Buddhism and the Silk Road

Abstract

Sometime from the seventh to the fourth century BCE in northeastern India lived a man named Siddhartha Gautama, who came to be known as the Buddha, or “Enlightened One.”1 A spiritual reformer who sought a “Middle Path” between worldliness and asceticism, the Buddha preached a message based on Four Noble Truths: that life is suffering, that there is a cause of that suffering, namely, desire, that there is a way to end suffering, and that the way is by following an Eightfold Path of right opinion, right thought, right speech, right activity, right livelihood, right effort, right attention, and right concentration. In contrast to a localized approach to religion that seems to have pertained in ancient human societies, the Buddha taught that his analysis was universal, that it was true for all people everywhere regardless of their culture.

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