xii | FBSt - Foreword

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Oriental philosophy cannot possibly be understood if one
assumes that the minds of Orientals are qualitatively different
from those of Westerners, and that it contains some "mys-
terious" elements which can never have a living meaning to
men brought up in the West. I regard Buddhist philosophy, as
preached in the Prajñāpāramitā and argued by Nāgārjuna
and Candrakīrti as the most likely, or at least as the least
unlikely, of all philosophical attitudes. I arrived at it by the
logical development of elements which form part of Western
tradition for thousands of years, and I had reached the basic
tenets (as shown in SW[*]) long before I had made a study of the
Sanskrit sources. When I was a student, it was well nigh

[*] Der Satz vom Widerspruch, Hamburg 1932.