Eastern Philosophy

Eastern philosophy (e.g. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism) and early Western philosophy are
similar in their interest in matters of basic significance to human existence. There were, however,
some important, interrelated, differences.

1). Early Western philosophy and science were influenced by the concept of 'God as King of the
universe'. As King, God made laws that the natural world obeys (e.g. the 'law of gravity'). The
role of philosophy and science was to discover the laws that govern the behavior of the universe.

In Eastern philosophy, however, the natural world does not follow laws, it simply 'is'. Humans
can look for regularities and pattern in the flow of nature, but any 'laws' thus detected are the
product of human conception, a way of organizing our experiences, and are not the underlying
basis of the phenomena being observed.

2) Both the Western and the Eastern approach share a concept that a deeper understanding of
reality is possible than is normally available in everyday experience. The approaches differ
significantly, however, in how to develop that understanding.

The Western approach to a deeper understanding involves the application of symbolic thought
(i.e. words and mathematics). In other words, the nature of reality can be discovered by thinking
about it the right way. Science relies upon a specific thinking processes (logic) while faith relies
upon specific thoughts (dogma).

In the Eastern approach, thinking moves us away from understanding reality. When we think we
transfer our attention away from reality to the world of symbols, and an irretrievable difference
lies between the symbol and what it represents. In the Eastern approach, the nature of reality is
discovered by experiencing it directly, without thoughts. This is accomplished through a variety
of meditative processes.

3) The third difference between the Western and Eastern approach is directly related to the first
two, it involves the different roles of symbolic communication, In the Western approach, both
religious and scientific, the verbal or mathematical models of reality are evaluated along the
criterion of Truth. A model is expected to accurately express the true nature of reality.

In the Eastern approach, however, verbal models concern more how to experience reality, and
are much less concerned about how to think about reality. They are evaluated on their
effectiveness rather than on their truth. The difference between verbal models in the two
approaches is essentially the difference between a text book on organic chemistry and a cook
book.

Sources

 Oakley (with numerous influences)

http://www.psych.utah.edu/gordon/Classes/Psy4905Docs/PsychHistory/Cards/Eastern.html

On Truth & Reality

The Wave Structure of Matter (WSM) in Space

Important Note (September, 2012) - I have submitted an essay to a competition on the
foundations of physical reality. It explains how matter and fields are just two different ways that
space vibrates. It is very simple and obvious once understood, has profound consequences for
humanity, our sense of self in the universe knowing that we vibrate with everything around us.
Please read it, rate it, and I will reply to all comments. Thanks, Geoff haselhurst (11th Sept.
2012)

Site Introduction (2012): Despite several thousand years of failure

to correctly understand physical reality(hence the current postmodern
view that this is impossible) there is an obvious solution.
Simply unite Science (Occam's Razor / Simplicity) with Metaphysics
(Dynamic Unity of Reality) and describe reality from only one substance
existing, as Leibniz wrote; 
'Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things
with one another'.
Given we all experience many minds and many material things, but always in one common
Space, we are thusrequired to describe physical reality in terms of Space. We then find there is
only one solution, a Wave Structure of Matter (WSM) where the electron is a spherical standing
wave. See Wave Diagrams.
In hindsight the error was obvious, to try and describe an interconnected reality with discrete
'particles', which then required forces / fields to connect them in space and time. This was always
just a mathematical solution which never explained how matter was connected across
the universe.

I realise that there are a lot of 'crackpot' theories about truth and reality on the internet, but it is
easy to show that the Wave Structure of Matter is the correct solution as it deduces the laws of
Nature (the fundamentals of Physics & Philosophy) perfectly (there are no opinions). While the
Wave Structure of Matter is obvious once known, to begin it will seem strange simply because it
takes time for our minds to adjust to new knowledge. 

For those who are religious / spiritual, I think Albert Einstein expresses the enlightened view of
God. He writes 'I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what
exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.' This
harmony arises from a Wave Structure of Matter in Space (we are all interconnected in this space
that we all commonly experience). This unity of reality (God, Brahman, Tao, Spirit, Energy,
Light, Vibration) is central to all major world religions, thus their common moral foundation of
'Do unto others as to thyself' as the other is part of the self.

Please help our world (human society / life on earth) by sharing this knowledge.
Clearly our world is in great trouble due to human overpopulation and the resultant destruction
of Nature, climate change and the pollution of air, land and water. The best solution to these
problems is to found our societies on truth and reality rather than past myths and customs (which
invariably cause harm).
We are listed as one of the Top Philosophy Websites on the Internet with around 600,000 page
views each week, and rank in the top 20 in Google for many academic search terms - so we just
need a bit of help to get in the top five. Given the Censorship in Physics / Philosophy of Science
Journals (founded on the standard model / particle physics) the internet is clearly the best way to
get new knowledge visible to the world.
A world now in great need of wisdom from truth and reality.
Sincerely,
Geoff Haselhurst - Karene Howie - Full Introduction - Email - Nice Letters - Share this
Knowledge

In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act. (George Orwell)
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. (Mohandas Gandhi)
All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing. (Edmund Burke)
Hell is Truth Seen Too Late. (Thomas Hobbes)

Ancient Eastern Philosophy

On the Ancient Wisdom of Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism & Confucianism

The most important characteristic of the Eastern world view - one could almost say
the essence of it - is the awareness of the unity and mutual interrelation of all things
and events, the experience of all phenomena in the world as manifestations of a
basic oneness. All things are seen as interdependent and inseparable parts of this
cosmic whole; as different manifestations of the same ultimate reality.
(Fritjof Capra,The Tao of Physics)

The fundamental element of the cosmos is Space. Space is the all-embracing

principle of higher unity. Nothing can exist without Space. .. According to ancient
Indian tradition the Universe reveals itself in two fundamental properties:
as Motionand as that in which motion takes place, namely Space. This Space is
called Akasa .. derived from the root kas, 'to radiate, to shine', and has therefore the
meaning of ether which is conceived as the medium of movement. The principle of movement,
however, is Prana, the breath of life, the all-powerful, all-pervading rhythm of the universe.
(Lama Anagarika Govinda, 1969)

Buddhism
On the Life of Buddha, Buddhist Thought & Practice

Buddhism is a moral philosophy / religion based upon the teachings of Siddhartha

Gautama(566 - 486 B.C.). 
Siddhartha Gautama became known as the Buddha. 'Buddha' (from the ancient
Indian languages of Pali and Sanskrit) means "one who has awakened". It is
derived from the verbal root "budh", meaning "to awaken" or "to be enlightened",
and "to comprehend".

The Buddha offered metaphysical knowledge into the nature of reality as well as a moral way of
life. The Middle Way is an important idea in Buddhist thought and practice. To seek moderation
and avoid the extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification.

At the age of 35, meditating under a Bodhi tree, Siddhartha reached Enlightenment, awakening
to the true nature of reality, which is Nirvana (Absolute Truth);

The dustless and stainless Eye of Truth (Dhamma-cakkhu) has arisen. 

He has seen Truth, has attained Truth, has known Truth, has penetrated into Truth, has crossed
over doubt, is without wavering.
Thus with right wisdom he sees it as it is (yatha bhutam) ... The Absolute Truth is Nibbana,
which is Reality. (Buddha, from the Dhatuvibhanga-sutta (No. 140) of the Majjhima-nikaya)

The Buddha taught that the nature of reality was impermanent and interconnected. We suffer in
life because of our desire to transient things. Liberation from suffering may come by training the
mind and acting according to the laws of karma (cause and effect) i.e. with right action, good
things will come to you. This teaching is known as the Four Noble Truths:

Dukkha: Suffering is everywhere

Samudaya: There is a cause of suffering, which is attachment or misplaced
desire (tanha) rooted in ignorance. 
Nirodha: There is an end of suffering, which is Nirvana (the possibility of
liberation exists for everyone). 
Maggo: There is a path that leads out of suffering, known as the Noble Eightfold
Path (right view, right thought, right speech, right conduct, right vocation, right effort, right
attention and right concentration).

The following quotes (from Buddha and others) express some of the main
ideas of Buddhism;

I will teach you the Truth and the Path leading to the Truth. (Buddha)
It is proper for you to doubt .. do not go upon report .. do not go upon tradition..do not go upon
hearsay..' (Buddha, Kalama Sutra)

O Brahmana, it is just like a mountain river, flowing far and swift, taking everything along with
it; there is no moment, no instant, no second when it stops flowing, but it goes on flowing and
continuing. So Brahmana, is human life, like a mountain river. (Buddha)

‘Wherefore, brethren, thus must ye train yourselves : Liberation of the will through love will
develop, we will often practice it, we will make it vehicle and base, take our stand upon it, store
it up, thoroughly set it going.’ (Buddha)

From The Dhammapada;

Not to do any evil, to cultivate the good, to purify one’s mind, this
is the Teaching of the Buddhas.

To speak no ill will, to do no harm, to practice self-restraint

according to the fundamental precepts, to be moderate in eating,
to live in seclusion, to devote oneself to higher consciousness, this
is the Teaching of the Buddhas.

By endeavour, diligence, discipline and self-mastery, let the wise

person make (of himself) an island that no flood can overwhelm.

All (mental) states have mind as their forerunner, mind is their

chief, and they are mind-made. If one speaks or acts with a
defiled mind, then suffering follows ..

Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world; it is appeased

by love. This is an eternal Law.

Hard to restrain, unstable is this mind; it flits wherever it lists. Good is it to control the mind. A
controlled mind brings happiness.

'All conditioned things are impermanent’, when one sees this in wisdom, then one becomes
dispassionate towards the painful. This is the Path to Purity.

Buddhism recognizes that humans have a measure of freedom of

moral choice, and Buddhist practice has essentially to do with
acquiring the freedom to choose as one ought to choose with
truth: that is of acquiring a freedom from the passions and
desires that impel us to distraction and poor decisions. (Walpola
Rahula, What the Buddha Taught)

Buddhism stands unique in the history of human thought in

denying the existence of such a Soul, Self, or Atman. According to
the teaching of the Buddha, the idea of self is imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding
reality, and it produces harmful thoughts of ‘me’ and ‘mine’, selfish desire, craving, attachment,
hatred, ill-will, conceit, pride, egoism, and other defilements, impurities and problems. It is the
source of all the troubles in the world from personal conflicts to wars between nations. (Rahula)

The theory of karma is the theory of cause and effect, of action and reaction; it is a natural law,
which has nothing to do with the idea of justice or reward and punishment. Every volitional
action produces its effects or results. If a good action produces good effects, it is not justice, or
reward, meted out by anybody or any power sitting in judgement of your action, but this is in
virtue of its own nature, its own law. (Rahula)

For the first time in the history of the world, Buddhism proclaimed a salvation which each
individual could gain from him or herself, in this world, during this life, without any least
reference to God, or to gods either great or small. (Aldous Huxley)

See our webpage Buddha Nirvana / Buddhism Religion for more pictures, information and
quotes on Karma, Truth, the Dynamic Unity of Reality, Buddha's conception of Mind and
Matter, The Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, Anatta (No Soul) and Conditioned
Genesis (Paticca-samuppada).

Hinduism
On the Metaphysics & Philosophy of Hinduism Beliefs & Hindu Gods
All is One (Brahman)

The first collection of Indian philosophy that was written down was the Vedas. The
word 'Veda' comes from the Sanskrit vid, meaning knowledge - the Vedas are
'sacred knowledge'. Their exact date is controversial, it is possible that the
knowledge dates back 10,000 years BC, and were first written around 3,000 BC.

The metaphysical foundation of Hinduism, which is expressed in both the Vedas and the
Upanishads is that Reality (Brahman) is One or Absolute, changeless, perfect and eternal. The
ordinary human world of many separate and discrete (finite) things (which our mind represents
by our senses) is an illusion. Through meditation and purity of mind, one can experience their
true Self which is Brahman, God, the One infinite eternal thing which causes and connects the
many things. True enlightenment is Self-realisation, to experience
the supreme reality as Self.

