Roman Buddha

Rudyard Kipling tells us that “East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.”[i]To some this may seem an apt summation of the intellectual and spiritual chasm yawningbetween the dominant wisdom traditions originating respectively in certain areas of Asia and in the early Mediterranean citystates that spawned Western culture. The multifarious strands of Buddhism (and other Asian wisdom traditions) are often regarded as too esoteric and culturally alien for the earthy pragmatism of the industrial West and its predominantly materialisticworldview. The admonitions of the Noble Eightfold Path are all well and good for tonsuredmonks swaddled in flowing robes, or cave-dwelling hermits perched in the lotus position on some Himalayan mountaintop, contemplatively indifferent to “worldly” concerns, but what has all that got to do with life in the “real world” of career, family, financial obligations, and material need? In this paper, I argue that the Roman Stoic philosopher Epictetus (55-135 CE) offered practical counsel through which the West may begin to more comfortably approach Buddhism as a system of self-governance and path to awakening. Epictetus’ collected Discourses and Enchiridion offer glimpses of a spirit which Buddhist practitioners will, I think, find strikinglykindred.