Early Monastic Buddhism

This work is a revised, enlarged, and reorganized edition of the author’s earlier study published in 1941. Its scope is deliberately confined to the historical Buddha and the fundamental teachings associated with the earliest Buddhist tradition. The opening discussion gives substantial attention to pre-Buddhist Brahmanical and non-Brahmanical systems in order to clarify the religious, philosophical, and ascetic environment within which Buddhism emerged as a distinct path toward the highest good. The book subsequently moves from historical biography to systematic doctrine. It examines the Buddha’s missionary career and then develops a structured account of Buddhist ethics, meditation, psychological analysis, causation, and liberation. The concluding discussions of the unconditioned and the Tathāgata address the philosophical meaning of Nibbāna and reject interpretations of liberation as either annihilation or the survival of an eternal individual self.