Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha)
Buddhist · South Asia · 480 to 400 BCE
Teacher whose path aims to end suffering by seeing that clinging to a fixed self and lasting things is mistaken.
What it is
The Buddha, traditionally named Siddhartha Gautama, was the founder of Buddhism, who taught a path to liberation from suffering. The title Buddha means awakened. He is one of the most important Asian thinkers and spiritual teachers of all time, and his teachings are the foundation of Buddhist philosophy, which began in South Asia and later spread across the rest of Asia and now has a global following.
He belonged to the Śākya clan, a ruling family in the area of the present border between India and Nepal, and is also called Buddha Śākyamuni, the sage of the Śākyas. His dates are not certain, and scholars place him somewhere between the 500s and the 400s BCE. His teachings were preserved after his death in texts known as the Nikāyas or Āgamas.
The main ideas
- Liberation from suffering. The point of his teaching is the quest for liberation from suffering. To reach the good life, he said, one has to understand what suffering comes from.
- The nature of persons. His account of where suffering comes from rests on claims about what a person is. One of his central teachings is non-self: that there is no unchanging self at the core of a person.
- Karma and rebirth. He taught that actions have effects that carry on, and that beings are reborn until the causes of rebirth and suffering have been eliminated.
- Nirvana. The goal is nirvana, the cessation of suffering and the end of the cycle of rebirth.
- The middle path. He called his teaching a middle path between two extreme views.
What it looks like in practice
Picture someone who is tormented by a worry that keeps returning and who believes it is part of who they are. The Buddha's teaching invites them to look closely at what the worry is made of, a thought, a feeling, a memory, and to see that it arises and passes on conditions, not as a fixed thing. This is an illustration of the approach, not a passage from the texts.
Books and moments
- The Nikāyas and Āgamas are the early collections in which his teachings were preserved.
- The middle path is the name for his way between extremes.
Questions and criticism
- Which teaching is his? His teachings come to us through later texts, and it is fair to ask how closely they follow him.
- Is there really no self? The teaching of non-self is among the hardest to accept. It is fair to ask what then continues from one life to the next.
- Philosophy or religion? His teaching is both a path of practice and a body of philosophical argument, and readers weigh the two in different ways.
Close neighbours
The pages on Nagarjuna and on Madhyamaka show how later Buddhist philosophers developed his ideas, and the page on Theravada describes another school that claims to follow his teaching.
Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 9 October 2026. The sources are listed below.
Where to start reading
Books by Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) or about them, from the easiest way in to the harder ones.
Covers belong to their publishers and are shown so you can recognise the book.
Philosophies they belong to or are close to
Who they connect to
Influenced
- Arthur Schopenhauer · Schopenhauer read Buddhist and Upanishadic texts and ranked them with Plato and Kant. He saw a likeness between his view of suffering and the Four Noble Truths. (scholars disagree about this link)
- B. R. Ambedkar · He turned to Buddhism late in life and read its teaching as a basis for equality.
- Mohandas Gandhi · Gandhi's ahimsa draws on a tradition of non-harm shared by Buddhist, Jain and Hindu teachers. (scholars disagree about this link)
- Vasubandhu · Vasubandhu wrote systematic treatises interpreting the Buddha's teaching.
Runs parallel to
- Derek Parfit · Parfit argued that a person is nothing over and above a stream of connected events. He wrote that the Buddha would have agreed.
- Jiddu Krishnamurti · His stress on watching the mind clearly echoes Buddhist mindfulness, though he rejected every school and teacher. (scholars disagree about this link)
- Mahavira · Both taught in the same region and period, and both rejected the authority of the old rituals and taught paths of release.
Other Buddhist thinkers
- Nagarjuna · 150 to 250
- Asanga · 300 to 370
- Vasubandhu · 350 to 430
- Dignaga · 480 to 540
- Candrakirti · 600 to 650
- Dharmakirti · 600 to 660
- Wonhyo · 617 to 686
Sources we used
- The Buddha · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read on 9 October 2026
- Buddha · Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read on 9 October 2026