Knowra Indian philosophy Indian philosophy Indian philosophy comprises traditions originating in the Indian subcontinent, including Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and materialist schools. Its debates address knowledge, reality, selfhood, liberation, and ethical life.
Āstika and nāstika : A classification distinguishing schools that accept the authority of the Vedas from those that reject it. This traditional divide organizes schools, though it does not simply distinguish theistic from atheistic views.
Advaita Vedānta : A Vedānta school teaching that ultimate reality is nondual Brahman and that the self is not ultimately separate from it. Its nondual account offers one influential Hindu answer to the question of ultimate reality.
Vedas : The oldest surviving body of Sanskrit sacred texts, central to the authority claimed by several Hindu schools. Their status became a key criterion in later classifications of philosophical traditions.
Buddhist meditation : Contemplative practices cultivated in Buddhist traditions to develop attention, insight, and liberation. Buddhist theories of mind and suffering are tied to disciplined contemplative practice.
Pramāṇa : A means of reliable knowledge, such as perception, inference, or testimony, recognized by a philosophical system. Disagreement over valid knowledge shapes arguments across Indian schools.
Madhyamaka : A Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophical tradition that argues phenomena lack inherent existence. Its analysis of emptiness challenges claims of permanent self and independent substances.
Upanishads : Ancient Sanskrit texts exploring ultimate reality, the self, and liberation. Their questions about self and ultimate reality shaped later Hindu philosophical debates.
Jain nonviolence : The Jain ethical commitment to avoiding harm to living beings, expressed in varying degrees of rigor. Jain metaphysics and liberation practice give nonviolence an unusually expansive scope.
Karma : The principle that intentional actions produce consequences, often extending across lives in Indian religious traditions. Schools explain action and its consequences differently, linking ethics to rebirth and liberation.
Cārvāka : An Indian materialist school that privileges perception and rejects afterlife and Vedic authority. Its skepticism contests the metaphysical and ritual commitments of many rival schools.
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