The following mantra and quotes express the aspirations of

Hinduism religion;

OM Asato ma sadgamaya, tamaso ma jyotirgamaya, mrityor

mamritam gamaya 
" OM Lead me from falsehood to truth, from darkness to light,
from death to immortality."
Though One, Brahman is the cause of the many.
Brahman is the unborn (aja) in whom all existing things abide. The One manifests as the many,
the formless putting on forms. (Rig Veda)

Behold but One in all things; it is the second that leads you astray. (Kabir)

The word Brahman means growth and is suggestive of life, motion, progress. (Radhakrishnan)

Hindu cosmology is non-dualistic. Everything that is is Brahman. Brahman is the eternal Now,
and in eternity there is no before or after, for everything is everywhere, always. To use the words
of Pascal 'it is a circle the center of which is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.'
(Sudhakar S.D, 1988)

In Indian philosophy, the main terms used by

Hindus and Buddhists have dynamic
connotations. The word Brahman is derived from
the Sanskrit root brih - to grow- and thus suggests
a reality which is dynamic and alive. The
Upanishads refer to Brahman as 'this unformed,
immortal, moving', thus associating it with motion
even though it transcends all forms.' The Rig Veda
uses another term to express the dynamic
character of the universe, the term Rita. This
word comes from the root ri- to move. In its
phenomenal aspect, the cosmic One is thus
intrinsically dynamic, and the apprehension of its
dynamic nature is basic to all schools of Eastern
mysticism.
They all emphasize that the universe has to be
grasped dynamically, as it moves, vibrates and
dances. ..The Eastern mystics see the universe as an inseparable web, whose interconnections
are dynamic and not static. The cosmic web is alive; it moves and grows and changes
continually. (Fritjof Capra, 1972.)

In Hinduism, Shiva the Cosmic Dancer, is perhaps the most perfect personification of the
dynamic universe. Through his dance, Shiva sustains the manifold phenomena in the world,
unifying all things by immersing them in his rhythm and making them participate in the dance - a
magnificent image of the dynamic unity of the Universe. (Capra, The Tao of Physics)

For a more detailed explanation of the Metaphysics of Hinduism and the Wave Structure of
Matter, see the webpage Hinduism / Hindu Gods

Taoism
Way of the Tao, Lao Tzu
 There is a thing, formless yet complete. Before heaven and earth it existed. Without
sound, without substance, it stands alone and unchanging. It is all-pervading and
unfailing. We do not know its name, but we call it Tao. .. Being one with nature, the
sage is in accord with the Tao. (Lao Tzu)

Taoism is one of the great religions / philosophies of Ancient China (along with Buddhism and
Confucianism). 
In 440 B.C. Taoism was adopted as a state religion of China, with Lao Tzu (so called founder of
Taoism) honoured as a deity. Lao Tzu was a contemporary of Confucius and wrote a book called
the Tao te Ching, composed some time between the sixth and third centuries B.C. Some people
believe Lao Tzu is a mythical character. State support of Taoism ended in 1911 with the end of
the Ch'ing Dynasty and much Taoist heritage was destroyed.

Tao (pronounced 'Dao') can be defined as 'path', or 'road'. The way of the Tao is the way of
Nature and of ultimate reality. Tao is often described as a force that flows through all life. A
happy and virtuous life is one that is in harmony with the Tao, with Nature. 
The philosophy of Taoism understands Tao as the One Thing which exists and connects the
Many things. Tao, Nature, Reality are One.

The following quotes (attributed to Lao Tzu) help us understand the nature of the Tao;

“If people do not revere the Law of Nature, It will inexorably and adversely affect them
If they accept it with knowledge and reverence, It will accommodate them with balance and
harmony.”

“There is a thing, formless yet complete.

Before heaven and earth it existed.
Without sound, without substance, 
it stands alone and unchanging.
It is all-pervading and unfailing.
One may think of it as the mother of all beneath Heaven.
We do not know its name, but we call it Tao.
Deep and still, it seems to have existed forever.”

“The Great Tao flows everywhere.

It may go left or right.
All things depend on it for life, and it does not turn away from
them.
It accomplishes its tasks, but does not claim credit for it.
It clothes and feeds all things, but does not claim to be master
over them.
Always without desires, it may be called the Small.
All things come to it and it does not master them;
it may be called The Great.”
“The Tao that can be told of is not the eternal Tao;
the name that can be named is not the eternal name.”

“Hold on to the Tao of old in order to master the things of

the present.”

“Being one with Nature, he is in accord with the Tao.

Being in accord with the Tao, he is everlasting.”

“Whether it is big or small, many or few, repay hatred

with virtue.”

”Manifest plainness, Embrace simplicity, Reduce

selfishness, Have few desires.”

“Be still like a mountain and flow like a great river.”

(Lao Tzu)

See our webpage Taoism / Philosophy of the Tao for more quotes, information, history and
pictures.

Confucianism
On the Life of Confucius & the Philosophy of Confucianism

Confucianism is an ethical and philosophical system based upon the teachings of the Chinese
sage, Confucius.

Confucius was a famous thinker and social philosopher of China, whose teachings

have deeply influenced East Asia for centuries. Living in the Spring and Autumn
period (a time when feudal states fought against each other), he was convinced of
his ability to restore the world's order, though failed. After much travelling around
China to promote his ideas among rulers, he eventually became involved in teaching
disciples. His philosophy emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social
relationships, and justice and sincerity. Used since then as the imperial orthodoxy, Confucius'
thoughts have been developed into a vast and complete philosophical system known in the west
as Confucianism.

The Analects is a short collection of his discussions with disciples, compiled posthumously.
These contain an overview of his teachings. Confucius presents himself as a transmitter who
invented nothing and his greatest emphasis may be on study, the Chinese character that opens the
book. In this respect, he is seen by Chinese people as the Greatest Master. Far from trying to
build a systematic theory of life and society, he wanted his disciples to think deeply for
themselves and relentlessly study the outside world. For almost two thousand years, Analects
had also been the fundamental course of study for any Chinese scholar, for a man was not
considered morally upright or enlightened if he did not study Confucius' works.

Based upon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius

The following quotes from The Analects demonstrate the simplicity and wisdom of
Confucianism;

“ Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles.”

“ I am not one who was born in the possession of

knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest
in seeking it there.”

“ Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it.”

“ Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.”

“ Men's natures are alike, it is their habits that carry them

far apart.”

“ Respect yourself and others will respect you.”

“ Study the past if you would define the future.”

“ To see what is right, and not to do it, is want of courage

or of principle.”

“ What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.”

“ When anger rises, think of the consequences.”

“ When we see men of a contrary character, we should turn

inwards and examine ourselves.”

“ Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.”

“ They must often change who would be constant in happiness or

wisdom.”

“ Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom

associated with true virtue.”

“ Have no friends not equal to yourself.”

“ If a man takes no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand.”
See our webpage Confucius / Confucianism for more pictures, quotes and information.

http://www.spaceandmotion.com/buddhism-hinduism-taoism-confucianism.htm

Quotes About Eastern Philosophy

Quotes tagged as "eastern-philosophy" (showing 1-9 of 3,000)

“In the end

these things matter most:
How well did you love?
How fully did you live?
How deeply did you let go?” 
― Gautama Buddha
tags: eastern-philosophy, inspirational
1,867 people liked it

like

“(When asked what he thought of Western civilization): 'I think it would be a good idea.” 
― Mahatma Gandhi
tags: civilization, eastern-civilization, eastern-philosophy, society, western-civilization, western-
philosophy
176 people liked it

like
“As soon as you have made a thought, laugh at it.” 
― Lao Tzu
tags: comedy, eastern-philosophy, philosophy
78 people liked it

like

“Do you have the patience to wait 

Till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
Till the right action arises by itself?” 
― Lao Tzu
tags: eastern-philosophy
35 people liked it

like

“Anyone who is steady in his determination for the advanced stage of spiritual realization and
can equally tolerate the onslaughts of distress and happiness is certainly a person eligible for
liberation.” 
― A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, The Bhagavad Gita
tags: eastern-philosophy, hindu, inspirational, religious, spirituality
34 people liked it

like
“As soon as we notice that certain types of event "like" to cluster together at certain times, we
begin to understand the attitude of the Chinese, whose theories of medicine, philosophy, and
even building are based on a "science" of meaningful coincidences. The classical Chinese texts
did not ask what causes what, but rather what "likes" to occur with what.” 
― M.L. von Franz
tags: eastern-philosophy, jung, jungian, man-and-his-symbols, synchronicity
14 people liked it

like

“Compassion is not complete if it does not include oneself.” 

― Allan Lokos, Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living
tags: buddhism, compassion, eastern-philosophy, mindfulness
9 people liked it

like

“The man who wishes to know the "that" which is "thou" may set to work in any one of three
ways. He may begin by looking inwards into his own particular thou and, by a process of "dying
to self" --- self in reasoning, self in willing, self in feeling --- come at last to knowledge of the
self, the kingdom of the self, the kingdom of God that is within. Or else he may begin with the
thous existing outside himself, and may try to realize their essential unity with God and, through
God, with one another and with his own being. Or, finally (and this is doubtless the best way), he
may seek to approach the ultimate That both from within and from without, so that he comes to
realize God experimentally as at once the principle of his own thou and of all other thous,
animate and inanimate.” 
― Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy
 tags: eastern-philosophy, hinduism, perennial-philosophy, spirituality
8 people liked it

like

“When affirmation and negation came into being, Tao faded. After Tao faded, then came one-
sided attachments. ” 
― Zhuangzi
tags: chuang-tzu, eastern-philosophy, tao
8 people liked it

like

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/eastern-philosophy

Ancient Eastern Philosophers

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Siddhattha (Gautama Buddha) सिद्धार्थ गौतम(c.565 - d.)
Gautama Buddha Siddhārtha Gautama (Sanskrit: सिद्धार्थ गौतम; Pali: Siddhattha Gotama) was a
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孔子 Confucius (-552 - -479)
子姓 孔氏 名丘 字仲尼 魯國陬邑（今山東曲阜）人 Confucius, 孔丘 Kǒng Qiū Confucius
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 About
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 history

"To understand Western philosophy is to only get half the story. Just as important a contribution
to human thought is the Eastern intellectual tradition---the product of thousands of years of
thought by brilliant minds who demonstrated different ways of approaching fundamental
questions about the existence of God, the Meaning of Life, the Nature of Truth and Reality, etc."

"Among the many sages, mystics, poets, revolutionaries, critics, novelists, politicians, and
scientists you encounter in Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition are some you may
not have heard of before".

(Please feel free to join and add further names and information to this project)

eg.

 Zarathustra: This ancient Persian priest was the father of Zoroastrianism, a belief system
that spread throughout the near East and parts of the West. Zarathustra's greatest insight was
that the universe is characterized by dualism, with good and evil locked in a cosmic conflict
in which individuals must choose one side or the other.
 The Buddha Born Siddhartha Gautama around 563 B.C., the Buddha achieved a profound
state of enlightenment after meditating under a bodhi tree. Although he retained classical
ideas from Hinduism, he sharply differed from it when he taught that nothing has a soul and
that any grasping at permanence ends in suffering and failure.
 Confucius A contemporary of the Buddha, Confucius is the most significant philosopher in
Chinese history. He developed a program for lifelong moral growth that would influence the
culture for more than a thousand years. Confucius saw the answer to the increased violence
and lawlessness of his society as rooted in the social standards of sages, not revelation.
 Gandhi Best known for the concept of satyagraha (nonviolent resistance), this Indian
independence fighter changed his philosophical ideas over time in response to particular
situations. His overarching goal, however, was a more humane way of life based on self-
government, self-sufficiency, and a deep connection to one's community.
 Ashoka, the Indian ruler and Buddhist convert whose role in the spread of Buddhism is
similar to that of Emperor Constantine's in Christianity.
 Prince Shotoku, one of the most admired individuals in Japan and author of a 17-article
constitution that, unlike the U.S. Constitution, was a list of moral injunctions on leadership.
 Patanjali, the Indian philosopher who developed yoga as a means not for stress reduction or
flexibility but for people to escape life's suffering and achieve spiritual liberation.
 Nanak, a contemporary of Martin Luther who became the first Sikh guru and taught that
salvation comes when the soul, after cycles of reincarnation, is finally united with the One
God.
 Bodhidharma - Introduced a regimen of martial excercises, which became the foundation
of many later schools of Kung Fu.
 Lao Zi - Confucius and Lao Zi are the only Chinese philosophers that have become widely
known in the Western world. Lao Zi believed that violence should be avoided when
possible, and that codified laws and rules are just going to make managing society more
difficult.
 Zhuang Zi - Zhuangzi's philosophy was very influential on the development of Chinese
Buddhism, especially Chan, and Zen which evolved out of Chan
 Sun Tzu 孙子 was an ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher who is
traditionally believed, and who is most likely, to have authored The Art of War, an
influential ancient Chinese book on military strategy. Sun Tzu's The Art of War grew in
global popularity and his work has continued to influence both Asian and Western culture
and politics.
 Bahá-u-lláh-Mirza-Husayn-Ali-Nuri Humanity is understood to be in a process of
collective evolution, and the need of the present time is for the gradual establishment of
unity on a global scale leading to peace and justice for all mankind.
Syntheses of Eastern and Western Philosophy
Swiss psychologist Carl Jung was deeply influenced by his interest in the I Ching. The I Ching
(Book of Changes) is an ancient text in China, dating back to the Shang Dynasty (Bronze Age
1700BC-1050BC), and utilizes a system of Yin and Yang which it places into Hexagrams for
the purposes of divination. Carl Jung's idea of synchronicity moves towards an Oriental view of
causality.

