Level 47
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Buddhist and East Asian Philosophy

Early Buddhism and the Four Noble Truths

The life and teaching of the historical Buddha and the foundational doctrines of suffering, impermanence, and the path to liberation.

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A condensed, point-by-point summary of the module, for reviewing right before a test or exam.

  1. The Life of Siddhartha Gautama and the Great Departure. Siddhartha Gautama, a Shakya prince, renounced palace life to seek liberation from suffering.
  2. The Four Noble Truths and the Nature of Dukkha. The Four Noble Truths diagnose suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the path leading to that cessation.
  3. The Eightfold Path and the Middle Way. The Eightfold Path charts a middle course of ethics, meditation, and wisdom between indulgence and asceticism.
  4. Anatta: The Doctrine of Non-Self. Anatta denies a permanent, unchanging self, analyzing the person into five impermanent aggregates.
  5. Dependent Origination and Impermanence. Dependent origination explains all phenomena as arising through conditioned causes, none independent or permanent.
  6. Karma and Rebirth in Early Buddhist Cosmology. Karma as volitional intention drives rebirth across a vast, non-eternal cosmos of many realms.
  7. The Pali Canon and Early Monastic Community. The orally transmitted Pali Canon and the rule-governed sangha preserved and organized the Buddha's teaching.
  8. Theravada Buddhism and the Abhidharma Tradition. Theravada preserved the Pali Canon and developed the Abhidhamma's systematic analysis of momentary phenomena.

This is the starting point of Buddhist and East Asian Philosophy: you don't need any prior knowledge of this subject to begin.

Key points

Visual module map

1The Life of Siddhartha Gautama and the Great Departure
2The Eightfold Path and the Middle Way
3Dependent Origination and Impermanence
4Karma and Rebirth in Early Buddhist Cosmology
5Theravada Buddhism and the Abhidharma Tradition

Alternative visual view: a simplified sequence of some of the module's key points, in their order within the syllabus.

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Final test

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Memory

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Time Attack

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Chronological Order

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Further reading

Bibliography and cited sources used to create this module.

  • Gombrich, R. (2006). Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
  • Gombrich, R. (1996). How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings. London: Athlone Press.
  • Rahula, W. (1974). What the Buddha Taught (Rev. ed.). New York: Grove Press.
  • Harvey, P. (2013). An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Kalupahana, D.J. (1975). Causality: The Central Philosophy of Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
  • Norman, K.R. (1997). A Philological Approach to Buddhism: The Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai Lectures 1994. London: School of Oriental and African Studies.