Published January 27, 2026 | Version v3
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Buddhism as the Deconstruction of Meaning

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This paper reinterprets early Buddhism as a practice for dismantling meaning-making itself. Rather than a metaphysical system describing reality, Buddhism is read as an intervention into the process by which human beings endow experience with meaning, institutionalize it as religious order, and thereby render suffering and injustice “natural” and “legitimate.”

Reexamining key Buddhist concepts—Dhamma, ignorance (avijjā), right view (sammā-diṭṭhi), grasping (upādāna), observation (vipassanā), the Noble Truth of suffering, and the Three Marks—this study shows that they function not as components of a worldview but as practical devices that interrupt the hardening of meaning into dogma. In particular, the Three Marks (sabbe saṅkhārā aniccā; sabbe saṅkhārā dukkhā; sabbe dhammā anattā) are reinterpreted as an internal critique of the Brahmanical linkage between dharma (order) and ātman (essential self), rather than as ontological claims.

On this reading, Buddhism does not replace one worldview with another. It intervenes at the moment when interpretation becomes “truth,” order becomes “world,” and roles become “self.” Buddhism thus emerges as a practice that continuously suspends the transformation of meaning into unquestionable reality and the justification of suffering that follows from it.

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References

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