German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was very interested in Taoism. His

system of dialectics is sometimes interpreted as a formalization of Taoist principles. Hegel read
Bhagavad-Gita and mentioned it in some of his works.

Hegel's rival Arthur Schopenhauer developed a philosophy that was essentially a synthesis

of Hinduism with Western thought. He anticipated that the Upanishads (primary Hindu
scriptures) would have a much greater influence in the West than they have had.

Some have claimed that there is also a definite eastern element within Heidegger's philosophy.
Heidegger did spend time attempting to translate the Tao Te Ching into German, working with
his Chinese student Paul Hsaio. It has also been claimed that much of Heidegger's later
philosophy, particularly the sacredness of Being, bears a distinct similarity to Taoist ideas.

East Asian philosophies

Confucianism
Confucianism(儒學), developed around the teachings of Confucius(孔子) and is based on a set
of Chinese classic texts.

Neo-Confucianism
Neo-Confucianism is a later further development of Confucianism but also went much more
differently from the origin of Confucianism.

It started developing from the Song Dynasty and was nearly completed in late Ming Dynasty. Its
root can be found as early as Tang Dynasty, often attributed to scholar Tang Xie Tian.

It has a great influence on the countries of East Asia including China, Japan and Korea as well as
Vietnam as well. Zhu Xi is considered as the biggest master of Song where Neo-Confucianism
and Wang Yangming is the one of Ming's. But there are conflicts between Zhu's school and
Wang's.

Taoism
Taoism (or Daoism) is the traditional foil of Confucianism in China. Taoism's central books are
the Dao De Jing (Tao-Te-Ching), traditionally attributed to Laozi (Lao Tzu), and
the Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu).

Shinto
Shinto is the indigenous religion of Japan. It is a sophisticated form of animism which holds that
spirits called kami inhabit all things. Worship is at public shrines or in small shrines constructed
in one's home. According to Shinto practice, relationship with the kami that inhabit this world is
foremost in a person's duties; the kami are to be respected in order that they may return our
respect.

Shinto further holds that the "spirit" and "mundane" worlds are one and the same. Of all of the
tenets of this philosophy, purity is the most highly stressed.

Pure acts are those that promote or contribute to the harmony of the universe, and impure acts are
those which are deleterious in this regard. As a faith, Shinto bears heavy influences from Chinese
religions, notably Taoism and Buddhism.

Legalism
Legalism advocated a strict interpretation of the law in every respect. No judgment calls.
Adherence to the letter of the law was paramount.
Maoism
Maoism is a Communist philosophy based on the teachings of 20th century Communist Party of
China revolutionary leader Mao Zedong. It is based partially on earlier theories
by Marx and Lenin, but rejects the urban proletariat and Leninist emphasis on heavy
industrialization in favor of a revolution supported by the peasantry, and a decentralized agrarian
economy based on many collectively worked farms.

Indian philosophies

Hindu philosophy
Hinduism (सनातन धर्म; Sanātana Dharma, roughly Perennial Moral Duty) is one of the oldest
major world religion.

Hinduism is characterized by a diverse array of religious belief systems, practices and scriptures.
It has its origin in ancient Vedic culture at least as far back as 1500 BC. It is the third largest
religion with approximately 1.05 billion followers worldwide, 96% of whom live in the Indian
subcontinent.

Hinduism rests on the spiritual bedrock of the Vedas, hence Veda Dharma, and their mystic
issue, the Upanishads, as well as the teachings of many great Hindu gurus through the ages.

Many streams of thought flow from the six Vedic/Hindu schools, Bhakti sects and Tantra
Agamic schools into the one ocean of Hinduism, the first of the Dharma religions. Also, the
sacred book Bhagavad Gita is one of the most revered texts among Hindus.

What can be said to be common to many theistic Hindus is belief in Dharma, reincarnation,
karma, and moksha (liberation) of every soul through a variety of moral, action-based, and
meditative yogas.

Still more fundamental principles include ahimsa (non-violence), the primacy of the Guru, the
Divine Word of Aum and the power of mantras, love of Truth in many manifestations as gods
and goddesses, and an understanding that the essential spark of the Divine (Atman) is in every
human and living being, thus allowing for many spiritual paths leading to the One Unitary
Religious Truth (which Hindus call Brahman).

This acceptance of various paths leading to the same truth, is also a foundation of Hindu
philosophy. However, since the term Hindu is more of an umbrella term for dharmic traditions
arising from the Indian subcontinent, there may be persons who believe in none of the above
concepts and yet consider themselves Hindu.

Buddhist philosophy
Buddhism is a system of religious beliefs based on the teachings of Siddhartha
Gautama. Buddhism is a non-theistic religion, one whose tenets are not especially concerned
with the existence or non-existence of a God or gods.
The Buddha himself expressly disavowed any special divine status or inspiration, and said that
anyone, anywhere could achieve all the insight that he had.

The question of God is largely irrelevant in Buddhism, though some sects (notably Tibetan
Buddhism) do venerate a number of gods drawn in from local indigenous belief systems yet this
practice has taken on different meanings and has become a skillful mean within the Tibetan
Buddhist practice.

Most Buddhist sects believe in karma, a cause-and-effect relationship between all that has been
done and all that will be done. Events that occur are held to be the direct result of previous
events.

One effect of karma is rebirth. At death, the karma from a given life determines the nature of the
next life's existence.

The ultimate goal of a Buddhist practitioner is to eliminate karma (both good and bad), end the
cycle of rebirth and suffering, and attain Nirvana, usually translated as awakening or
enlightenment.

Sikh religious philosophy

Simran and Sewa - These are the Foundation of Sikhism. It is the duty of every Sikh to practise
Naam Simran (meditation on the Lord's name) daily and engage in Sewa (Selfless Service)
whenever there is a possibility, in Gurdwara (Sikh place of worship), in community centres, old
people's homes, care centres, major world disasters, etc. "Ek ong kar Satanam" and "Waheguru"
are some mantras used for this purpose. "Ek ong kar Satanam" roughly translates to "there is one
God un-separate from nature and truth is its name". "Waheguru" is used as a meditative practice
on the Lord's name.

The Three Pillars of Sikhism - Guru Nanak formalised these three important pillars of Sikhism.

1. Naam Japna – A Sikh is to engage in a daily practise of meditation and Nitnem (a daily prayer
routine) by reciting and chanting of God’s Name.

2. Kirat Karni - To live honestly and earn by ones physical and mental effort while accepting
Gods gifts and blessings. A Sikh has to live as a householders carrying out his or her duties and
responsibilities to the full.

3. Vand Chakna - Sikhs are asked to share their wealth within the community and outside by
giving Dasvand and practising charity (Daan). To “Share and consume together”.

Kill the Five Thieves - The Sikh Gurus tell us that our mind and spirit are constantly being
attacked by the Five Evils –

Five Evils

1. Kam (Lust),
2. Krodh (Rage),
3. Lobh (Greed),
4. Moh (Attachment)
5. Ahankar (Ego).
A Sikh needs to constantly attack and overcome these five vices; be always vigilant and on guard
to tackle these five thieves all the time. Positive Human Qualities - The Sikh Gurus taught the
Sikhs to develop and harness positive human qualities which lead the soul closer to God and
away from evil. These are

Positive Qualities

1. Sat (Truth),
2. Daya (Compassion),
3. Santokh (Contentment),
4. Nimrata (Humility)
5. Pyare (Love).
Jainism
Jain philosophy deals extensively with the problems of metaphysics, reality, cosmology,
ontology, epistemology and divinity. Jainism is essentially a transtheistic religion of ancient
India.

It is a continuation of the ancient Śramaṇa tradition which co-existed with the Vedic tradition
since ancient times. The distinguishing features of Jain philosophy are its belief on independent
existence of soul and matter, denial of creative and omnipotent God, potency of karma, eternal
and uncreated universe, a strong emphasis on non-violence, accent on relativity and multiple
facets of truth, and morality and ethics based on liberation of soul.

Jain philosophy attempts to explain the rationale of being and existence, the nature of the
Universe and its constituents, the nature of bondage and the means to achieve liberation.

It has often been described as an ascetic movement for its strong emphasis on self-control,
austerities and renunciation.It has also been called a model of philosophical liberalism for its
insistence that truth is relative and multifaceted and for its willingness to accommodate all
possible view-points of the rival philosophies.

Jainism strongly upholds the individualistic nature of soul and personal responsibility for one's
decisions; and that self-reliance and individual efforts alone are responsible for one's liberation.

Throughout its history, the Jain philosophy remained unified and single, although as a religion,
Jainism was divided into various sects and traditions. The contribution of Jain philosophy in
developing the Indian philosophy has been significant. Jain philosophical concepts like Ahimsa,
Karma, Moksa, Samsara and like have been assimilated into the philosophies of other Indian
religions like Hinduism and Buddhism in various forms.

While Jainism traces its philosophy from teachings of Mahavira and other Tirthankaras, various
Jain philosophers from Kundakunda and Umasvati in ancient times to Yaśovijaya Gaṇi in recent
times have contributed greatly in developing and refining the Jain and Indian philosophical
concepts.
Cārvāka
Cārvāka, also frequently transliterated as Charvaka or Cārvāka, and also known as Lokayata or
Lokyāta, was a materialist and atheist school of thought with ancient roots in India. It proposed a
system of ethics based on rational thought. However, this school has been dead for more than a
thousand years.

Iranian philosophy

Zoroastrianism
Zoroastrianism is a monotheistic religion, which originated in Iran. It has a dualistic nature
(Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu), with an additional series of six important divine entities
called the Amesha Spentas.

In modern Zoroastrianism they are interpreted as aspects or emanations of Ahura Mazda (the
Supreme Being), who form a heptad that is good and constructive. They are opposed to another
group of seven who are evil and destructive.

It is this persistent conflict between good and evil that distinguishes Zoroastrianism from
monotheistic frameworks that have only one power as supreme. By requiring its adherents to
have faith and belief in equally opposing powers Zoroastrianism characterizes itself as dualistic.

The teachings of Zarathustra (Zoroaster) appeared in Persia at some point during the period
1700-1800 BCE. His wisdom became the basis of the religion Zoroastrianism, and generally
influenced the development of the Iranian branch of Indo-Iranian philosophy. Zarathustra was
the first who treated the problem of evil in philosophical terms.

He is also believed to be one of the oldest monotheists in the history of religion. He espoused an
ethical philosophy based on the primacy of good thoughts (pendar-e-nik), good words (goftar-e-
nik), and good deeds (kerdar-e-nik).

The works of Zoroaster and Zoroastrianism had a significant influence on Greek philosophy and
Roman philosophy.

Manichaeism
Manichaeism, founded by Mani, was influential from North Africa in the West, to China in the
East. Its influence subtly continues in Western Christian thought via Saint Augustine of Hippo,
who converted to Christianity from Manichaeism, which he passionately denounced in his
writings, and whose writings continue to be influential among Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox
theologians. An important principle of Manichaeism was its dualistic nature.

