Skepticism in Indian philosophy

Dmitri dmitris at PIPELINE.COM
Tue Nov 28 02:15:10 UTC 2000


It occured to me that Pirrho's maxim of suspending judgment as an ultimate
goal of inquiry and reliance on directly percieved data is quite similar
to the yogic masters insistence that true knowledge is acquired through
direct experience only: "No matter how many scriptures you read, unless
you've experienced samaadhi yourself -- you don't know." (That is taken
from Swami Rama's "Living with the Himalayan Masters" -- so I don't really
know this.)

As a question of comparative history, was there ever an attempt to
correspond Pirrho's views with traditions of self-inquiry existing
in Himalayas?

The legend has it that Pirrho travreled with Alexander the Great to India.
So, there might have been a direct exchange of phylosophical ideas
between sages of India and greek intellectuals.

Back to the original post, my question was more specific:

Is there in any Indian phylosophical school
a  system of inquiery, similar to that of Descartes.
It is not the scepticism as general paradigm that is my interest, but
a system. Descart formulated his system of inquiry in "Rules for the
direction of Mind". Is there any similar set of rules?





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