WI: No Buddhism

Many people have posted threads asking what a world would be like without Christianity, or Islam, or perhaps even a world without Abrahamic Religions entirely. Obviously, PODs that occur centuries or millennia before the birth of the Buddha will obviously butterfly away Buddhism if the said POD is in Eurasia. Nonetheless, I am positing that POD itself would be that Siddhartha Gautama is just never born. Obviously, this would butterfly away many South Asian and East Asian cultural and philosophical developments, but how would it affect the world of the Greeks and the rest of Classical Western World. I'm not sure that the butterflies would reach Europe until a few hundred years later. What would Europe and the Near East even be like?

Another question I have to ask is "would someone else have taken Siddhartha's role as a TTL Buddha". Sramanic traditions had already existed for some time during the life of Siddhartha. Jainism is already a thing by this time and perhaps Jainism gains more traction outside of India?


Lastly, would there be greater cultural interplay between Greater Iran and India? What about China.


P.S. I know Schopenhauer's philosophy would be butterflied not only because of the POD would be millennia before his birth, but his philosophy was very much influenced by Buddhist thought. I might be wrong in saying so, but please let me know.
 
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Another question I have to ask is "would someone else have taken Siddhartha's role as a TTL Buddha". Sramanic traditions had already existed for some time during the life of Siddhartha.
As i understand it the India of siddhartha's time was a lot like the judea of the first century bc/ad in that there were a lot of different religious movements around going in different directions so it is fairly plausible that someone will come out on top
 
The period of Buddha was a time when many philosophers and preachers had appeared in India. Besides Buddha, Mahavira, Charvaka and several others preached their own path of salvation. Buddhist, Jainist, Ajivaka, Lokayatha and similar systems had many followers. Most of them were confined to the borders of the subcontinent and disappeared in course of time. Jainism survived as a minor religion. Buddhism alone spread beyond the borders of India and became a global religion because of the patronage of emperors like Ashoka, Kanishka, Harsha etc. If Buddha was not born and Buddhism never appeared on the scene, some other system could have taken its place and might have received the patronage of the emperors and spread outside India. How far and where it could have spread is a matter of speculation.
 
Lastly, would there be greater cultural interplay between Greater Iran and India? What about China.
How exactly? And also, why exactly, would Buddhism not existing promote more Affinity with other Nations and Empires, if the relations are not dependent on religion?
Jainism is already a thing by this time and perhaps Jainism gains more traction outside of India?
Conversion to Jainism is actually difficult as there is a lot of rigid limitations that impeded the spread. People won't agree to give up food habits, lifestyle, etc that easily. Look how small Jainism is in India itself? And such a religion would be beaten down by Hinduism/Vedic Religion PDQ, limiting it to a small region.
Many people have posted threads asking what a world would be like without Christianity, or Islam, or perhaps even a world without Abrahamic Religions entirely. Obviously, PODs that occur centuries or millennia before the birth of the Buddha will obviously butterfly away Buddhism if the said POD is in Eurasia. Nonetheless, I am positing that POD itself would be that Siddhartha Gautama is just never born. Obviously, this would butterfly away many South Asian and East Asian cultural and philosophical developments, but how would it affect the world of the Greeks and the rest of Classical Western World. I'm not sure that the butterflies would reach Europe until a few hundred years later. What would Europe and the Near East even be like?
Christianity, is also having a possibility of having been influenced by Buddhism which, I think, there's a vary high chance for as I don't believe the "Real Jesus". So, in that view, Christianity and it's linked religion, Islam would never exist or exist in totally different ways.

Central Asia would most likely be dominated by Ethnic religions but influenced heavily by Hinduism and little by Zoroastrianism, if any. Paganism would be the dominant religion all around the World with exception to Zoroastrianism and Judaism(which would be a tinier community), which would be Monotheistic. Judaism's survival is also doubted as they could be easily influenced by Greek, Assyrian, Roman and Celtic religious culture.
 
Actually seems like the most difficult "No religion X" paradigm to discuss.

Buddhism is the oldest significant world religion besides Zoroastrianism (older than the Hindu Synthesis?).

It's the religion I also that I would guess is hardest to imagine certain societies without. Its easy to imagine an Middle East without Islam or Europe, in both cases we look at what they were like before and extrapolate, but imagining mainland SE Asia or Tibet without Buddhism seems much more difficult.

I would wager the most intellectually distinct and influential world religion from peers to boot, in ideas and beliefs.