Mazdakism
The religious and philosophical teaching called Mazdakism which was regarded by its founder,
Mazdak, as a reformed and purified version of Zoroastrianism displays remarkable influences
from Manichaeism as well.
Zurvanism
Zurvanism is characterized by the element of its First Principle which is Time, "Zurvan", as a
primordial creator. According to Zaehner, Zurvanism appears to have three schools of thought all
of which have classical Zurvanism as their foundation:

1. Aesthetic Zurvanism which was apparently not as popular as the materialistic kind, viewed
Zurvan as undifferentiated Time, which, under the influence of desire, divided into reason (a
male principle) and concupiscence (a female principle).

2. Materialist Zurvanism - While Zoroaster's Ormuzd created the universe with his thought,
materialist Zurvanism challenged the concept that anything could be made out of nothing.

3. Fatalistic Zurvanism resulted from the doctrine of limited time with the implication that
nothing could change this preordained course of the material universe and that the path of the
astral bodies of the 'heavenly sphere' was representative of this preordained course. According to
the Middle Persian work Menog-i Khrad:"Ohrmazd allotted happiness to man, but if man did
not receive it, it was owing to the extortion of these planets."

Avicennism
The Persian polymath Avicenna wrote almost 450 treatises on a wide range of subjects. Many
philosophical works, among them The Book of Healing, have survived.

Iranian Illuminationism
The Philosophy of Illumination founded by Sohrevardi argued that light operates at all levels
and hierarchies of reality. Light produces immaterial and substantial lights, including immaterial
intellects, human and animal souls and even 'dusky substances', such as bodies. Sohrevardi's
works display extensive developments on the basis of Zoroastrian ideas and ancient Iranian
thought.

Transcendent Philosophy
Transcendent Philosophy, developed by Sadr Shirazi, is one of two main disciplines of Islamic
philosophy that is currently live and active.

Bahá'í Philosophy
Concepts of Bahai Philosophy are portrayed in the work Divine Philosophy by Abdul-Baha, the
eldest son of the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, Bahá'u'lláh.

Babylonian philosophy
The origins of Babylonian philosophy, in the popular sense of the word, can be traced back to the
wisdom of early Mesopotamia, which embodied certain philosophies of life, particularly ethics,
in the forms of dialectic, dialogs, epic poetry, folklore, hymns, lyrics, prose, and proverbs. The
reasoning and rationality of the Babylonians developed beyond empirical observation.
It is possible that Babylonian philosophy had an influence on Greek philosophy, and later
Hellenistic philosophy, however the textual evidence is lacking. The undated Babylonian text
Dialog of Pessimism contains similarities to the agnostic thought of the sophists, the Heraclitean
doctrine of contrasts, and the dialogs of Plato, as well as a precursor to the maieutic Socratic
method of Socrates and Plato. The Milesian philosopher Thales is also said to have studied
philosophy in Mesopotamia.

Islamic philosophy
Early Islamic philosophy was influenced by Greek philosophy, Hellenistic philosophy, Iranian
philosophy, Judaism, Christianity and Indian philosophy, and in turn, Islamic philosophy had a
strong influence on Jewish philosophy, Christian philosophy, Western philosophy, Iranian
philosophy and Indian philosophy, hence many consider Islamic philosophy to be both an
Eastern philosophy and a Western philosophy.

Al-Mu'tazilah (‫)المعتزلة‬
Mu'tazilite is a popular theological school of philosophy during early Islam. They called
themselves Ahl al-'Adl wa al-Tawhid ("People of Justice and Monotheism"). They ascended
dramatically during 8th and 9th century due to the support of intellectuals and elites. Later in the
13th century, they lost official support in favour of the rising Ash'ari school. Most of their
valuable works were destroyed during the Crusades and Mongol invasion.

Averroism school of philosophy

One of the most influential Muslim philosophers in the West was Averroes (Ibn Rushd).

It is said that other influential Muslim philosophers include-:

 al-Jahiz, a pioneer of evolutionary thought and natural selection;

 Ibn al-Haytham (Alhacen), a pioneer of phenomenology and the philosophy of science and
a critic of Aristotelian natural philosophy and Aristotle's concept of place (topos);
 Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī, a critic of Aristotelian natural philosophy;
 Avicenna, a critic of Aristotelian logic ( see above )
 Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, a critic of Aristotelian logic and a pioneer of inductive logic; * Ibn
Khaldun, considered the father of the philosophy of history and sociology and a pioneer of
social philosophy.
Sufism
Sufism (‫ تصوف‬taṣawwuf) is a school of esoteric philosophy in Islam, which is based on the
pursuit of spiritual truth as a definite goal to attain. In order to attain this supreme truth, Sufism
has marked Lataif-e-Sitta (the six subtleties), Nafs, Qalb, Sirr, Ruh (spirit), Khafi and Akhfa.
Apart from conventional religious practices, they also perform Muraqaba (meditation), Dhikr
(Zikr or recitation), Chillakashi (asceticism) and Sama (esoteric music and dance).

Sources:

 Wikipedia - Eastern Philosophy

 Great Courses Series
 Oriental Wisdom / Eastern Philosophy
http://www.geni.com/projects/Ancient-Eastern-Philosophers/7544

Introduction Back to Top

Indian Philosophy (or, in Sankrit, Darshanas), refers to any of several traditions of

philosophical thought that originated in theIndian subcontinent, including Hindu
philosophy, Buddhist philosophy, and Jain philosophy (see below for brief introductions to
these schools). It is considered by Indian thinkers to be a practical discipline, and its goal
should always be toimprove human life.

Orthodox (Hindu) Schools Back to Top

The main Hindu orthodox (astika) schools of Indian philosophy are those codified during the
medieval period of Brahmanic-Sanskritic scholasticism, and they take the ancient Vedas (the
oldest sacred texts of Hinduism) as their source and scriptural authority:

 Samkhya:
Samkhya is the oldest of the orthodox philosophical systems, and it postulates that
everything in reality stems frompurusha (self or soul or mind) and prakriti (matter,
creative agency, energy). It is a dualist philosophy, although between the self and matter
rather than between mind and body as in the Western dualist tradition, and liberation
occurs with the realization that the soul and the dispositions of matter (steadiness,
activity and dullness) are different.
 Yoga:
The Yoga school, as expounded by Patanjali in his 2nd Century B.C. Yoga Sutras,
accepts the Samkhya psychology and metaphysics, but is more theistic, with the addition
of a divine entity to Samkhya's twenty-five elements of reality. The relatively brief Yoga
Sutras are divided into eight ashtanga (limbs), reminiscent of Buddhism's Noble
Eightfold Path, the goal being to quiet one's mind and achieve kaivalya (solitariness or
detachment).
 Nyaya:
The Nyaya school is based on the Nyaya Sutras, written by Aksapada Gautama in the
2nd Century B.C. Its methodology is based on a system of logic that has subsequently
been adopted by the majority of the Indian schools, in much the same way
as Aristotelian logic has influenced Western philosophy. Its followers believe
that obtaining valid knowledge(the four sources of which are perception, inference,
comparison and testimony) is the only way to gain release from suffering. Nyaya
developed several criteria by which the knowledge thus obtained was to be
considered valid or invalid(equivalent in some ways to Western analytic philosophy).
 Vaisheshika:
The Vaisheshika school was founded by Kanada in the 6th Century B.C., and it
is atomist and pluralist in nature. The basis of the school's philosophy is that all objects
in the physical universe are reducible to a finite number of atoms, andBrahman is
regarded as the fundamental force that causes consciousness in these atoms. The
Vaisheshika and Nyaya schools eventually merged because of their closely related
 metaphysical theories (although Vaisheshika only acceptedperception and inference as
sources of valid knowledge).
 Purva Mimamsa:
The main objective of the Purva Mimamsa school is to interpret and establish the
authority of the Vedas. It requires unquestionable faith in the Vedas and the regular
performance of the Vedic fire-sacrifices to sustain all the activity of the universe.
Although in general the Mimamsa accept the logical and philosophical teachings of the
other schools, they insist that salvation can only be attained by acting in accordance with
the prescriptions of the Vedas. The school later shifted its views and began to teach the
doctrines of Brahman and freedom, allowing for the release or escape of the soul from
its constraints through enlightened activity.
 Vedanta:
The Vedanta, or Uttara Mimamsa, school concentrates on the philosophical teachings of
the Upanishads (mystic or spiritual contemplations within the Vedas), rather than
the Brahmanas (instructions for ritual and sacrifice). The Vedanta focus on meditation,
self-discipline and spiritual connectivity, more than traditional ritualism. Due to the
rather cryptic and poetic nature of the Vedanta sutras, the school separated into six sub-
schools, each interpreting the texts in its own way and producing its own series of sub-
commentaries: Advaita (the best-known, which holds that the soul and Brahman are one
and the same), Visishtadvaita (which teaches that the Supreme Being has a definite
form, name - Vishnu - and attributes), Dvaita (which espouses a belief in three separate
realities: Vishnu, and eternal soul and matter), Dvaitadvaita(which holds that Brahman
exists independently, while soul and matter are dependent), Shuddhadvaita (which
believes that Krishna is the absolute form of Brahman) and Acintya Bheda
Abheda (which combines monism and dualism by stating that the soul is both distinct
and non-distinct from Krishna, or God).

Heterodox (Non-Hindu) Schools Back to Top

The main heterodox (nastika) schools, which do not accept the authority of the Vedas, include:

 Carvaka:
Also known as Lokayata, Carvaka is a materialistic, sceptical and atheistic school of
thought. Its founder was Carvaka, author of the Barhaspatya Sutras in the final
centuries B.C., although the original texts have been lost and our understanding of them
is based largely on criticism of the ideas by other schools. As early as the 5th
Century,Saddaniti and Buddhaghosa connected the Lokayatas with the Vitandas (or
Sophists), and the term Carvaka was first recorded in the 7th Century by the
philosopher Purandara, and in the 8th Century by Kamalasila and Haribhadra. As a
vital philosophical school, Carvara appears to have died out some time in the 15th
Century.
 Buddhist philosophy:
Buddhism is a non-theistic system of beliefs based on the teachings of Siddhartha
Gautama, an Indian prince later known as the Buddha, in the 5th Century B.C. The
question of God is largely irrelevant in Buddhism, and it is mainly founded on
the rejection of certain orthodox Hindu philosophical concepts (althought it does share
 some philosophical views with Hinduism, such as belief in karma). Buddhism advocates
a Noble Eightfold Path to end suffering, and its philosophical principles are known as
the Four Noble Truths (the Nature of Suffering, the Origin of Suffering, the Cessation
of Suffering, and the Path Leading to the Cessation of Suffering). Buddhist philosophy
deals extensively with problems
in metaphysics, phenomenology, ethics and epistemology.
 Jain philosophy:
The central tenets of Jain philosophy were established by Mahavira in the 6th
Century B.C., although Jainism as a religion is much older. A basic principle
is anekantavada, the idea that reality is perceived differently from different points of
view, and that no single point of view is completely true (similar to the Western
philosophical doctrine of Subjectivism). According to Jainism, only Kevalis, those who
have infinite knowledge, can know the true answer, and that all others would only know
a part of the answer. It stresses spiritual independence and the equality of all life, with
particular emphasis on non-violence, and posits self-control as vital for attaining the
realization of the soul's true nature. Jain belief emphasize the immediate consequences
of one's behaviour.
 Indian Political Philosophy:
The Arthashastra, attributed to the Mauryan minister Chanakya in the 4th Century B.C.,
is one of the earliest Indian texts devoted to political philosophy, and it discusses ideas
of statecraft and economic policy. During the Indian struggle for independence in the
early 20th Century, Mahatma Gandhi popularized the philosophies of ahimsa (non-
violence) andsatyagraha (non-violent resistance), which were influenced by the
teachings of the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, as well as Jesus, Tolstoy, Thoreau and Ruskin.

