Stoicism and Buddhism: a comparison

Whether we realize it or not, we all have a philosophy of life. That’s the premise of a new book that I co-edited with my colleagues and friends Skye Cleary and Dan Kaufman: How to Live a Good Life — A Guide to Choosing Your Personal Philosophy. The book presents an overview of 15 philosophies or religions, as seen and experienced by the 15 contributing authors. Why include religions? Because we argue that a philosophy of life, at a minimum, is made of two components: a metaphysics, i.e., an account of how the world hangs together, so to speak; and an ethics, i.e., an account of how we ought to live in the world. If that account includes transcendental entities, gods, and so forth, then we have a religion; if it doesn’t, then we have a philosophy. Either way, what counts the most is the ethics.

I am taking advantage of the publication of the book to begin a short series comparing Stoicism with some of the other philosophies covered in How to Live a Good Life, particularly the three big eastern ones: Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism, covered respectively by Owen Flanagan, Bryan W. Van Norden, and Robin R. Wang. Let me start with Buddhism, though I have already commented on its similarities and differences with Stoicism. In the rest of this essay I will follow Flanagan’s outline of Buddhism and comment from a Stoic perspective whenever appropriate.

Right at the onset of the chapter, Owen tells us that “Tibetan Buddhists believe that anger, resentment, and their suite of emotions are categorically bad, always unwarranted, wrong, and ‘unwholesome.’” Which is precisely the Stoic position, as articulated in detail in Seneca’s On Anger. Both the Buddhist and the Stoic approaches are sharply distinct from the more “commonsense” view, which happens to be the one articulated by Aristotle:

“Aristotle says that ‘certain passions, if one makes a proper use of them, act as arms’: which would be true if, like weapons of war, they could be taken up or laid aside at the pleasure of their wielder. These arms, which Aristotle assigns to virtue, fight of their own accord, do not wait to be seized by the hand, and possess a…