On the scale of asking "What would the world look like without Hebrew monotheism?" (almost everything is different) to "What would the world look like without Rabbinic Judaism / Sikhism?" (not much is different) it's towards the former.
 
Christianity, is also having a possibility of having been influenced by Buddhism which, I think, there's a vary high chance for as I don't believe the "Real Jesus". So, in that view, Christianity and it's linked religion, Islam would never exist or exist in totally different ways.
Just to be clear, Buddhism as an inspiration for Christianity is considered by historians, theologians and people who have read buddhist literature to be pseudohistory at best. Buddhism is pretty antithetical to Christianity in almost every regard, and Judea was pretty central to other philosophies far more similar (like Cynicism).
 
The period of Buddha was a time when many philosophers and preachers had appeared in India. Besides Buddha, Mahavira, Charvaka and several others preached their own path of salvation. Buddhist, Jainist, Ajivaka, Lokayatha and similar systems had many followers. Most of them were confined to the borders of the subcontinent and disappeared in course of time. Jainism survived as a minor religion. Buddhism alone spread beyond the borders of India and became a global religion because of the patronage of emperors like Ashoka, Kanishka, Harsha etc. If Buddha was not born and Buddhism never appeared on the scene, some other system could have taken its place and might have received the patronage of the emperors and spread outside India. How far and where it could have spread is a matter of speculation.
Which of these other philosophies have a chance of being patronized by rulers? Spreading Lokayata would be hard as atheism doesn't mix well with the preexisting theistic systems of neighboring regions. Buddhism, on the other hand, could be syncretized with the preexisting beliefs of people beyond the borders of India. However, I might be wrong in saying so.

Central Asia would most likely be dominated by Ethnic religions but influenced heavily by Hinduism and little by Zoroastrianism, if any. Paganism would be the dominant religion all around the World with exception to Zoroastrianism and Judaism(which would be a tinier community), which would be Monotheistic. Judaism's survival is also doubted as they could be easily influenced by Greek, Assyrian, Roman and Celtic religious culture.

Why is paganism necessarily the likely outcome in a world without Buddhism? Maybe I am missing out on something here. However, if Judaism and Zoroastrianism were to somehow seep into the philosophical landscape of Greater India at the time, do you think a Dharmic "Messianic" religion could arise? Or is that not realistic or feasible?
Actually seems like the most difficult "No religion X" paradigm to discuss.

Buddhism is the oldest significant world religion besides Zoroastrianism (older than the Hindu Synthesis?).

It's the religion I also that I would guess is hardest to imagine certain societies without. Its easy to imagine an Middle East without Islam or Europe, in both cases we look at what they were like before and extrapolate, but imagining mainland SE Asia or Tibet without Buddhism seems much more difficult.

I would wager the most intellectually distinct and influential world religion from peers to boot, in ideas and beliefs.

On the scale of asking "What would the world look like without Hebrew monotheism?" (almost everything is different) to "What would the world look like without Rabbinic Judaism / Sikhism?" (not much is different) it's towards the former.

That is why I asked it, precisely because it is a hard question. Tibetans practiced a religion called Bon before the arrival of Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism has been heavily influenced by Bon. But yes I do agree, it is truly hard to picture certain regions of the world without a certain cultural feature.
 
@Timeline Junkie It is not assured that Tibetans practiced Bön as it exists today. Rather, Bön is now a term used for that older religious tradition that was a collection of shamanism and polytheistic beliefs prior to Hindu influences via Buddhism. Without Buddhism and the aforementioned Hindu influence, Tibetan Bön is not as otl, but is a collection of shamanistic and folk practices without Hindu conceptions of the world, at least those seen from Buddhism. Tibet during its height of geopolitical power, exhibited a strong military impulse, fearsome warriors and an imperial agenda. One can imagine this without Buddhism...
 
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I want to bump this considering that there is another thread about European Buddhism and I found that to be interesting, but would a lack of Buddhism actually have an impact on the development of the Abrahamic Religions? I mean if some states and monarchs are never born, the historical Jesus may not be born, but easily someone could take his place in the macroscale so long as Rome comes to power and the rise of the Hellenistic kingdoms and Alexander/Alexander-figure also happens. I doubt that so perhaps Christianity isn't born because of geopolitical factors being different rather any Buddhist influences.

Let's assume in a world without Buddhism, a form of moderate Jainism becomes far more popular and the Hindu synthesis takes more Jain influences. Zoroastrianism and Iranic polytheism might influence the religious practices of the border regions between Greater Iran and Greater India. I would assume that Hinduism's influence would radiate into places like Tibet. Furthermore, I do not see a centralization of beliefs in this version of Hinduism.