Introduction Back to Top

Chinese Philosophy refers to any of several schools of philosophical thought in the Chinese

tradition, includingConfucianism, Taoism, Legalism, Buddhism and Mohism (see below for
brief introductions to these schools). It has a long history of several thousand years.

History of Chinese Philosophy Back to Top

It is known that early Shang Dynasty (c. 1600 BC - 1046 B.C.) thought was based on cyclicity,
from observation of the cycles of day and night, the seasons, the moon, etc., a concept which
remained relevant throughout later Chinese philosophy, and immediately setting it apart from
the more linear Western approach. During this time, both gods and ancestors were worshipped
and there were human and animal sacrifices.

During the succeeding Zhou Dynasty (1122 BC - 256 B.C.), the concept of the Mandate of

Heaven was introduced, which held that Heaven would bless the authority of a just ruler, but
would be displeased with an unwise ruler, and retract the Mandate.

The "I Ching" (or "Book of Changes") was traditionally compiled by the mythical figure Fu

Xi in the 28th Century B.C., although modern research suggests that it more likely dates to
the late 9th Century B.C. The text describes an ancient system of cosmology and philosophy
that is intrinsic to ancient Chinese cultural beliefs, centring on the ideas of the dynamic balance
of opposites, the evolution of events as a process, and acceptance of the inevitability of
change. It consists of a series ofsymbols, rules for manipulating these symbols, poems and
commentary, and is sometimes regarded as a system of divination.

In about 500 B.C., (interestingly, around the same time as Greek philosophy was emerging),

the classic period of Chinese philosophy (known as the Contention of a Hundred Schools of
Thought) flourished, and the four most influential schools (Confucianism, Taoism, Mohism and
Legalism) were established.

During the Qin Dynasty (also know as the Imperial Era), after the unification of China in
221 B.C., Legalism became ascendant at the expense of the Mohist and Confucianist schools,
although the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. - A.D. 220) adopted Taoism and later Confucianism as
official doctrine. Along with the gradual parallel introduction of Buddhism, these two schools
have remained the determining forces of Chinese thought up until the 20th Century.

Neo-Confucianism (a variant of Confucianism, incorporating elements of Buddhism, Taoism

and Legalism) was introduced during the Song Dynasty (A.D. 960 - 1279) and popularized
during the Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644).

During the Industrial and Modern Ages, Chinese philosophy also began to integrate concepts

of Western philosophy. Sun Yat-Sen (1866 - 1925) attempted to incorporate elements
of democracy, republicanism and industrialism at the beginning of the 20th century,
while Mao Zedong (1893 - 1976) later added Marxism, Stalinism and
other communist thought. During theCultural Revolution of 1966 - 1976, most previous
schools of thought, with the notable exception of Legalism, were denouncedas backward and
purged, although their influence has remained.

Major Schools Back to Top

The main schools of Chinese philosophy are:

 Confucianism:
This school was developed from the teachings of the sage Confucius (551 - 479 B.C.),
and collected in the Analects of Confucius. It is a system of moral, social, political, and
quasi-religious thought, whose influence also spread to Korea andJapan. The major
Confucian concepts include ren (humanity or humaneness), zhengming (similar to the
concept of the Mandate of Heaven), zhong (loyalty), xiao (filial piety), and li (ritual). It
introduced the Golden Rule (essentially, treat others as you would like to be treated), the
concept of Yin and Yang (two opposing forces that are permanently in conflict with each
other, leading to perpetual contradiction and change), the idea of meritocracy, and
of reconciling opposites in order to arrive at some middle ground combining the best of
both. Confucianism is not necessarily regarded as a religion, allowing one to be a
Taoist, Christian, Muslim, Shintoist or Buddhist and still profess Confucianist beliefs.
Arguably the most famous Confucian after Confucius himself was Meng
Tzu (or Mencius) (372 – 289 B.C.)
  Taoism:
Sometimes also written Daoism, Taoism is a philosophy which later also developed into
a religion. Tao literally means "path" or "way", athough it more often used as a meta-
physical term that describes the flow of the universe, or the force behind the natural
order. The Three Jewels of the Tao are compassion, moderation, and humility. Taoist
thought focuses on wu wei ("non-action"), spontaneity, humanism, relativism, emptiness
and the strength of softness (or flexibility). Nature and ancestor spirits are common in
popular Taoism, although typically there is also a pantheon of gods, often headed by
the Jade Emperor. The most influential Taoist text is the "Tao Te
Ching" (or "Daodejing") written around the 6th Century B.C. by Lao Tzu (or Laozi),
and a secondary text is the 4th Century B.C. "Zhuangzi", named after its author. TheYin
and Yang symbol is important in Taoist symbology (as in Confucianism), as are
the Eight Trigrams, and a zigzag with seven stars which represents the Big Dipper star
constellation.
 Legalism:
Legalism is a pragmatic political philosophy, whose main motto is "set clear strict laws,
or deliver harsh punishment", and its essential principle is one of jurisprudence.
According to Legalism, a ruler should govern his subjects accordoing to Fa (law or
principle), Shu (method, tactic, art, or statecraft) and Shi (legitimacy, power, or
charisma). Under Li Si in the 3rd century B.C., a form of Legalism essentially became
a totalitarian ideology in China, which in part led to its subsequent decline.
 Buddhism:
Buddhism is a religion, a practical philosophy and arguably a psychology, focusing on
the teachings of Buddha(Siddhartha Gautama), who lived in India from the mid-6th to
the early 5th Century B.C. It was introduced to China fromIndia, probably some time
during the 1st Century B.C. Chinese tradition focuses on ethics rather than metaphysics,
and it developed several schools distinct from the originating Indian schools, and in the
process integrated the ideas of Confucianism, Taoism and other indigenous
philosophical systems into itself. The most prominent Chinese Buddhist schools
are Sanlun, Tiantai, Huayan and Chán (known as Zen in Japan).
 Mohism:
Mohism was founded by Mozi (c. 470 - 390 B.C.) It promotes universal love with the
aim of mutual benefit, such that everyone must love each other equally and impartially
to avoid conflict and war. Mozi was strongly against Confucian ritual, instead
emphasizing pragmatic survival through farming, fortification and statecraft. In some
ways, his philosophy parallels Western utilitarianism. Although popular during the latter
part of the Zhou Dynasty, many Mohist texts were destroyed during the succeeding Qin
Dynasty, and it was finally supplanted completely by Confucianism during the Han
Dynasty.

Introduction Back to Top

Korean Philosophy has been influenced by a number of religious and philosophical thought-

systems over the years, includingShamanism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism:

History and Major Schools Back to Top

  Native shamanism developed in Korea for millennia, although the traditional
rites and shamanistic practices were later deeply influenced by Buddhism and Taoism.
In Korea, a shaman is known as a mudang, and she (it is usually a woman) seeks to solve
human problems through a connection to the spirit world. Korean Shamanism held three
spirits in especially high regard: Sanshin (the Mountain Spirit), Toksong (the Recluse)
and Chilsong (the Spirit of the Seven Stars, the Big Dipper).
 Buddhism arrived in Korea from China during the Three Kingdoms period
(57 B.C. - A.D. 668), specifically in the year A.D.372. Korean Buddhism accepted and
absorbed many shamanistic spirits, and early schools
like Samnon, Gyeyul andYeolban attempted to develop a new holistic approach to
Buddhism in order to resolve what it saw as internal inconsistencies
in Chinese Mahayana Buddhism. Soon Wonyung (later known as Hwaeom) became
the dominant school and then, in the 7th and 8th Century and after, the meditation-
based Seon school finally gained the upper hand. Seon is a version of the Chinese Chan
(or Japanese Zen) Buddhism, and it developed in Korea particularly under the direction
of Jinul (1158-1210), the most important figure in Seon. Buddhism in Korea initially
enjoyed wide acceptance, even being supported as the state ideology during the Goryeo
Dynasty (also known as Koryo: 918-1392), but it suffered extreme repression during the
long Joseon Dynasty (or Chosun: 1392-1910), when Neo-Confucianism became
dominant.
 Confucianism was the second major intellectual import from China during the Three
Kingdoms period, alongside Buddhism, although the exact date of its introduction is not
clear. Korean Confucianism was, and remains, a fundamental part of Korean society,
shaping the moral system, the way of life, social relations between old and young, high
culture and is the basis for much of the Korean legal system. During the Joseon
Dynasty, Korean Confucianism (or, arguably, Neo-Confucianism) was the primary
system of belief amongst the scholarly and military classes. KoreanConfucian
schools were built, and there was even greater encouragement of Confucian ideas and
ideals such as chung(loyalty), hyo (filial piety), in (benevolence) and sin (trust).
Confucianism in Joseon Korea flourished most notably in the16th Century, under the
guidance of the country's two most prominent Confucian scholars, Yi Hwang (Toegye)
(1501–1570) and Yi I (Yulgok) (1536–1584).
 Taoism, largely shaped by the writings of the Chinese philosophers Lao
Tzu and Chuang Tzu, also arrived in Korea during the latter part of the Three
Kingdoms period, in A.D. 674. Korean Taoism enjoyed its greatest popularity during
the Goryeo Dynasty, especially in the court and the ruling class. By the mid period of the
Goryeo Dynasty, however,Buddhism dominated Korea, subsuming other religions and
philosopies, including Taoism. Taoism never grew into an autonomous religion or
philosophy in Korea, being rejected by Confucian and Buddhist elites, but it remains
a minor but significant element of Korean thought.

Modern Era Back to Top

Under Japanese rule, from 1910, Shintoism became the state religion, although Western

philosophy, particularly the German Idealist philosophers which were in vogue in Japan at the
time, was influential. After partition in 1945, North Korea's orthodoxMarxism was loosely built
on the Confucian yangban scholar-warriors of earlier times, and communist Maoism represents
a latter day philosophical import from China.

Introduction Back to Top

Japanese Philosophy has historically been a fusion of both foreign

(particularly Chinese and Western) and uniquely Japanese elements.

In its literary forms, Japanese philosophy began about fourteen centuries

ago. Confucianism entered Japan from China around the 5th Century A.D., as
did Buddhism. Neo-Confucianism became most prominent in Japan in the 16th Century. Also
since the 16th Century, certain indigenous ideas of loyalty and honour developed within the
Japanese samurai or warrior class were integrated. Western philosophy has had its major impact
in Japan only since the middle of the 19th Century.

However, in all of these cases, the philosophies were not imported wholesale; rather, they
were adapted, and selectively adopted.

History and Major Schools Back to Top

Shinto is the native religion of Japan and, up until the Second World War, its state religion. It is
a type of polytheistic animism, and involves the worship of kami (or spirits). It can be traced
back to the earliest natives of Japan, although it was significantly modified by the arrival
of Buddhism in the 6th Century. Shinto has no binding set of dogma, and the most important
elements are a great love and reverence for nature in all its forms, respect for tradition and
the family, physical cleanlinessand matsuri (or festivals dedicated to the kami). Shinto is not a
philosophy as such, but has greatly influenced all other philosophies in their Japanese
interpretations.

Buddhism definitively entered Japan (from its native India, via China and Korea) in A.D. 550.

Each major period after that - theNara period (up to 784), the Heian period (794–1185) and
the post-Heian period (1185 onwards) - saw the introduction of new doctrines and upheavals in
existing schools. The three main schools of Japanese Buddhism are:

 Zen Buddhism:
Zen, as a distinct school of Buddhism, was first documented in China in the 7th
Century A.D., where it was established as an amalgamation of various currents
in Indian Mahayana Buddhist thought. It subsequently spread southwards to Vietnam
and eastwards to Korea and then Japan. Although the Japanese had known Zen-like
practices for centuries (Taoism and Shinto), it was not introduced as a separate school
until the 12th Century. It asserts that all sentient beings possess a Buddha-nature, a
nature of inherent wisdom and virtue, which lies hidden in the depths of their minds. Zen
practitioners attempt to discover this Buddha-nature within themselves,
through meditation and mindfulness of daily experiences. Zen sitting meditation, (such
as the lotus, half-lotus, Burmese or seiza postures) is known as zazen. The schools of Zen
 that currently exist in Japan are Soto (largest), Rinzai (split into several sub-schools)
and Obaku(smallest).
 Pure Land (or Amidist) Buddhism:
Pure Land is a broad branch of Mahayana Buddhism and currently one of the most
popular schools of Buddhism in East Asia, along with Zen. It is a devotional or "faith"-
oriented branch of Buddhism focused on Amitabha Buddha. Pure Land Buddhism
teaches that through devotion to just Amitabha, one will be reborn in the Pure Land in
which enlightenment is guaranteed. In medieval Japan it was also popular among those
on the outskirts of society, such as prostitutes and social outcasts, who were often
denied spiritual services by society but could still find some form of religious practice
through worshipping Amitabha.
 Nichiren Buddhism:
Nichiren Buddhism is a branch of Buddhism based on the teachings of the 13th Century
Japanese monk Nichiren (1222–1282). It focuses on the Lotus Sutra and an attendant
belief that all people have an innate Buddha-nature and are therefore inherently capable
of attaining enlightenment in their current form and present lifetime. It was particularly
popular among the merchants of Kyoto in Japan's Middle Ages, and among some
ultranationalists during the pre-World War II era, and has something of a reputation
for missionary zeal and strident pushes to convert others.

