When Plotinus wrote in third-century Alexandria that evil has no substantial existence, he articulated a position that Buddhist philosophers in India had been developing for centuries through radically different conceptual frameworks. Both traditions faced the same puzzle: how can suffering and moral corruption pervade human experience if ultimate reality is fundamentally good, or at least unmarked by the dualistic categories that generate our sense of wrongness? The answers they constructed reveal not mere parallel thinking but sophisticated responses to constraints imposed by their respective metaphysical commitments.

The comparison illuminates something important about theodicy itself. Neither tradition begins from the Abrahamic assumption of a personal creator whose goodness must be reconciled with created evil. Instead, both work from ontological frameworks where evil cannot possess the same reality-status as what is genuinely real—whether that be the Neoplatonic One or the Buddhist unconditioned. This shared starting point generates structural similarities even as the underlying metaphysics diverge sharply.

What emerges from careful analysis is not simple equivalence but something more instructive: two traditions demonstrating that privation theories of evil require specific philosophical infrastructure to remain coherent, and that different infrastructures generate different practical consequences for those seeking liberation from suffering. The theodicies mirror each other imperfectly, and examining where they diverge proves as illuminating as noting their convergences.

Plotinus inherited from Plato the conviction that evil could not derive from the Good, yet he radicalized this insight into a comprehensive privation theory. In the Enneads, evil emerges not as a positive force but as the progressive diminishment of being that occurs as reality emanates downward from the One through Intellect and Soul toward matter. Matter itself—formless, utterly indeterminate—represents the limiting case where being approaches zero. Evil is literally nothing: the absence of form, goodness, and reality that characterizes the material realm insofar as it resists the shaping influence of higher principles.

Buddhist analysis arrives at a structurally similar conclusion through entirely different reasoning. Suffering (dukkha) arises not from some malevolent cosmic force but from fundamental misapprehension of reality. The root cause is avidyā—ignorance—which generates the illusion of a permanent self where none exists. This ignorance is not a substance but a failure of understanding, a cognitive privation that produces the grasping, aversion, and delusion that constitute suffering. Evil has no ontological ground because the self that supposedly experiences evil is itself a construction lacking ultimate reality.

The parallel extends to both traditions' treatment of moral evil specifically. For Plotinus, vice represents the soul's excessive attachment to matter and its turning away from the intelligible realm. The soul possesses goodness inherently through its connection to higher principles; vice is the privation of this natural orientation. Buddhist ethics similarly treats unwholesome actions as arising from the three poisons—greed, hatred, and delusion—which themselves stem from ignorance about the nature of self and reality. Moral failure is not the presence of something but the absence of wisdom.

Yet the ontological contexts differ fundamentally. Plotinus maintains a hierarchical emanationism where higher levels of reality possess genuine, eternal existence. The One is supremely real; matter approaches non-being. Buddhist philosophy, particularly in Madhyamaka formulations, denies inherent existence to all phenomena whatsoever. Even nirvana and samsara lack ultimate ontological distinction. The Buddhist privation of evil operates within a framework where all apparent entities are privations of inherent existence.

This difference matters philosophically. Plotinus can locate evil's privative status within a cosmic hierarchy that includes genuinely existing levels. Buddhist thinkers face the more radical task of explaining evil as a privation within a system where nothing possesses the substantial existence that could be privated in the Neoplatonic sense. The parallel between the traditions proves genuine but incomplete, revealing how similar functional roles can be played by structurally different philosophical moves.

Takeaway

Both traditions treat evil as absence rather than presence, but they disagree about what is being absent—being itself for Plotinus, understanding of non-self for Buddhism—which shapes everything that follows in their respective systems.

Plotinus's universe is fundamentally good because it flows necessarily from the Good itself. The One, beyond being and thought, generates Intellect, which generates Soul, which generates the material cosmos—not through choice or creation but through the natural overflow of perfection. Even matter, though representing the lowest degree of reality, has its place in the complete picture. The cosmos is, famously, the best possible emanation: not because some deity chose optimally but because the structure of reality permits no alternative. Evil appears within this system as local privation against a backdrop of cosmic goodness.

Buddhist cosmic optimism takes a different form, particularly in Mahāyāna developments. The doctrine of Buddha-nature (tathāgatagarbha) suggests that all sentient beings possess the inherent potential for awakening. Suffering and delusion, however pervasive, are adventitious—temporary obscurations of a fundamentally pure nature rather than essential features of mind or reality. The Yogācāra tradition's concept of the ālayavijñāna (storehouse consciousness) as containing seeds of both affliction and liberation similarly maintains that the basic structure of experience is not irredeemably corrupted.