Additionally, a TTL equivalent of Buddhism could perhaps arise in the Near East, the Mediterranean, or East Asia. Just because Siddhartha never got to preach his ideas, it doesn't mean that someone else could not have conceived of them in Athens or Alexandria or in Judaea or perhaps in China. Without a doubt, there would superficial differences, but in terms of philosophy, something very similar could arise.
 
One thing I’ve also realised- with no Buddhism, Indian philosophy has a void in skepticism and whether someone manages to bring that insistence on proof through experimentation as the only way of knowing that something is true that Buddhism brought otl is hugely important for all India’s technological, scientific and medical advances of the first millenium ad.
 
One thing I’ve also realised- with no Buddhism, Indian philosophy has a void in skepticism and whether someone manages to bring that insistence on proof through experimentation as the only way of knowing that something is true that Buddhism brought otl is hugely important for all India’s technological, scientific and medical advances of the first millenium ad.

It is interesting you should mention that. In fact, I read somewhere that Advaita Vedanta had strong influences from Buddhism. I don't know how true that is considering there are some conflicting ideas between Vedanta and Buddhism. Advaita Vedanta is kind of like Neo-Platonism while Buddhism rejects permanence of any kind.

So I am curious to know if the development of Vedanta would also be butterflied away if Buddhism never takes hold.


There were other skeptic communities in India around the time of Buddha, such as Charvaka, Ajivaka, and Lokayata. However, I doubt that these philosophies would be particularly appealing to large populations as they tend to deny the existence of higher beings or of any spirituality for that matter.

However, I assuming that there could have been other Indian philosophies that could have encourage skepticism of one form? Or would I be incorrect in saying that?
 
All important Indian philosophical systems point to the same phenomenon:Enlightenment or Liberation. Enlightenment has different names in various systems. Nirvana in Buddhism, Moksha in Vedanta etc. and is described in different ways, but the similarities among them are great. Perhaps the most significant is the agreement that enlightenment is intellectually incomprehensible: it cannot be attained through conceptual knowledge, because it escapes all categories of thought. Hence Indian philosophy points beyond itself to a realization which transcends philosophy.
The nature of nirvana is perhaps the greatest problem of Buddhist philosophy, because Buddha himself refused to speculate on it. His attitude was in effect, if you want to know what nirvana is like, then attain it. But clearly nirvana does not involve the isolation of a pure consciousness, because there is no such thing in early Buddhism. The unique feature of Buddhism is that there is no self at all, and never was, there are only five skandhas, 'heaps' of elements which constantly interact, it is significant that skandhas do not constitute a self, the sense of self is merely an illusion created by their interaction. Buddha emphasized that one should not identify anything as the self. Buddha compounded the mystery by emphasizing that nirvana is neither annihilation or eternal life. Clearly this is necessary since there should be a self to be destroyed or to live eternally. But it is confusing in so far as our thought naturally tends to fall into the dichotomy of one or the other.
Yet there are a few passages in the Pali Canon which contradict this usual Theravada interpretation. In the Brahmanimanthanika Sutra(Majjhima-Nikaya) Buddha says:Do not think that this(nirvana) is an empty or void state. There is this consciousness, without distinguishing mark, infinite and shining everywhere; it is untouched by the material elements and not subject to any power.
The passage reappears in the Kevaddha Sutra(Digha Nikaya) with the addition "Here it is that conditioned consciousness ceases to be". This distinction between conditioned consciousness and an infinite consciousness is inconsistent with the usual Theravada view that all consciousness is the result of conditions and does not arise without those conditions, but it accords very well with the Vedantic position as we shall see. Buddha who criticized the idea of an Omnipotent Brahma(God), but he never said anything about the impersonal Brahman of Advaita.
Shankara's Advaita Vedanta is generally regarded as having best developed and systematized the main strand of Upanishadic thought which stresses the identity of Atman and Brahman. Brahman is an infinite, self-luminous (self-aware) consciousness that transcends the subject-object duality. Unqualified and inclusive, perhaps its most significant feature is that it is 'One without a second', for there is nothing outside it. Hence Atman-the true self, which each of us really is, is one with this Brahman. Tat tvam asi( That thou art). This is All-Selfness......there is nothing else but the Self. To realize the whole universe as the Self is the means of getting rid of bondage. To the seer, all things have verily become the Self.
For Shankara, moksha, liberation, is the realization that I am, and always have been Brahman, my individual ego-consciousness is destroyed, but not the pure, non-dual consciousness which it was always just a reflection of. It must be emphasized that one does not attain or merge with this Brahman, one merely realizes that one has always been Brahman. Shankara uses the analogy of the space in a closed jar. That space was always been one with all space outside the jar, that there is only the illusion of separateness. This point, that there is nothing to attain, is especially significant because the same is true for yoga and Buddhism. Regardless of however it is categorized one's self(or Buddhanature) has always been pure and unstained. In Buddhism there never was a self, it was always just an illusion.
 