Two other religions that were brought into Japan from

mainland China are Confucianism and Taoism. According to early Japanese
writings, Confucianism was introduced to Japan via Korea in the year 285 A.D. Some of the
most important Confucian principles are humanity, loyality, morality and consideration on an
individual and political level. Taoism spread to Japan in the 7th century. For more than 1,000
years, these religions have had a significant impact on Japan's society. The rules of Confucianism
in particular have had major influence on ethical and political philosophy, especially during the
6th to 9th Centuries and later after Meiji Restoration of 1868.

Modern Era Back to Top

Later, Chinese Neo-Confucianism also made its way into Japan, where it became ascendant

during the Edo (or Tokugawa) period (1603 - 1868). Japanese Neo-Confucians such as Hayashi
Razan and Arai Hakuseki were instrumental in the formulation of Japan's dominant early
modern political philosophy.

Kokugaku was a school of Japanese philology (the study of ancient literature and the origins of

language) and philosophy originating during the Edo period. Kokugaku scholars tended
to relativize the study of Chinese and Buddhist texts and favoured philological research into the
early Japanese classics.

Mitogaku refers to a 17th Century school of Japanese historical and Shinto studies, originally
commissioned to compile theHistory of Great Japan in a Neo-Confucianist context, based on
the view that historical development followed moral laws. Around the end of the 18th Century,
Mitogaku expanded its remit to address contemporary social and political issues, based on
Confucianist and kokugaku thought, and eventually became one of the driving forces behind
the Meiji Restoration of 1868.

The Kyoto School is the name given to a 20th Century Japanese philosophical movement
centred at Kyoto University that assimilated Western philosophy and religious ideas and used
them to reformulate religious and moral insights unique to the East Asian cultural tradition.

Introduction Back to Top

Persian Philosophy (or Iranian Philosophy), due to a series of large-scale political and social

changes such as the Arab andMongol invasions of Persia, has initiated a wide spectrum of
schools of thought. In general terms, these can be split between thePre-Islamic Period and
the Post-Islamic Period.

Pre-Islamic Schools Back to Top

The Pre-Islamic schools include Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism and Mazdakism:

 Zoroastrianism, which follows the teachings of Zarathustra (Zoroaster) appeared in

Persia at some point during the period between 1000 - 588 B.C. Zarathustra was the first
to treat the problem of evil in philosophical terms, and is also believed to be one of the
oldest monotheists in the history of religion. His ethical philosophy is based on the
primacy ofhumata (good thoughts), hukhata (good words) and hvarshatra (good
deeds). He also founded a system of rational ethics called Mazda-Yasna (Worship of
Wisdom). The Avesta and the Gathas are the primary collections of sacred texts of
Zoroastrianism, composed in the Avestan language. Little was known of Zarathustra's
ideas in post-Classical Western culture until the late 18th Century, but he had a
significant influence on Greek and Roman philosophy.
 Manichaeism, (also spelled Manicheism), was founded by the Persian religious
preacher Mani (A.D.210 - 276). At its height, it was one of the most widespread religions
in the world, from North Africa and Western Europe in the West, toChina in the East.
It died out before the 16th Century, although a modern revival has been attempted under
the name ofNeo-Manichaeism, and its influence subtly continues in Western Christian
thought via St. Augustine of Hippo, who converted to Christianity from Manicheism.
Manichaeism claims to present the complete version of teachings only revealed partially
by teachers such as Zoroaster, Buddha, and Jesus. An important principle of
Manicheism is itsdualistic cosmology/theology, which it shared with Mazdakism (see
below). Under this dualism, there are two original principles of the universe, Light (the
good one) and Darkness (the evil one), which had been mixed by a cosmic accident,
tainting everything except God. Man's role in this life is, through good conduct, to
release the parts of himself that belong to Light.
 Mazdakism, was founded by Mazdak (died c. 524 or 528), a proto-socialist Persian
reformer who claimed to be aprophet of God, and instituted communal possessions and
social welfare programs. Like Manichaeism, Mazdakism posited a dualistic cosmology,
but where Manichaeism saw the mixture of good and bad as a cosmic tragedy, Mazdak
viewed this in a more neutral, even optimistic, way. Mazdak emphasized good conduct,
 which involved a moral andascetic life, no killing and no eating flesh (which contained
substances solely from Darkness), being kind and friendly and living in peace with other
people. He downplayed the importance of religious formalities, and critized the strong
position of Zoroastrian clergy, who, he believed, had oppressed the Persian population
and caused much poverty.

Post-Islamic Schools Back to Top

Early Islamic Philosophy was very influential in the rise of modern philosophy, including the
development of a strict science of citation; a method of open inquiry to disprove claims; the
separation of theology and law, a precursor to secularism; the beginnings of a peer
review process; the first forms of non-Aristotelian logic, including temporal modal
logic and inductive logic; and even early theories of evolution.

The two main currents in early Islamic thought are Kalam (which mainly deals with theological
questions) and Falsafa (which is founded on interpretations
of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism). To some extent, some schools are also
considered Western in their outlook, include Avicennism, Illuminationism and Transcendent
Theosophy (see below).

The main Post-Islamic schools include:

 Mu'tazilism is an Islamic theological school of thought, based mainly around Basra and
Baghdad (modern day Iraq). It was influenced by Greek and Hellenistic philosophy, and
expanded the use of ijtihad (independent thought) to open questions of science and
society. The Mu'tazilites focused on the Five Principles (Divine Unity, Divine Justice,
Promise and Threat, the Intermediate Position, and Advocating the Good and Forbidding
the Evil). The most celebrated proponent of Mu'tazilism was 'Abd al-Jabbar (935 -
1025), after which Mu'tazilism declined steadily and significantly.
 Ash'arism is a school of early Muslim speculative theology founded by the
theologian Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari (874 - 936). It marked the 12th-14th Century peak
of innovation in Muslim civilization, and permitted philosophical methods to be applied
to science and technology. In contrast to the Mu'tazilite school of theologians, the
Ash'arite view was that the comprehension of the unique nature and characteristics of
God are beyond human capability and that, while man hasfree will, he has no power to
create anything. The most influential work of this school's thought was "The
Incoherence of Philosophers", by the Persian polymath al-Ghazali (1058 - 1111),
which laid the groundwork to "shut the door of ijtihad" in subsequent centuries in all
Sunni Muslim states.
 Avicennism was founded by Avicenna (also known as Ibn Sina), an 11th-century Persian
Islamic philosopher. By the 12th Century (the Islamic Golden Age), it had become the
leading school of Islamic philosophy. Avicenna attempted
toreconcile Western Aristotelianism and Neo-Platonism with Islamic theology, and his
metaphysics were very influencial on the Western Scholastics and St. Thomas
Aquinas among others. He initiated a fully-fledged inquiry into the question ofbeing, in
which he distinguished between Mahiat (essence) and Wujud (existence). He proposed
 an ontological argument for the existence of God as the first cause of all things, and
developed his own system of Avicennian logicwhich had replaced Aristotelian logic as
the dominant system of logic in the Islamic world by the 12th Century.
 Averroism was founded by the 13th Century Arab philosopher Averroës (also known
as Ibn Rushd) and was based on his interpretations of Aristotle and the reconciliation
of Aristotelianism with the Islamic faith. Among his main ideas were: that there is one
truth (but at least two ways to reach it, through philosophy and through religion); that
the world is eternal; that the soul is divided into two parts, one individual and one
divine; that the individual soul is not eternal; that all humans at the basic level share one
and the same divine soul (monopsychism); and that the resurrection of the dead is not
possible. While it had relatively little influence in the Islamic world, which was then
dominated by Avicennianphilosophy and Ash'ari theology (see above), Averroism
became very infuential in medieval Europe, especially among the Scholastics, and it can
be argued that it eventually led to the development of modern secularism.
 Illuminationism is a school of Islamic philosophy founded by the Persian Sufi Shahab
al-Din Suhrawardi (1155 - 1191) in the 12th Century. It is a combination of Avicenna’s
early Islamic philosophy and ancient Iranian philosophical disciplines, dressed up with
many new innovative and mystical ideas of Suhrawardi's own, although it is often also
described as having been influenced by Neoplatonism. To the Illuminationists, essence is
more important than existence, and intuitive knowledge is more significant
than scientific knowledge. They use the notion of light, as the name suggests, as a way
of exploring the links between God (the Light of Lights) and his creation, and takes the
physical world to be an aspect of the divine.
 Transcendent Theosophy (or al-hikmat al-muta’liyah) was developed and perfected
by the Persian philosopher Mulla Sadra (Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi) (1571 - 1640), the
foremost representative of the Illuminationist school of philosopher-mystics, and
commonly regarded by Iranians as the greatest philosopher their country has ever
produced. It is one of two main disciplines of Islamic philosophy live and active today.
 Introduction Back to Top

Arabic Philosophy refers to philosophical thought in the Arab world that spans Persia, the

Middle East, North Africa, and Iberia, although, as a particular centre of intellectual
endeavour, Persian Philosophy is often treated separately. Some schools of Arabic thought,
including Avicennism and Averroism are also often considered within the traditons of Western
philosophy.

History of Arabic Philosophy Back to Top

The first great Arab thinker is widely regarded to be al-Kindi (801 - 873 A.D.), a Neo-

Platonic philosopher, mathematician and scientist who lived in Kufa and Baghdad (modern day
Iraq). After being appointed by the Abbasid Caliphs to translate Greek scientific and
philosophical texts into Arabic, he wrote a number of original treatises of his own on a range of
subjects, from metaphysics and ethics to mathematics and pharmacology. Much of his
philosophical output focuses on theological subjects such as the nature of God, the soul and
prophetic knowledge.
His near-contemporary, the Persian (or possibly Central Asian) polymath al-Farabi (872 -
950 A.D.), made use of the logical treatises of Aristotle and the practical political
philosophy of Plato, and employed arguments for the existence of God which would only make
their way into the Christian tradition in the 13th Century. He is credited with over one hundred
works and his output, aimed at synthesis of philosophy and Sufism, paved the way
for Avicenna's later work.

The 11th-century Persian Islamic philosopher Avicenna (also known as Ibn Sina) attempted

to reconcile WesternAristotelianism and Neoplatonism with Islamic theology, and his
metaphysics were very influencial on the Western Scholasticsand St. Thomas Aquinas among
others. He proposed an ontological argument for the existence of God as the first cause of all
things, and developed his own system of Avicennian logic.

The 13th Century Arab philosopher Averroës (also known as Ibn Rushd) has been described as
the founding father of secular thought in Western Europe. He lived in southern Spain and
Morocco and based his work on interpretations of Aristotle and
thereconciliation of Aristotelianism with the Islamic faith. Devoted to the teachings of Aristotle,
he often disagreed explicitly with his Islamic predecessors, particularly with the Ash'arite al-
Ghazali and Avicenna.

The 14th Century Ash'arite philosopher and scholar Ibn Khaldun (1332 - 1406), born in
present-day Tunisia, is considered one of the greatest Arabic political theorists, and his
definition of government as "an institution which prevents injustice other than such as it
commits itself" is still considered a succinct analysis. He is sometimes credited as a "father"
of demography,cultural history, historiography, the philosophy of history, sociology and
modern economics for anticipating many elements of these disciplines centuries before they
were developed.

