Early Buddhist Teaching as Proto-śūnyavāda

Abstract

This article argues that the search for a metaphysical foundation to early Buddhist thought is futile. For if the world of experience is a cognitive construction, as implied in a number of early discourses, it follows that thought cannot transcend its limits, and cannot attain an objective picture of reality. Despite this sceptical anti-realism, the Buddha’s focus on the causes of suffering also suggests that phenomena – although constructed and ultimately unreal – follow a regular order, and so are in some sense objectively real. Two orientations to the Buddha’s Dhamma can thus be identified, ‘anti-realism’ and ‘constructed realism’, which are roughly equivalent to what the canonical teachings term ‘no view’ and ‘correct view’.