This book argues that the Buddha was one of the most brilliant and original thinkers of all time. While the book is intended to serve as an introduction to the Buddhas thought, and hence even to Buddhism itself, it also has larger aims: it argues that we can know far more about the Buddha than it is fashionable among scholars to admit, and that his thought has a greater coherence than is usually recognised. It contains much new material. Interpreters both ancient and modern have taken little account of the historical context of the Buddhas teachings; but relating them to early brahminical texts, and also to ancient Jainism, gives a much richer picture of his meaning, especially when his satire and irony are appreciated. Incidentally, since many of the Buddhas allusions can only be traced in the Pali versions of surviving texts, the book establishes the importance of the Pali Canon as evidence. Though the Buddha used metaphor extensively, he did not found his arguments upon it like earlier thinkers: his capacity for abstraction was a breakthrough. His ethicising older ideas of rebirth and human action (karma) was also a breakthrough for civilisation. His theory of karma is logically central to his thought. Karma is a process, not a thing; moreover, it is neither random nor wholly determined. These ideas about karma he generalised to every component of conscious experience except nirvana, the liberation from that chain of experience. Morally, karma both provided a principle of individuation and asserted the individuals responsibility for his own destiny.

Richard Gombrich is founder and Academic Director of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, and Chairman of the UK Association for Buddhist Studies. Before his retirement in 2004, he held the Boden Chair of Sanskrit at Oxford University and a Professorial Fellowship at Balliol College for 28 years. He supervised nearly 50 theses on Buddhist topics, and is the author of 200 publications. He continues to lecture and teach at universities round the world.

Preface
Background Information
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: More about karma, and its social context
Chapter 3: The antecedents of the karma doctrine in brahminism Chapter 4: Jain antecedents Chapter 5: What did the Buddha mean by "no soul"?
Chapter 6: The Buddha's positive values: love and compassion
Chapter 7: Assessing the evidence Chapter 8: Everything is burning: the centrality of fire in the Buddha's thought
Chapter 9: Causation and non-random process
Chapter 10: Cognition
language
nirvana
Chapter 11: The Buddha's pragmatism and intellectual style
Chapter 12: The Buddha as satirist
brahmin terms as social metaphors
Chapter 13: Is this book to be believed? Appendix: The Buddha's appropriation of four (or five?) brahminical terms