Introduction Back to Top

Babylonian Philosophy can be traced back to early Mesopotamian wisdom, which embodied

certain philosophies of life, particularly ethics. These are reflected in Mesopotamian
religion (much of which revolved around the identification of the gods and goddesses with
heavenly bodies) and in a variety of Babylonian literature.

History of Babylonian Philosophy Back to Top

Their reasoning and rationality developed beyond empirical observation at a very early

date. Esagil-kin-apli's medical"Diagnostic Handbook", dating back to the 11th Century B.C.,
was based on a logical set of axioms and assumptions, including the modern view that, through
the examination and inspection of the symptoms of a patient, it is possible to determine the
patient's disease, and the chances of the patient's recovery.

During the 8th and 7th Centuries B.C., Babylonian astronomers began studying philosophy

dealing with the ideal nature of the early universe, and began employing an internal
logic within their predictive planetary systems, an important contribution to thephilosophy of
science.

It is possible that Babylonian philosophy had an influence on Greek,

particularly Hellenistic philosophy. The Babylonian text"Dialogue of Pessimism" contains
similarities to sophism, Heraclitus' doctrine of contrasts,
the dialogues of Plato andSocrates' dialectical method of inquiry.

Basic Concepts Back to Top

There are four prominent concepts in Babylonian philosophy which have carried over to many
different philosophical schools and movements in different parts of the world:

 All things are the result of organic evolution (so a Creator is not needed and the way is
open for Man to think that he helped in his own creation and evolution and that he
therefore has, in his own self, the power for his advancement).
 The human intellect has pre-eminence (the educational systems of the day are enmeshed
in this ideology).
 Promiscuity and sexual abandonment permeates all of society (and is all but
encouraged, even if it often results in the break-down of the home and marriage).
 A total state or welfare society or, arguably, totalitarianism is the natural path to follow
(thus, the State - or in some cases organized religion - will act for the people, think for the
people, do everything for the people).

Introduction Back to Top

Jewish Philosophy refers to philosophical inquiry informed by the texts, traditions and

experiences of Judaism (as opposed to just any philosophical writings which happened to be
written by Jews).

Ancient Era Back to Top

Among Jewish philosophers of note in ancient times are:

 Philo of Alexandria (20 B.C. - A.D. 40) was a Hellenized Jewish philosopher born

in Alexandria, Egypt. He tried to harmonize the wisdom of the Ancient
Greek philosophers with his Jewish religious beliefs, and thereby justify and defend
those beliefs. In practice, however, he chose selectively those tenets of the Greeks which
served to justify the points he wanted to make, and conveniently ignored the rest.
 Jesus of Nazareth (c. 7 B.C. - A.D. 26) was a 1st Century Jewish teacher (and
sometimes considered a philosopher) from the Galilea area of Palestine (modern day
Israel), who is the central figure of Christianity (in which he known as Jesus Christ,
meaning "The Annointed One"), a major Islamic prophet and an important figure in
several other religions. The main sources of information regarding his life and teachings
are the four canonical Gospels of the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Some of Jesus' most famous teachings come from the Sermon on the Mount (including
 the Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer), and he often employed parables, such as the
Parable of the Prodigal Son and the Parable of the Sower. His teachings encouraged
unconditional self-sacrificing love for God and for all people, serviceand humility,
the forgiveness of sin, faith, turning the other cheek, love for one's enemies as well as
friends, and the need to follow the spirit of the law in addition to the letter.

Medieval Era Back to Top

Many Early Medieval Jewish philosophers (from the 8th Century to end of the 9th Century)
were particularly influenced by the Islamic Persian Mu'tazilite philosophers: they denied all
limiting attributes of God and were champions of God's unity and justice. Over time, the Ancient
Greek Aristotle came to be thought of as the philosopher par excellence among Jewish thinkers.

 Saadia Gaon (892 - 942) is considered one of the greatest of the early Jewish
philosophers. His Emunoth ve-Deoth(originally called Kitab al-Amanat wal-l'tikadat or
the Book of the Articles of Faith and Doctrines of Dogma), completed in 933, was the
first systematic presentation and philosophic foundation of the dogmas of Judaism. In it,
he posits therationality of the Jewish faith, but with the restriction that reason must give
way wherever it contradicts tradition: dogma must take precedence over reason.
 Solomon Ibn Gabirol (Avicebron) (1021 - 1058) was a Spanish-Jewish poet-
philosopher and one of the first teachers (or revivers) of Neoplatonism in Europe.
Although, (like Philo before him), Avicebron was largely ignored by his fellow Jews
and made little impression on later Jewish philosophers, he exercised a considerable
influence on the Scholastics of medieval Christianity, including Albertus Magnus and St.
Thomas Aquinas.
 Bahya ibn Paquda lived in Spain in the first half of the 11th Century, and was the author
of the first Jewish system of ethics, written in Arabic in 1040 and translated into
Hebrew in 1180 under the title Chovot ha-Levavot (Duties of the Heart). He was an
adherent of Neoplatonic mysticism and inclined to contemplative mysticism and
asceticism. Bahya eliminated from his system every element that he felt might
obscure monotheism or might interfere with Jewish law.
 Judah ha-Levi (Yehuda Halevi) (c.1075–1141) was a Spanish Jewish philosopher and
poet. He made strenuous arguments against philosophy in his polemical work Kuzari, and
expounded his views on the teachings of Judaism, which he defended against the attacks
of the Karaites (a sect which rejected the rabbinical works and oral law of
the Mishnahand the Talmud, in preference for sole reliance on the Tanakh, or Hebrew
Bible, as scripture).
 Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides) (1135 - 1204) was a Jewish rabbi, physician, and
philosopher who lived in Spain, Morocco and Egypt. Although his copious works
on Jewish law and ethics initially met with much opposition during his lifetime,
subsequently his works and views came to be considered a cornerstone of Jewish
thought and study, and his influence on the non-Jewish world was
profound. Maimonides declared that it can only be said of God that He is, not what He
is, and he established thirteen principles of faith which he stated that all Jews were
obligated to believe.Maimonides foreshadowed the Scholastics and undoubtedly
 influenced them, although he also maintained many doctrines which the Scholastics could
not accept.
 Levi ben Gershon (Gersonides) (1288 - 1345), a French Rabbi and philosopher, is best
known for his work Milhamot HaShem (Wars of the Lord), a criticism of some elements
of Maimonides' syncretism of Aristotelianism and rabbinic Jewish thought. In contrast to
the theology held by the majority of Orthodox Judaism, Gersonides held that
God limitedhis own omniscience concerning foreknowledge of human acts. He also
posited that people's souls are composed of two parts: a material, or human,
intellect (which gives people the capacity to understand and learn); and an acquired, or
agent, intellect (which survives death, and can contain the accumulated knowledge that
the person acquired during their lifetime).
 Hasdai Crescas (1340 - 1410) is best known for his Or Hashem (Light of the Lord).
Crescas' avowed purpose was toliberate Judaism from what he saw as the bondage
of Aristotelianism, which threatened to blur the distinctness of the Jewish faith.
 Joseph Albo (c. 1380 - 1444) was a Spanish rabbi and theologian, known chiefly for
his Ikkarim, a work on the fundamental Jewish principles of faith, which he limited
to three: belief in the existence of God, belief in revelation and belief in divine justice, as
related to the idea of immortality.

The Arabic-Jewish philosophers of the Middle Ages were essential in preserving

the continuity of philosophical thought from the classical philosophies of Ancient
Greece through to the Muslim and Christian scholasticism of the Medieval period and beyond.

Mystical Jewish Philosophy Back to Top

Kabbalah refers to a set of esoteric teachings and mystical practices that form an alternative to

traditional Jewish interpretations of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) and especially of the Torah (the
name commonly given to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible). It is a set of beliefs followed
by some Jews as the true meaning of Judaism, while rejected by other Jews asheretical and
contrary to Judaism. The Zohar is widely considered the most important work of Kabbalah. With
its wide dissemination in the Jewish world of the Middle Ages, it became the mainstream Jewish
theology, side-lining the earlier schools of philosophy that had expressed Jewish belief in the
framework of Greek thought.

Hasidic philosophy is the thought and teachings of the Hasidic movement founded by Baal
Shem Tov (1698 - 1760), which expressed the Kabbalisic tradition in a new paradigm in relation
to man, and so could be conveyed to the Jewish masses.

Modern Era Back to Top

One of the major trends in modern Jewish philosophy was the attempt to develop a theory of
Judaism through existentialism, as exemplified by the work of Franz Rosenzweig (1886 - 1929).

Perhaps the most controversial forms of Jewish philosophy that developed in the early 20th
Century was the religious naturalism of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan (1881 - 1983) whose
theology was a variant of John Dewey's philosophy.
Another important figure in 20th Century Jewish philosophy is Martin Buber (1878 - 1965), a
cultural Zionist active in the Jewish and educational communities of Germany and Israel. His
work centered on theistic ideals of religious consciousness,interpersonal
relations and community, and his major interest was in ontology (the study of reality and
existence).

http://www.philosophybasics.com/general_eastern.html

CHAPTER 4: CLASSICAL EASTERN PHILOSOPHY

 
From The History of Philosophy: A Short Survey by James Fieser
Home: www.utm.edu/staff/jfieser/110
Copyright 2008, updated: 3/19/2012
 
 
Contents
 
A. Hindu philosophy
The Self-God
Release from Rebirth
Yoga
Vedanta
B. Buddhist Philosophy
Four Noble Truths
Improper Questions and the No-Self Doctrine
Dependent Origination
Emptiness and Zen Buddhism
C. Confucian Philosophy
Ritual conduct
Humanity and the Superior Person
Filial Obedience and Good Government
Mencius: Inherent Human Goodness
D. Daoist Philosophy
The Dao
Return
Non-Action and Non-Mind
Minimal Governing
Lieh-Tzu: Following Natural Desires
E. Conclusion
 
Questions for Reflection
1. People speak of God dwelling within us. Suppose that was literally true, and God was at the
core of all of our individual identities. Would that change they way you viewed the world and
religious practices?
2. Suppose that the process of reincarnation actually happened. Would that be a good thing or
bad thing?
3. Would it be possible to completely eliminate your desires and notion of self identity, and, if
so, what would that be like?
4. For you to be morally good, do you need to have the right inner attitude, or is proper behavior
good enough?
5. Suppose that there are two types of people: high energy active types, and low energy passive
types. Which would be better for social stability, the natural environment, and your personal
happiness?
 
At the time that ancient Greek philosophy was blossoming, on the other side of the world a
different set of philosophical traditions emerged within the Eastern Asian regions of India and
China. Like Greece, both of these areas had complex social structures, sophisticated cultures,
and, most importantly, systems of writing that enabled people to record their thoughts. But
unlike Greek philosophy which was largely secular, Eastern philosophies were intimately tied to
their local religious traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism.
Distinguishing Eastern philosophy from religion is an issue of emphasis: its philosophy deals
less with worship rituals and depictions of the gods, and more with larger questions of our
relation to the cosmos.
            While the specific elements of the various Eastern philosophies differ dramatically, many
share a specific conception of God and the cosmos. Philosophers and theologians of all traditions
try to understand how God – or an ultimate divine reality – relates to the world. There are two
general approaches. First, I can look at a mountain or a forest and see these as external objects
that God creates, which are not literally part of God himself. God himselftranscends or rises
above the things in the world, and is beyond even the cosmos itself. To communicate with God, I
must look beyond this finite created world and seek God in his secluded realm. The Western
religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam typically depict God in this way. The
second approach is that I can look at the same mountain and forest and see these as literally parts
of God. God is not external to the cosmos, but dwells within it or isimmanent to it. This view is
often called pantheism, a term literally meaning all-God. On this view, God dwells within me too
since I am part of the cosmos. To communicate with God I look within myself, and not outwards
to a secluded divine realm beyond the cosmos. Communication with God, then, involves a
mystical experience by which I become aware of my union with God. Eastern religious traditions
in general gravitate towards this pantheistic notion of God.
 
