page_title: Buddhist philosophy
section_title: East Asian Buddhism
hierarchical_section_title: Buddhist philosophy / East Asian Buddhism
caption_attribution_description: English: Ancient painting of Sramana Zhiyi, founder of the Tiantai school of Buddhism.
context_page_description: Buddhist philosophy refers to the philosophical investigations and systems of inquiry that developed among various Buddhist schools in India following the parinirvana of the Buddha and later spread throughout Asia. The Buddhist path combines both philosophical reasoning and meditation. The Buddhist traditions present a multitude of Buddhist paths to liberation, and Buddhist thinkers in India and subsequently in East Asia have covered topics as varied as phenomenology, ethics, ontology, epistemology, logic and philosophy of time in their analysis of these paths.
  Early Buddhism was based on empirical evidence gained by the sense organs and the Buddha seems to have retained a skeptical distance from certain metaphysical questions, refusing to answer them because they were not conducive to liberation but led instead to further speculation. A recurrent theme in Buddhist philosophy has been the reification of concepts, and the subsequent return to the Buddhist Middle Way.
  Particular points of Buddhist philosophy have often been the subject of disputes between different schools of Buddhism.
caption: Painting of Śramaṇa Zhiyi of the Tiantai school.
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