Bhadantacariya Buddhaghosa (Pali: Buddhaghosa)
fl. c. 5th c. CE · Indo-Tibetan Buddhism · Prominent
Buddhaghosa worked at the great monastery in Anuradhapura in the fifth century and pressed the whole Buddhist path into three words: virtue, concentration, understanding. His Visuddhimagga takes a person apart into passing conditioned events, each fixed by its characteristic, function, manifestation and cause, and treats the felt solidity of a self as the thing meditation has to break down. Rebirth runs on as continuity with no doer and no self that travels between lives.
Signature
The position Buddhaghosa is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Nature of Reality
- strongly leans Multiplicity
- Knowledge
- Tradition
Positions on the 9 axes the sources answer
- Identity
- strongly leans Changing (96 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Order
- leans Vertical (12 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Nature of Reality
- strongly leans Multiplicity (94 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (86 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- strongly leans Objective (96 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Ethics
- strongly leans Means (100 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
- Ignorance
- strongly leans Bondage (10 on a 0–100 scale from Bondage to Bliss)
- Conviction
- leans Certain (81 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
- Allegiance
- strongly leans Global (92 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)
11 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Buddhaghosa refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Other
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Peace
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Karmic Balance
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Final Liberation
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Knowledge
- Tradition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Intention
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Non-Self
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Cyclical Recurrence
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Cyclical Return
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Sacred Tradition
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Death
- Karmic Cycle
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Virtue to Cultivate
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- No-Self
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- All Beings
What is your primary bond and loyalty?