Gautama Buddha’s thoughts, ideas, and teachings have had a profound effect not only on the minds of common people from all parts of the world but also upon great poets of all ages. Ghalib, the great poet of Urdu and Persian, also got inspired by Buddhist thought and philosophy, probably through Bedil’s poetry. In his Urdu and Persian poetry, he expressed Buddhist philosophical views about the origin of the universe, self, the laws of nature, the nature of life, human greatness, the reality of life and death, illusion, nihilism, and meditation. This article is an attempt to interpret Ghalib’s poetry in a wider Eastern philosophical perspective. It has been asserted that Ghalib didn’t just versify Buddhist ideas, rather he imbibed them and added another dimension to his multifaceted poetry.

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