Understanding Buddhism: Principles, History, and Catholic Insights
This is the eleventh article in a series. To learn more, see: “The -Isms Encyclopedia: Historical and Philosophical Ideas Explained” by Mr. Phillip Campbell.
In the history of religion, Buddhism and Christianity share analogous trajectories of development. They both grew out of preexisting religions, Christianity from Judaism and Buddhism from Hinduism. Both faiths spread by means of traveling evangelists. Both embraced asceticism and spawned rich monastic movements. And both Christianity and Buddhism transformed the cultures in which they took root. Indeed, Buddhism has been as formative in the cultures of East Asia as Christianity has been for Europe.
Once confined to East and South Asia, Buddhism has expanded into the West—not only through immigration but also through conversions of Westerners, often attracted to its rich spiritual traditions and seeking a non-Western form of spirituality. It is thus important for Catholics to understand the fundamental principles of Buddhism, as it positions itself as a rival spirituality to the Christian Gospel.
Though no single article could do justice to the complex tapestry of thought and tradition that constitutes Buddhism, we can nevertheless say a few words about the essential idea common to the different strains of Buddhism and speak generally about its history.
Siddhartha Gautama
We must begin our discussion of Buddhism with its enigmatic founder, Siddhartha Gautama. Much of Buddha’s life was written generations after his death. Therefore, it is difficult to disentangle fact from legend. What follows is the traditional account of his life:
Siddhartha Gautama, who would become known as the Buddha or “the Enlightened One,” was born around 563 BC in Lumbini (present-day Nepal) as a prince of the Shakya clan to King Śuddhodana and Queen Maya. Like most Indians of his day, Siddhartha was raised in the Hindu religion. Raised in luxury within the palace at Kapilavastu, he was shielded from suffering by his father, who feared a prophecy that his son would become a great spiritual teacher rather than a powerful ruler.
At age 29, Siddhartha wandered beyond the confines of the palace and encountered the “Four Sights”—an old man, a sick person, a corpse, and an ascetic—which profoundly revealed to him the realities of aging, illness, death, and the possibility of renunciation. Disenchanted with life, he left his palace, wife Yashodhara, and newborn son in the middle of the night to seek enlightenment.
For six years, Siddhartha practiced extreme asceticism as a wandering mendicant, nearly starving himself in pursuit of liberation. At age 35, sitting in meditation under a pipal tree in Bodh Gaya (now in Bihar, India), it is said that he attained full enlightenment after defeating inner doubts and temptations, realizing the nature of suffering and the path to end it. Becoming the Buddha (“Enlightened”), he then taught the Middle Way—a balanced path avoiding indulgence and asceticism—beginning with his first sermon in the Deer Park at Sarnath, where he expounded the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, which we will discuss below.
For the next 45 years, he wandered northeastern India, teaching diverse audiences, establishing a monastic community, and attracting thousands of followers. He passed away at around age 80 in 483 BC after eating a meal that led to illness.
Over the millennia, countless sages and scholars have emerged within Buddhism and contributed to its development.
Principles of Buddhism
Buddhism rests on a fourfold hierarchy of principles about the human condition and the way to happiness. This hierarchy begins with descriptive observations about human existence and proceeds to proscriptive remedies for what ought to be done about it. These are called the “Four Noble Truths.” It is important to remember that Buddhism began as a reform movement within Hinduism. Buddha sought a way to attain Enlightenment and break the Hindu cycle of reincarnation. The Four Noble Truths are thus:
Dukkha: The Acceptance of Suffering
The first “Noble Truth” of Buddhism is the reality of suffering, which is called dukkha. This concept of dukkha refers not just to positive suffering (i.e., being sick or injured); it includes the dissatisfaction, stress, or unease that arises from the transitory nature of life—that even the best things in life are temporary, that we are all bound to be disappointed at one time or another, that all good things must come to an end, that the ultimate causes of things eludes us. Dukkha is something like existential angst.
Buddhism begins by asking one to accept that dukkha is a fundamental part of reality woven into our experience. It is an inevitable part of life.
