 How plausible is it to interpret Buddhist authors as committed to a hedonist view of well-being––or indeed, to any view of well-being at all? South Asian Buddhist texts often use terms such as artha and hita that plausibly express the same concept as our term “well-being,” so it is reasonable to ask what account the authors of those texts might have given of what they meant. Given the central importance of the prevention of suffering in Buddhism, as expressed in such teachings as the First Noble Truth, it must be true that well-being in Buddhism includes freedom from suffering as, at least, one of its components. Meanwhile, given the strongly negative Buddhist view of desire, it would not be plausible at all to regard Buddhism as holding a desire-fulfillment theory of well-being. 