If ancient philosophy remains alive, this is because it is about life. However abstract the debate may get (and it does get abstract), however abstruse the discussion, a thread leads back, anchoring it in the inescapable concern with how to live and how to be. This is true of the ancient Greek philosophers, which is why their work remains alive for us still; and it is equally true of the philosophers of ancient India, including the Indian Buddhist philosophers whose work is the focus of this book.

I cannot hope to have given a comprehensive account of Indian Buddhist philosophy, which spanned several centuries, and involved an enormous variety of interlocutors. In what follows, I have aimed instead to present only sufficient breadth that the reader may become oriented within the terrain, develop a sense for which sorts of concerns weighed with the Indian Buddhists, and how they articulated these concerns. And I have otherwise tried to focus on following through particular arguments, so that one might come to see what it is to do philosophy with these Buddhist philosophers and their texts, and come to appreciate how rewarding – and how challenging – this is. For although Buddhist philosophers remained alive to the basic questions and concerns that may resonate with anyone, they developed sophisticated conceptual tools and arguments for pursuing these.