Buddhism is often thought to be an influence on atomism, and Democritus was said to have travelled to India. This philosophy then influenced Epicureanism and Neopythagoreanism. Others, too were influenced by them, as their opposition to it added clarity to some of their own positions.
(This is a little incoherrant. Sorry. I'm not well.)
 
All important Indian philosophical systems point to the same phenomenon:Enlightenment or Liberation. Enlightenment has different names in various systems. Nirvana in Buddhism, Moksha in Vedanta etc. and is described in different ways, but the similarities among them are great. Perhaps the most significant is the agreement that enlightenment is intellectually incomprehensible: it cannot be attained through conceptual knowledge, because it escapes all categories of thought. Hence Indian philosophy points beyond itself to a realization which transcends philosophy.
The nature of nirvana is perhaps the greatest problem of Buddhist philosophy, because Buddha himself refused to speculate on it. His attitude was in effect, if you want to know what nirvana is like, then attain it. But clearly nirvana does not involve the isolation of a pure consciousness, because there is no such thing in early Buddhism. The unique feature of Buddhism is that there is no self at all, and never was, there are only five skandhas, 'heaps' of elements which constantly interact, it is significant that skandhas do not constitute a self, the sense of self is merely an illusion created by their interaction. Buddha emphasized that one should not identify anything as the self. Buddha compounded the mystery by emphasizing that nirvana is neither annihilation or eternal life. Clearly this is necessary since there should be a self to be destroyed or to live eternally. But it is confusing in so far as our thought naturally tends to fall into the dichotomy of one or the other.
Yet there are a few passages in the Pali Canon which contradict this usual Theravada interpretation. In the Brahmanimanthanika Sutra(Majjhima-Nikaya) Buddha says:Do not think that this(nirvana) is an empty or void state. There is this consciousness, without distinguishing mark, infinite and shining everywhere; it is untouched by the material elements and not subject to any power.
The passage reappears in the Kevaddha Sutra(Digha Nikaya) with the addition "Here it is that conditioned consciousness ceases to be". This distinction between conditioned consciousness and an infinite consciousness is inconsistent with the usual Theravada view that all consciousness is the result of conditions and does not arise without those conditions, but it accords very well with the Vedantic position as we shall see. Buddha who criticized the idea of an Omnipotent Brahma(God), but he never said anything about the impersonal Brahman of Advaita.
Shankara's Advaita Vedanta is generally regarded as having best developed and systematized the main strand of Upanishadic thought which stresses the identity of Atman and Brahman. Brahman is an infinite, self-luminous (self-aware) consciousness that transcends the subject-object duality. Unqualified and inclusive, perhaps its most significant feature is that it is 'One without a second', for there is nothing outside it. Hence Atman-the true self, which each of us really is, is one with this Brahman. Tat tvam asi( That thou art). This is All-Selfness......there is nothing else but the Self. To realize the whole universe as the Self is the means of getting rid of bondage. To the seer, all things have verily become the Self.
For Shankara, moksha, liberation, is the realization that I am, and always have been Brahman, my individual ego-consciousness is destroyed, but not the pure, non-dual consciousness which it was always just a reflection of. It must be emphasized that one does not attain or merge with this Brahman, one merely realizes that one has always been Brahman. Shankara uses the analogy of the space in a closed jar. That space was always been one with all space outside the jar, that there is only the illusion of separateness. This point, that there is nothing to attain, is especially significant because the same is true for yoga and Buddhism. Regardless of however it is categorized one's self(or Buddhanature) has always been pure and unstained. In Buddhism there never was a self, it was always just an illusion.

The similarity there is surely superficial as enlightenment means different things to different people and they’re approaching it from radically different metaphysical basic assumptions. While both view enlightenment as the cessation of suffering, the Buddhist view is that enlightenment can only come after personal cultivation has led to righteousness in outward conduct while the Advaita view is that enlightenment is a purely intellectual phenomenon with no this worldly cause.
 
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