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Buddhist Philosophy Is of “To Be” Philosophy



Author(s)

LIN Xiaohui

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DOI:10.17265/2328-2177/2024.12.009

Independent scholar, Tianjing, China

Based on the two roots of “to be” in Indo-European languages, this paper proposes that Brahman, Buddha, and bhutatathata all come from the second root, of “bhu (to be)”, because “bhu” belongs to the same root as the Greek root “phy”, physis from “phy”, is naturalism. Therefore, Brahma, Buddha, and bhutatathata are all knowledge related to natural science. The first root of “as (to be)” has led to the debate in buddhist philosophy about the asmiti and anasmiti. The spread of Buddhist philosophy in China is due to the lack of “as/bhu (to be)”, vocabulary and grammar in Chinese; as a result, the Buddhist verses translated in ancient China became a philosophy without “as/bhu (to be)”. At the same time, some Buddhist words have lost their connection with the root and the grammatical features of “as/bhu (to be)”, resulting in the spread of Buddhist philosophy in China having been into a language game. We should put Buddhist philosophy back into the Indo-European language family; it transforms the Buddhist philosophy of speaking ancient Chinese into the Buddhist modern philosophical language, and makes Buddhist philosophy develop into a set of understandable and logical normative philosophy.

to be, Buddhist philosophy, the west philosophy, Indo-European civilization