Krishna, Mahavira, Buddha and Lao-Tzu

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Krishna, Mahavira, Buddha and Lao-Tzu
One path, many expressions

Summary: This text invites us to consider, beyond historical and cultural differences, a shared inner orientation at work across various spiritual traditions. It does not seek to establish a historical continuity between the figures of Krishna, Mahavira, the Buddha and Lao-Tzu, but to recognize what they have in common within the experience they point to.

By distinguishing the forms of transmission from what they indicate, it brings to light a common movement: an initial dissatisfaction, a search, a practice, and then a recognition. The path does not depend on any era or language; it is verified through the attention given to what, in each of us, remains unchanged.

Text

This is a reading that does not attempt to establish a strict historical continuity, but rather to recognize, through different figures and traditions, the presence of a shared inner orientation. It is not about imposing a thesis, but about opening a way of seeing.

An origin

It is natural to want to locate the beginning of a path, to assign it an origin, a place, a time.

Some traditions speak of ancient civilizations, vanished peoples, sages whose names have not reached us. Yet this beginning escapes any precise localization. Not because it has been lost in the folds of history, but because it does not belong to time in the same way as events do.

What some call mārga, the path, and what ancient Chinese calls Tao, does not begin with a culture or a doctrine. It appears each time a human being ceases to scatter and turns toward what is already here, independent of the forms through which it is expressed.

Traditions arise, develop, transform, and disappear. The path, however, does not follow this movement: it runs through it.

Names

According to languages and contexts, this orientation has been given different names. In India, it has been called Dharma, or Dhamma in Pali; in China, Tao.

Elsewhere, other terms have been used to express it. These differences in vocabulary do not necessarily reflect differences in substance, but rather different ways of approaching the same reality.

It is not an object that can be grasped, nor a body of knowledge that can be accumulated. What is at stake is a direct recognition, which transforms the way existence is perceived and lived.

Words are only indications, useful as long as they point, but limited as soon as they are taken for what they designate.

Figures

This recognition is often associated with certain figures, among them Krishna, Mahavira, the Gautama Buddha, or Lao-Tzu. It is tempting to see them as founders, in the sense that they would have initiated distinct and independent traditions. A closer look, however, invites us to nuance this view.

These figures appear rather as moments of clarification, through which an understanding becomes perceptible and transmissible. They do not necessarily create what they express; they bear witness to it.

Over time, their words and gestures are collected, organized, and interpreted, eventually forming coherent bodies known as traditions. While this process allows transmission, it also introduces a distance between the initial experience and its later formulations.

A common movement

If we set aside doctrinal differences and focus on the experience described, a shared structure begins to emerge. It does not belong to a theoretical system, but to an inner movement found in various forms.

There is first a form of dissatisfaction, sometimes vague, sometimes acute, which certain traditions call dukkha, and which finds no answer in ordinary achievements.

This dissatisfaction opens the possibility of a search. This search takes the form of an orientation of attention, a shift of perspective, no longer satisfied with the usual objects of experience.

Then comes a practice, whether explicit or implicit, made of attention, discernment, and discipline, which some traditions gather under the term sadhana. This practice does not aim so much to produce a particular state as to bring an end to a confusion.

When this confusion dissolves, what seemed to be a goal to attain reveals itself as never having been absent. It is not an acquisition, but a recognition.

Transmission

After the disappearance of those recognized as sages, what remains are their words, their teachings, and the methods they transmitted. These elements are preserved, organized, and sometimes institutionalized. This work of preservation allows others to come into contact with these indications.

However, what was initially a living experience can, over time, become a fixed form. Words are repeated, gestures reproduced, and attention may shift toward fidelity to form rather than to the reality it points to. This evolution is not specific to any one tradition; it seems to accompany all transmission over time.

It then remains for each person to verify for themselves, not by rejecting the forms, but without stopping at them.

Today

The question may not be whether these figures belong to the same history in a historical sense. It is rather to see whether what they point to is accessible here and now.

This possibility depends on neither time nor place. It does not require adherence to a particular reconstruction of the past, nor the establishment of links between traditions that developed independently. It simply calls for sufficient attention to recognize, in the background of all experience, what remains.

Conclusion

It is possible that Krishna, Mahavira, the Buddha, and Lao-Tzu do not belong to the same historical continuity. It is, however, conceivable that each of them, within their own context, recognized the same reality.

This recognition is not a belief to adopt, but an invitation to see. It does not lie elsewhere or in some hypothetical future, but in the way existence is lived, here and now.

A few guiding terms

Path (mārga, Tao): Inner orientation, both the way and the goal.

Dharma (Dhamma): What is to be lived and put into practice in order to follow the path.

Sadhana: The set of practices that allow one to align with this orientation.

Dukkha: A form of dissatisfaction inherent to ordinary existence.

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