The Champions of Philosophy

Most legendary philosophers—even Plato and Marcus Aurelius—were noticeably inferior to Gautama Buddha. Even the magnificent works of Plotinus, Pascal, and Kierkegaard cannot rival the Buddhist philosophy of enlightenment. It took two thousand years after the Buddha's death before anyone produced a philosophy of equal stature: Hegel. After him, only Schopenhauer, Heidegger, Bataille, Sartre, and Foucault managed to match that achievement—not surpass it, but merely equal it.

Among the famous philosophers, only Nietzsche, Cioran, and Wilber succeeded in creating philosophies that, in my view, surpassed the Buddha's. And perhaps I will as well—if I succeed in popularizing my own philosophy.