Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge c8.69

c8.69

(171) Apart from the few hints that we get about these Sceptics from Buddhist and Jain sources, we have not been able to trace any positive reference to them elsewhere in Indian thought. But the account given of the scepticism of Pyrrho, who is said to have been influenced by Indian thought,¹ bears a remarkable similarity to the point of view of these Sceptics. The quotation preserved by Aristocles from one of Timon's prose works and which is supposed to represent the views of Timon's teacher, Pyrrho, reads as follows: 'He himself (Pyrrho) has left nothing in writing but his disciple Timon says that the man who is to be happy must look to these three things: (1) what is the nature of things, (2) what attitude should we take to them, and (3) what those who take this attitude will gain by it. He says that he declared that things were in an equal degree indifferent and unstable and incapable of being tested. For this reason neither our senses nor our opinions are true or false. So we must not put our trust in them but be free from beliefs and inclinations and unshaken, saying of each thing in turn that it no more is than it is not or that it both is and is not or that it neither is nor is not. And those who take this attitude, Timon says will first gain speechlessness (ἀφασία) and then imperturbability (ἀταραξία)'.²