Early Buddhism & Abhidharma

Why do we suffer, and how can suffering end?

Siddhārtha Gautama joined the śramaṇa wanderers, tried and rejected both a comfortable life and extreme austerity, and taught a ‘middle way’. After his death his discourses were memorised and later written down; Abhidharma scholars then systematised them into analyses of momentary physical and mental events (dharmas).

Everything we might call ‘me’—body, feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness—is impermanent and conditioned, so none of it is a lasting self. Clinging to what cannot last produces suffering; remove the craving through ethics, meditation and insight, and the suffering it feeds ceases (nirvāṇa).

1. Four Noble Truths: suffering, its cause, its cessation, the path.
2. No permanent self underlies the five aggregates.
3. All conditioned things arise dependently and pass away.

Buddhism spread across Asia and gave rise to Madhyamaka, Yogācāra and the East Asian schools; its analysis of the self is now discussed alongside Hume and contemporary philosophy of mind.