Written by Doug Bates, Founder of the Modern Pyrrhonism Movement and Author of Pyrrho’s Way: The Ancient Greek Version of Buddhism 

Even in antiquity Westerners looked to India for wisdom. The Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus tried to go there but had to turn back. Some people claim – on scant evidence – that Jesus went there. But there’s only one Westerner from antiquity that we know went to India and brought back something that profoundly influences Western thought to this day. His name was Pyrrho. He was a priest at the Temple of Zeus at Olympia and a philosopher in the tradition of Democritus. Upon his return to Greece, he became the founder of the philosophy of Pyrrhonism.

Pyrrho successfully made the trip because he was a member of Alexander the Great’s court during Alexander’s conquest of everything from Greece to India. Alexander had assigned the philosophers in his court to learn everything they could about the philosophies of his newly conquered lands. Pyrrho spent a year and a half in India doing exactly that.

In the 19th Century, when Buddhist texts were starting to become available in European languages, scholars began noticing uncanny similarities between Pyrrhonism and Buddhism. Nietzsche even called Pyrrho “a Buddha.” Eventually, Christopher Beckwith, a philologist specializing in the ancient languages used on the Silk Road connecting trade between the ancient civilizations of the East and the West, proved that Pyrrho had borrowed key ideas from Buddhism.

The teacher looks over the classroom, a frown conspicuously distorting her face. With knitted brow she passes down the aisles peering at each child suspiciously.

“NO ONE is leaving… until I found out who did it!”

The kids squirm. They furtively glance at the guilty and innocent alike.

“No one owning up, hmmm??? Okay, no recess for anyone!”

The United States of America will turn 244 years old tomorrow.

From a historical perspective, the U.S. is quite a young nation. We’ve come a long way, and have much still to learn.

To those of you not already aware, it may come as no surprise to learn that the Founding Fathers of the U.S. were heavily influenced by the classics. They had a good understanding of ancient history, philosophy, and politics, and utilized that when crafting the founding documents of this country.

Time. It’s an abstract concept, but it frames our life possibly more than anything else. We cannot touch time, we cannot feel it or see it, but we know for sure that, as the years pass, we will have (more) grey hair and a lot more stories to tell as a result of it.

Nowadays when we read articles and blogs about the importance of time, they are mostly related to the significance of time management and living every moment as if it was our last (Memento mori!). Of course, all of this is very important as we should be aware of the preciousness and uniqueness of every moment. However, we should not forget that time is important in a much more practical sense as well.

Imagine spending a day without being able to tell the time. Even just the thought of it gives you a certain amount of discomfort, doesn’t it? We are all completely dependent on a system of time measurement that is precise enough to prevent us from being late for an important meeting, that accurately counts the period between contractions, or that allows us to perfectly boil an egg.