It could exhaustingly be notable to make the acquaintance of a Greek Buddhist as we speak. Regardless of having originated in Asia, that religion — or philosophy, or lifestyle, or whatever you prefer to name it — now has adherents all around the world. Modern-day Buddhists needn’t make an arduous journey to be able to belowtake an much more arduous course of examine below a recognized master; nor are the types of Buddhism they practice at all times recognizin a position to the layman. What’s extra surprising is that the transplantation into and hybridization with other cultures that has led to so many novel strains of Buddhism was occurring even within the historical world.
Take, for examinationple, the “Greco-Buddhism” described in the Religion for Breakquick video above, the story of which includes a variety of fascinating figures each universally recognized and relatively obscure. Probably the most well-known of all of them can be Alexander the Nice, who, as host Andrew Henry places it, “conquered a massive empire stretching from Greece throughout central Asia all the best way to the Indus River, Hellenizing the populations alongside the best way.”
However “the cultural alternate didn’t simply go a method,” as evidenced by the still-new Buddhist religion additionally unfolding within the other direction, illustrated by items of textual content and artworks clearly formed by each civilizational currents.
Other main players in Greco-Buddhism embody the philosopher Pyrrho of Elis, who traveled with Alexander and took concepts of the suspension of judgment from India’s “health clubnosophists”; Ashoka, emperor of the Indian subcontinent within the third century BC, an avowed Buddhist who renounced violence for compassion (and professionalselytization); and King Menander, “essentially the most well-known Greek who converted to Buddhism,” who seems as a character in an early Buddhist textual content. It may nonetheless be difficult to say for positive precisely who believed what in that period, but it surely’s not exhausting to identify resonances between Buddhist principles, broadly communicateing, and people of such broadly recognized historical Greek faculties of thought as Stoicism. Each of these perception systems now happen to have a great deal of currency in Silicon Valley, although what legacy they’ll go away to be discovered in its ruins a couple millennia from now stays to be seen.
Related content:
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Concepts of the Hero in Greek Civilization (A Free Harvard Course)
Primarily based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His tasks embody the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the e book The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll by way of Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social internetwork formerly generally known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
