyamaka theory of emptiness, Yogacara idealism, and the logico-epistemological school.

A remarkable accomplishment especially for its consistent emphasis on a systematic engagement with Buddhist philosophy' (Birgit Kellner, Asiatische Studien-Etudes Asiatiques)

A rich and significant contribution both to Buddhist scholarship in the West and to its philosophical richness' (Graham Priest, Religious Studies)

'One of the landmark monographs charting the trajectory of Indian Buddhist philosophy' (Rafal Stepien, Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies)

'Simply the best high-level introduction to Buddhist philosophy now available' (Dhivan Thomas Jones, Western Buddhist Review)

'A highly readable and most valuable achievement of sustained and brilliant scholarship (Douglas Berger, Journal of Buddhist Etbico)

An ambitious and thorough addition to the Oxford History of Philosophy series. This book, written by an eminent specialist in the field of Buddhist philosophy, serves as an advanced introduction to a fertile period of philosophy' (Ethan Mills, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews)

One of the most famous of all Buddhist metaphors is, without doubt, the description of the Buddha's teaching, the dharma, as a wheel. The very first teaching of the Buddha, after all, came to be known as the 'discourse turning the Wheel of the Doctrine' (dharma-cakra-pravartana-sūtra). Why precisely the teaching should be compared to a wheel might not be altogether obvious to us, and it was also not obvious to some of the Buddhist scholastics, who discussed the matter in considerable detail. Vasubandhu describes a specific realization of the teaching as the wheel of dharma, namely the so-called 'path of seeing (darsana mårga), the first direct, non-conceptual insight into emptiness. This is considered to be like a wheel because it moves quickly, conveys the meditator to further spiritual realization, and crushes the defilements under it. The Sarvästivada master Ghoşaka considers the noble eightfold path to be a wheel, because some of its parts correspond to the spokes, others to the hub and to the rim. Later Tibetan commentators explain the wheel metaphor by reference to the universal monarch (cakravartin), whose attribute is a wheel.

As the king's dominion extends from country to country, so the Buddha's teaching extends from master to successive disciples.

A fairly obvious feature of a wheel is its combination of the static and the dynamic. After a 360-degree revolution a wheel returns to its original position while also having moved to another place. In this respect it resembles the development of Buddhist thought in India. In one sense it stays always the same, to the extent that all of its manifold developments can be traced back to some element of the Buddha's original teaching (though not necessarily a very explicit one); in another sense it is continuously changing, varying the way the Buddhist message is conveyed relative to different audiences and different times. Our discussion in the following pages attempts to be faithful to both aspects, giving an account of the changing manifestations of Buddhist philosophy while also examining the extent to which it is a coherent enterprise drawn from the single source of the Buddha's insight.