The Cause of Suffering
Why do people suffer? Buddhism tells us that suffering exists because of desire, tanha. Tanha is a word that means “craving” or “attachment.” According to Buddhism, all our suffering arises from inordinate attachments. Because all things are impermanent, attachment to desires for pleasure, meaning, happiness, or permanence causes disappointment, loss, and suffering, as individuals struggle against the natural flux of life. This stems from ignorance about the true nature of reality. We continually grasp for fulfillments and outcomes that life just can’t give us.
For Buddhists, this philosophy even accounts for physical suffering. E.g., if I am suffering because I am sick, my suffering is due to the fact that I am too attached to the idea that I would rather be healthy.
The End of Suffering
It follows, then, that if we would be free of suffering, we must learn to give up our attachments. To use the example of sickness, if I let go of my attachment to health, I would find it easier to be at peace while I am sick. We can stop being disappointed in life if we give up our unrealistic expectations driven by our cravings. Buddhism thus adopts a fundamentally stoic attitude about human experience.
The Eightfold Path
How do we attain this detachment? According to Buddhism, the answer is to follow the Eightfold Path, a balanced approach of wisdom, ethical conduct, and mental discipline, essentially developing a life of virtue. The Eightfold Path consists of:
- Right Understanding
- Right Thought
- Right Speech
- Right Action
- Right Livelihood
- Right Effort
- Right Mindfulness
- Right Concentration
Living the Eightfold Path ensures we are sufficiently detached from unreasonable expectations about life and frees us from the cycle of dukkha. This allows one to achieve nirvana. Nirvana is the ultimate goal in Buddhism, representing the “extinguishing” or “quenching” of the fires of greed, hatred, and delusion. It is a state of supreme peace, liberation, and freedom from suffering. Nirvana is not a place like the Christian heaven; rather, it is a state of enlightened mind achieved through the Eightfold Path. Attaining nirvana frees one from the endless cycle of suffering and reincarnation, because one no longer has any worldly attachments in need of purification.
History of Buddhism
After the death of Siddhartha Gautama around 483 BC, his followers gathered to preserve his teachings, which had until then been passed on orally. This led to the First Buddhist Council, held shortly after his passing. Monks recited and organized the Buddha’s discourses and rules of monastic conduct. Over the next two centuries, Buddhism remained largely confined to northeastern India, spreading gradually through wandering monks and the patronage of local rulers. The religion began to take on a more formal structure during this period, and disagreements over doctrine and discipline eventually led to the emergence of different schools of thought. Many of these sects still persist today.
The single greatest turning point in Buddhism’s early history was the conversion of the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka around 260 BC. After a particularly brutal military campaign left him horrified by its carnage, Ashoka embraced Buddhism. He dedicated his reign to spreading the principles of non-violence, compassion, and righteous governance. He sent missionaries across the Indian subcontinent and beyond, to Sri Lanka, Central Asia, and possibly as far as Mesopotamia. Ashoka’s son Mahinda is traditionally credited with bringing Buddhism to Sri Lanka, where it took deep root and became the foundation of what would later be known as Theravāda Buddhism, the oldest surviving school of the faith.
As trade routes expanded across Asia, Buddhism traveled with merchants and missionaries along the Silk Road into Central Asia and China, arriving there around the first century AD. From China, it spread further into Korea, Japan, and Vietnam over the following centuries, adapting to the cultures it encountered along the way. This branch, known as Mahāyāna Buddhism, emphasized the ideal of the bodhisattva, one who delays their own enlightenment out of compassion for all living things, a kind of Buddhist saint who not only seeks enlightenment but works to guide others to it as well. Mahāyāna Buddhism proved especially flexible and appealing to East Asian societies. A later development, Vajrayāna Buddhism, took hold in Tibet and Mongolia from around the seventh century onward, incorporating elaborate ritual and mystical elements.
Back in India, the religion that had been born there paradoxically began to decline from around the seventh century AD onward. It was gradually absorbed back into a reviving Hindu tradition. Indian Buddhism was dealt a severe blow by the Islamic invasions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which destroyed many great monastic universities. Yet by this point, Buddhism had long since become a world religion. Today, it is practiced by roughly half a billion people around the globe, with Theravāda traditions predominant in Southeast Asia, Mahāyāna traditions strong in East Asia, and Vajrayāna traditions centered in Tibet and the Himalayan world.