Both positions require delicate philosophical maneuvering to remain coherent. Plotinus must explain why, if emanation is necessary and the cosmos is optimally good, evil appears at all. His answer involves the necessity of every degree of being existing within the complete system—matter must exist for the cosmos to be complete, even though matter's resistance to form generates evil. This is not quite theodicy in the Leibnizian sense but something more like an acceptance that completeness requires contrast. The good needs its shadow to be fully articulated.

Buddhist thinkers face the parallel challenge of explaining how beings with pure Buddha-nature could ever become deluded in the first place. If ignorance is beginningless (anādi), no originary fall occurred; but then the relationship between pure nature and adventitious defilement becomes puzzling. Some Mahāyāna texts embrace this tension as pointing toward the ultimate non-duality of purity and defilement, while others develop elaborate accounts of how luminous mind becomes temporarily obscured without this obscuration affecting its essential nature.

The shared commitment to cosmic optimism serves similar functions in both traditions: it underwrites the possibility of liberation by ensuring that what must be overcome is not ultimate reality but rather our relationship to or understanding of reality. If evil were substantial and ineradicable, liberation would be impossible. The privation theories guarantee that awakening or return to the One remains achievable because we are not fighting against the fundamental grain of existence but rather clearing away what was never ultimately real.

Takeaway

Cosmic optimism in both systems is not naive cheerfulness but a philosophical requirement—without it, their soteriologies collapse, since liberation from something ultimately real would be metaphysically impossible.

The practical paths diverge significantly despite metaphysical parallels. For Plotinus, the soul's return to the One proceeds through intellectual and contemplative ascent. Because evil represents distance from the intelligible realm, salvation means reversing the descent—turning inward, away from sensible multiplicity, toward the unity of Intellect and ultimately toward mystical union with the One. The philosopher purifies the soul through dialectic, contemplation of the Forms, and ultimately henosis—the experience of unity that transcends even intellectual knowing. This is fundamentally a path of return to an origin never truly lost.

Buddhist soteriology, while also involving contemplative practice, operates differently. The problem is not distance from a higher principle but ignorance about the nature of what is immediately present. Liberation does not require ascending a cosmic hierarchy but rather seeing through the illusion of self that generates clinging and suffering. The Eightfold Path includes ethical conduct, mental discipline, and wisdom—but wisdom here means insight into dependent origination, impermanence, and non-self, not intellectual vision of eternal Forms.

These differences generate distinct attitudes toward the world. Plotinian salvation requires turning away from matter and sensation, treating embodiment as a limitation to be transcended. While Plotinus is no crude body-hater—he acknowledges the body's proper role—the direction of spiritual progress moves decisively toward disembodiment. Buddhist practice, particularly in Mahāyāna traditions, can embrace a more world-affirming stance. If samsara and nirvana are ultimately non-dual, awakening need not mean escape from embodied existence but transformed engagement with it.

The role of practice also differs subtly. Neoplatonic ascent, while requiring discipline, culminates in something received rather than achieved—the soul does not generate union with the One but opens itself to be taken up. There is a kind of grace operative in Plotinus, even if he wouldn't use that term. Buddhist awakening, while also sometimes described as uncovering what was always present, places greater emphasis on the methodical transformation of mind through specific practices. The technology of liberation—meditation techniques, analytical investigations, ethical training—is more elaborated.

Perhaps most significantly, the communal dimensions differ. Buddhist soteriology from its origins included a sangha—a community of practitioners whose mutual support enables liberation. The Bodhisattva ideal in Mahāyāna explicitly defers individual liberation for the sake of all beings. Neoplatonic salvation is more solitary, a flight of the alone to the Alone in Plotinus's famous phrase. While later Neoplatonists like Iamblichus developed theurgic rituals with communal dimensions, the philosophical core remains focused on individual ascent.

Takeaway

Metaphysical diagnoses constrain practical responses: Plotinus's vertical ontology demands ascent away from matter, while Buddhism's analysis of ignorance requires transformation of understanding within experience itself.

The comparison reveals that privation theories of evil are not single solutions but a family of approaches requiring specific supporting architectures. Both Neoplatonism and Buddhism conclude that evil lacks ultimate reality, yet they reach this conclusion through different routes and draw different practical consequences. The metaphysical infrastructure matters—it shapes not just how evil is explained but how liberation from suffering becomes possible and what form that liberation takes.

What neither tradition does is treat evil as ultimate cosmic dualism or as requiring some external redemption. Both maintain human capacity for awakening or return, grounded in the unreality of what must be overcome. This shared confidence in liberation's possibility may be their deepest convergence.

For contemporary readers, these ancient frameworks suggest that how we conceptualize evil determines what we think can be done about it. The question is not merely academic but shapes practical life—whether we understand ourselves as ascending toward transcendent unity or awakening to what was always already the case transforms how we approach suffering and its cessation.