Western philosophy can be divided into two different schools of thought — idealists and realists. Buddhism is neither one nor the other, even though the teachings contain a great deal of both elements. Some of the more substantive views of the idealist school in the West are set forth, for instance, in Bertrand Russell's discourse "Appearance and Reality," and in the writings of George Berkeley, the prominent British empirical idealist. They claimed reality consists solely of sensory perceptions and that there is no material world apart from this reality. These concepts are similar to the Mind Only school in Buddhism. However, Berkeley in the end encountered a contradiction in his own argument. In his response to exponents of the realist school, he grudgingly handed the problem back to God, which rendered his position unacceptable.

Depicted from Luminous Wisdom Book Series : The Significance of Buddhist Philosophy Today