From a Catholic Perspective
Comparing Buddhism and Catholicism is interesting because there are profound points of agreement as well as profound points of disagreement.
On the one hand, Catholicism and Buddhism share common ground in their insistence on detachment as a means to happiness. Catholic spirituality has always recognized the need to practice detachment as a means of mortifying our passions. St. Paul says, “I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound; in any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want” (Phil. 4:12). Some of the Church’s greatest spiritual masters, like St. Ignatius Loyola and St. Terese of Lisieux, have made radical renunciationof one’s own desires the heart of their spirituality.
The entire monastic tradition within Catholicism began with the Desert Fathers’ practice of mortifying desire through monastic discipline. We can, therefore, understand and empathize with the Buddhist desire for renunciation. The Second Vatican Council recognized this when it said, “Buddhism, in its various forms, realizes the radical insufficiency of this changeable world. It teaches a way by which men, in a devout and confident spirit, may be able either to acquire the state of perfect liberation, or attain, by their own efforts or through higher help, supreme illumination” (Nostra Aetate, 2).
Still, it must be recognized that though Buddhists and Catholics discuss the same ideas, they are within radically different contexts. For example, in Catholicism, the detachment we practice is detachment from disordered desires so that our hearts can be focused on accomplishing the will of God. Buddhism, on the other hand, advocates for a negation of all desire, a sort of “neutral” state where the soul wills neither good nor evil nor even its own continued existence nor non-existence. It is a detachment of total indifference. While Catholicism seeks to reorder and restore man’s faculties to a rightly ordered state aided by grace, Buddhism seeks to negate them entirely.
Prayer: Personal Communion vs. Impersonal Contemplation
Prayer is vastly different as well. Prayer in Buddhism is not directed towards any specific entity; instead, it often involves reciting aspirations, dedications of merit, or invocations to Buddha or various bodhisattvas to inspire qualities like compassion and resolve, set positive intentions, or invoke inner blessings—essentially, it boils down to a form of focused affirmation or devotional contemplation, a spiritualized “positive thinking.” Some Buddhist traditions blend silent meditation with recited prayers or mantras. This is different from every Christian tradition, where prayer is actual supplication to God, who is regarded as a personal being capable of hearing our prayers and intervening in our lives.
Suffering and Salvation: Escape or Redemption?
Suffering, as well, is fundamentally different. Buddhism proposes a path for negating suffering by attaining nirvana. Catholicism does not seek an escape from suffering but rather seeks to make sense of suffering by uniting it to the suffering of Christ and offering it up to God. In the passage from Philippians quoted above, when St. Paul says “I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want,” his secret his not the negation of suffering through spiritual enlightenment, but rather “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:12). In other words, suffering is a fundamental reality we cannot escape. Jesus does not numb us to the reality of suffering but gives us grace to bear it and transform it into a salvific act.
And, of course, the Buddhist motive of escaping the cycle of reincarnation is a non-issue in Catholicism, where every soul is utterly unique and has only one single life with which to work out its salvation.
Two Different Final Visions
While Buddhism and Catholicism both recognize the profound role of detachment and inner discipline in the spiritual life, their ultimate visions diverge sharply. Buddhism seeks the cessation of suffering through the extinguishing of desire and the dissolution of the self in nirvana, whereas Catholicism embraces suffering as a path to union with Christ, transforming it through grace rather than negating it.
For Catholics encountering Buddhism in the modern West, respectful dialogue is valuable, as Vatican II acknowledged the tradition’s insights into the insufficiency of this world, yet the Gospel remains distinct in proclaiming a personal God who redeems suffering and offers eternal communion rather than mere liberation from existence. Ultimately, the Catholic call is not to escape the human condition but to enter more deeply into it with hope, trusting that true peace is found not in detachment alone, but in surrender to divine love. In Catholicism, the answer to all these riddles about the human condition is found squarely in the cross of Christ.
Continuing the Discussion
Homeschool Connections offers two world religions courses that include Buddhism:
- World Religions with Christopher Martin, PhD for 7th to 12th grade (8 weeks)
- World Religions with Kyle Moore for 10th to 12th grade (12 weeks)
What are your thoughts on this topic? Join other homeschooling parents and me in the Homeschool Connections Facebook Group or in the HSC Community to continue the conversation.
