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Siddhārtha Gautama / Buddha MBTI Personality Type

Siddhārtha Gautama / Buddha MBTI Personality Type image

Personality

What personality type is Siddhārtha Gautama / Buddha? Siddhārtha Gautama / Buddha is an INFJ personality type in MBTI, 5w4 - so/sx - 592 in Enneagram, RCOAI in Big 5, ILI in Socionics.

Gautama is one of the clearest examples of the INFJ type. It is evident that his extraverted sensing was in the inferior position. This was a man who felt disgusted with the sight of his harem, who was dissatisfied with the sumptuous life his royal father was providing to him and who endured great ascetic pains to overcome suffering before realizing that he had to accept material reality as it is. His Middle Way between annihilationism (enthusiastic Se) and eternalism (repressed Se) looks to me like the integration of his Anima. That would leave us between INTJ and INFJ. Although there are some anecdotes of his biography that could lead us to see TeFi, the strength of both his Fe and Ti is patent in his major life decisions. First the extraverted feeling. He left his family because of his Ni vision, but before of that he had been living the expected life of a 5th century B.C., north-Indian prince because of social pressure. Moreover, once he had reached enlightenment: "the Buddha hesitated on whether or not he should teach the Dharma to others. He was concerned that humans were overpowered by ignorance, greed, and hatred that it would be difficult for them to recognise the path". A person without Fe (in the second or fourth position, I'd add) wouldn't have doubted in that situation. If you are a high Fi-user you don't care about what other people believe, you are certain about your ideals and that's the only thing that matters; if you are a low Fi-user you impose your ideals over those of the masses because what they believe is irrelevant. Now the introverted thinking. The fact that so many INTPs are attracted to buddhism should be proof enough to show the high amount of introverted thinking one can find in this ideology. The only teachings we can be certain Gautama transmited are the benefits of meditation and the 4 Noble Truths: i) there is insatisfaction, ii) insatisfaction has a cause, iii) there is a way to cease instatisfaction, iv) that way is the eightfold path. If this is not Ti, I don't know what Ti is. He was not trying to segment and organize reality as a Te-dom philosopher like Aristotle would do, he was deriving certain conclusions from some fundamental principles he found through induction. And as I always try to do, I'll invite you to compare him to other thinkers. Those who think he is an INTJ: can you seriously see him in the same team Nietzsche, Marx, Mozi, Newton or Heraclitus belong to? Can't you see the convergences between his thought and that of Plato, Spinoza, Bergson, Plotinus or Seneca?

Biography

https://tricycle.org/magazine/who-was-the-buddha/

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