Epicurus and Buddhism
James Ure, at the Buddhist Blog, has some thoughts about Epicurus. He writes:
What I was most interested in was that he believed and taught “that events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space.” This sounds very similar to the pivotal Buddhist belief of interdependence or dependent co-arising, which says that nothing exists separate from anything else. All is interconnected in a web of cause and effect.
This includes sharing the belief that something can not come from nothing and therefore the Universe must be endless yet because of his belief in a shifting, interconnected web of atoms that same Universe can not be unchanging. It was his belief that the Universe is eternal but only in the sense that it goes through cycles of birth and death along the way. Yet another shade of thinking, which can be found in Buddhist philosophy. As well as a theory that can be found is still found in modern day science via the cyclic theory of the Universe.
He was also dedicated to over-coming pain and fear, which is not unlike the dedication that we Buddhists seek to over-come what we would call suffering in general. He taught that curbing desires are important if one wants to avoid that pain and fear, which is another teaching shared in Buddhism. This included going into the detail as to how desires cause suffering such as mentioning indulging too much on foods because it leads to pain that one might not be able to afford such delicacies in the future. The idea of short term happiness doesn’t bring long term happiness.
I’ve just started reading more about Greek philosophy as part of my writing about the Six Elements, and although I haven’t got to Epicurus yet he borrows his atomic theory from the earlier Democritus, whose theory was opposed to the notion that the world was made up of the four elements that Empedocles posited. The whole “debate” seems to have centered on the problem of reconciling change and being. I’m still struggling to get my head around it all.
It’s worth reading the whole of James’s article.
6 Responses to “Epicurus and Buddhism”
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Published: Nov 13 2008
you would be surprised at how often you run into similarities in all religion and philosophies. Also now a days with string theory adding much evidence to Buddhist practice you have to start to think, perhaps this philosophy is the closest to the divine.
@Dale
anyone that studies certain schools of Buddhism would soon realise that it has more to do with philosophy than religion. People forget “religion” is a western word! Buddhism is the search for truth not devotion is some god.
I guess it depends on how you define the word religion. I tend to think of the main core of religion as being an explanation for suffering and a search for happiness. With theistic religion happiness is heaven and attained after death through faith or good works, depending on the tradition. In Buddhism happiness is attained through the extinguishing (nibbana) of greed, hatred, and delusion, which extinguishing can take place in this life or a future one.
Buddhism’s often described as a “nontheistic religion” and probably you two guys are just using the word religion in different ways.
Unfortunately a lot of the writing (by/about?) of Epicurus is lost to us. Only a few fragments remained. If one read the little that remained from Epicurus one will be surprised by its near similarity with Buddhism. It would not be surprising if Epicurus (he believed in a happy life as oppose to the popular idea about Epicureans of a life of indulgence) had perhaps some exposure to the teachings of Buddhism (I mean 200 years is a fair time for news/ideas to move from India to the Eastern Mediterrean)? Epicurus successfully showed the (then Western) world that one is able to lead a happy life without trusting/believing in a God or Gods.
But along came Christianity (some 300 years later) and most of the people jump on the bandwagon of an new God-idea again.
Just shows…people need Gods. Very few people agree with Nietzsches discovery that God is dead and with Marx that religion is merely a drug (opium). That means most of humanity is in a drugged state believing in a delusion (God).
And then people wonder why we suffer. At least Buddhism have the tools (meditation techniques) to alleviate suffering.
Despite some similarities, Epicurean philosophy is incomaptible with budhism.
The “first noble truth” of budhism is “life is suffering”.
The first thesis of Epicurus is “pleasure is the natural good and goal of life”.
The vorldviews are completely diferent, if not oposite.
The first Noble Truth of Buddhism is indeed that life is suffering, but the third is that there is an end of suffering and the fourth is the way that leads to attaining the end of suffering. Although Buddhism tends to talk about happiness as the goal of life rather than pleasure, the two systems are not as different as your comparison might suggest.