A: HINDU PHILOSOPHY
The best place to begin examining Eastern Philosophy by looking at Hinduism. Hindu texts are
among the oldest in the East, and their concepts directly or indirectly influenced the philosophy
of other Eastern philosophical traditions. While many of the world’s religious traditions were
founded by renown people—Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad—Hinduism has no founding figure, and
it covers a diversity of views of the people of India dating as far back as 3,500 BCE. The term
“Hindu” comes from the Persian word “Hind,” which was the name given to the Indus River
region of northern India. Most generally, “Hinduism” means the religion of the Indus River
region. Early Hindu religion was polytheistic, similar to the religion in ancient Greece and
Rome. Their sacred text is a large work called the Vedas, which literally means “bodies of
knowledge,” written between 1,500-800 BCE in the ancient language Sanskrit. It describes
features of various gods, rituals to appease them, and hymns to chant to them. Hindu
philosophical discussions emerged shortly after, from around 800 BCE to 200 CE., emphasizing
the pantheistic notion of the divine reality that permeates the cosmos. The Hindu name for this
reality is the Atman-Brahman, literally meaning the Self-God, and much of Hindu philosophy
focuses on this concept.
 
The Self-God
The dramatic implication of the notion of the Self-God is that I am the God of the cosmos. This
requires some explanation, and classical Hindu philosophers were prepared to provide it.
The Atman is our true Self that lies at the inner core of our human identities, and it is only this
inner core that is identical with God. Hindus sometimes use an analogy of an onion to describe
the various layers of our identities. Like an onion with many layers of skin, our human identities
also have different layers. The outer layers of our identities involve common sense views of
ourselves that we experience empirically, such as our individual physical bodies, sensations,
thoughts and feelings. The Self-God is like the inner core of the onion, hidden beneath many
distracting layers, and consequently we fail to immediately comprehend the very existence of
that inner core and our divine status. Instead, we see ourselves as distinct beings – each of us
with our own bodies and minds – and we see the world itself as consisting of a multiplicity of
isolated parts. By pealing away the outer layers of our identities, though, we will find the Self-
God within each of us and see the underlying unity of the world.
            The doctrine of the Self-God was put forward in two specific Hindu works: The
Upanishads and The Bhagavad Gita. The Upanishads is actually a series of more than 200
anonymously-written texts, although Hindu tradition gives special emphasis to only about 18
early ones composed between 600 and 400 BCE. In one of the most famous of these, a father
picturesquely describes to his son how things that seem diverse in fact have an underlying
reality. Plants, animals, humans, and everything else are united in the Self-God that exists
beneath the physical structure of things. Take, for example, how bees collect juices from a
variety of trees and unify those juices in their honey:
 
Bees make honey by collecting the juices of distant trees and reducing the juices into one
form. These juices have no discrimination and do not say “I am the juice of this tree or
that tree.” In the same manner, when all these creatures merge with Being [either in deep
sleep or in death], they do not know that they merged with Being. Whatever these
creatures are here — whether a lion, a wolf, a boar, a worm, a fly, a gnat, or a mosquito
— they become that again and again. Everything that exists has as its soul that which is
the finest essence. It is Reality. It is the Atman, and you are that, my son. [Chandogya
Upanishad]
 
This passage makes a distinction between our physical identities and our underlying true
identities. Our physical identities go through continual cycles of reincarnation; this is so of
animal life as well as human life. Our true underlying identities, though, merge with God, which
is undifferentiated reality. The father says to his son, “You are that,” meaning that his son is the
Self-God that he’s describing (Tat Tvam Asi in the Sanskrit language). According to later Hindu
tradition, this phrase “You are that,” as spoken by the father, encapsulates the message of all
the Upanishads.
            The Bhagavad Gita, or Song of God, is a 100-page section of an epic poem called
the Mahabharata. At about 5,000 pages and composed over an 800 year period,
the Mahabharata is the world’s longest epic poem. It chronicles a legendary feud between two
branches of a royal family. The long-standing quarrel culminates in a bloody battle. The story
line behind the Bhagavad Gita focuses on prince Arjuna, the leader on one side of the feud, who
is despairing about going into battle against his kinfolk. He expresses his grief to his charioteer,
Krishna, who, it turns out, is the manifestation of the Hindu god Vishnu in human form. Krishna
comforts Arjuna with a philosophy lesson about discovering the Self-God:
 
Those who distinguish between the slayer and the slain are ignorant of them both. No one
slays, and no one is slain. No one is born, and no one dies. No one who once existed,
ceases to exist. They are unborn, perpetual, eternal and ancient, and are not slain when
their bodies are slaughtered. If we understand a person to be indestructible, perpetual,
unborn, undiminishing, how can that person slay, or be slain? [Bhagavad Gita, Sect. 2]
 
Krishna’s point is that we are all eternal by virtue of the Self-God within us, and what happens to
our bodies is insignificant. By implication, Arjuna should not worry about the conflict with his
relatives since even if their bodies die in battle, their inner selves are untouched.
 
Release from Rebirth
Hindus have a long tradition of belief in reincarnation, which, most simply, is the view that one’s
present life is followed by a series of new lives in new physical bodies. There are two
components to rebirth. First, there is the basic process of rebirth itself: when I die, my true Self
will be reborn into another body, and when that body dies, I will be reborn into another, and so
on. The Bhagavad Gita picturesquely states “As a person throws off worn-out garments and
takes new ones, so too the dweller in the body throws off worn-out bodies and enters into others
that are new” (Bhagavad Gita, 2). Some Hindu writings are explicit about the mechanics of the
rebirth process. When I die, and my body is cremated, my soul rises with the smoke and travels
through the heavens for several months. My soul then falls back to earth, mixes with natural
elements, and is consumed by humans. From there my soul works its way into a man’s semen,
and, through intercourse, enters a woman’s womb.
            The second component of rebirth is that the moral consequences of my behavior in this
life are carried over to my next lives. Known as the doctrine of karma, or action, the quality of
my existence in my new life is largely a function of my good or bad actions in my present and
previous lives. To illustrate, imagine that my true Self carries around a karma pouch from one
life to another. Each time I perform a good deed, a good-karma token is tossed into the pouch,
and when I perform a bad deed, a bad-karma token is thrown in. When I die, I carry the karma
pouch and all of its tokens on to the next life. If I have an abundance of good-karma tokens, then
in my next life I may be healthier, wealthier, and more spiritually mature than I am now. On the
other hand, if I die with an abundance of bad-karma tokens, then I may be reborn sickly, poor,
and ignorant. To make my next lives better, I should do what I can to accumulate as many good-
karma tokens as I can.
            While we might think of reincarnation as a good thing, it is instead something that we
should dread. We need to do what we can to become released (moksha) from the rebirth cycle.
Hindu writings stress several approaches to release, two of which are especially dominant. One
approach is that release is a matter of accumulating a great abundance of good karma over our
various lives. When I get as good as I can possibly be, then the rebirth process is over and my
true Self remains with God. The appeal of this approach is that it underscores the fact that life is
a moral journey, with perfection as our ultimate goal. The other approach to release involves
discovering the Self-God within me through disciplined reflection and meditation. The appeal of
this approach is that I can go more directly towards my final goal and experience the pure Self-
God right here and now. Both of these approaches, though, are interconnected. Before I’m
capable of reflectively experiencing the Self-God within me, I must first be morally mature. If I
rob a bank this morning, I stand little chance of discovering the Self-God within me this
afternoon, no matter how hard I meditate. Developing that moral maturity might require that I go
through several more reincarnations until my karma pouch is filled with good tokens, at which
time I’ll be able to more successfully meditate.
 
Yoga
It is one thing for us to theoretically understand the concept of the Self-God, and entirely another
for us to discover the Self-God within each of us. To assist believers in this task, Hindu tradition
developed a series of yoga techniques. The term “Yoga” literally means “to yoke” or “to
harness,” and, more generally, it means  “discipline”. The Bhagavad Gita is something like a
handbook of the various Yoga methods, and we’ll look it its account of two of them.
            The first of these is the Yoga of action (karma), which involves routinely behaving with
indifference to the fruits of our actions. By engaging in pure action, unconcerned with the
action’s results, we distance ourselves from the outer layers of our identities and our perceptions
of the world. We thus become more sensitive to the reality of the Self-God. Suppose, for
example, that it is lunchtime and I make a sandwich. Ordinarily, I do this to ward off hunger
pangs, to satisfy my food craving, to keep me healthy, or to keep me alive. All of these reasons,
though, emphasize the outer layers of my identity: my bodily cravings, my desires, and the
continuation of my finite life. This all takes me far from my true inner Self. I should still eat the
sandwich, but I should disassociate myself from the act of eating, and view it as though someone
else is eating the sandwich. Since all of our actions focus on our outer selves, the Yoga of action
prescribes disassociation from everything that we do: “By renouncing the fruit of one’s actions,
the person who is endowed with intellect, is freed from the bond of birth and goes to the place
that is devoid of illness” (Bhagavad Gita, 2). Ultimately, reincarnation is the result of people
clinging to the fruits of their actions. We are locked into our physical bodies as long as we enjoy
the results of our activities. We need an evenness of mind to give up the fruits of our actions.
            According to the Bhagavad Gita, we will not reach this degree of indifference in our
actions by following traditional customs in the scriptures: “Scriptures prescribe many ceremonies
to attain pleasure and power, but rebirth is the fruit of those actions” (ibid). Like eating a
sandwich, we perform religious rituals for a purpose; in this case, the purpose is to appease God
or to get to heaven. However, religious actions are no less distracting than any other action.
There are clear psychological indicators when we disassociate ourselves from our actions,
namely, we are freed from all emotions and attachments:
 
When a person abandons all the desires of his heart and is satisfied in the Self and by the
Self, then he is called “stable in mind.” A sage of stable mind is free from anxiety when
surrounded by pains, is indifferent when surrounded by pleasures, and is freed from
passion, fear and anger. He is without attachments on every side, whether desirable or
undesirable, and neither likes nor dislikes. The person of understanding is well poised.
Just as a tortoise pulls in all its limbs, the sage withdraws his senses from the objects, and
his understanding is well poised. [Ibid]
 
The analogy of the tortoise in the final sentence explains the benefit of freeing ourselves from
emotions and attachments. Through detachment, we withdraw from the world of the senses,
which in turn enables us to be more in tune with the Self-God.
            A second type of Yoga discussed in the Bhagavad Gita is that of meditation, which
involves immediately experiencing our union with God through contemplation. The practice of
meditation requires a disciplined effort, and to that end the Bhagavad Gita provides step-by-step
instructions. When attempting meditation, we should first find a private spot, assume a seated
posture, gaze ahead, subdue our thoughts and senses, and lose self-consciousness. Through this
method, we directly experience the unified Self-God within us.
 
The Yogi should constantly engage himself in Yoga, staying in a secret place by himself,
subduing his thoughts and Self, and freeing himself from hope and greed. He should set
up a fixed seat for himself in a pure place, which is neither too high, nor too low, made of
a cloth, a black deerskin, and grass, one over the other. Once there he should practice
Yoga for the purification of the Self; he should make his mind one-pointed, subduing his
thoughts and the functions of his senses. He should hold his body, head and neck erect,
immovably steady, looking at the point of his nose with an unseeing gaze. His heart
should be serene, fearless and firm in the vow of renunciation. His mind should be
controlled as he sits in harmony. In this manner he will think on me and aspire after me.
[Ibid, 6]
 
The point of all these steps in the meditative process is to block out distractions. Imagine that
you are in a room with 50 radios playing, all tuned to different channels, and in the back of the
room a cat is meowing. The only way to hear the cat is to first shut off all the radios, one by one.
Similarly, the meditative techniques guide us in successively shutting down the commotion of
ordinary consciousness so that we can experience our inner Selves.
            In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna and Arjuna discuss some of the pitfalls of the Yoga of
meditation. Krishna says that this meditation method is not for everyone, but only for those who
can avoid extremes in their conduct and desires:
 
Yoga is not for the person who eats too much or too little, or who sleeps too much or too
little. Yoga kills all pain for the person who is moderate in eating, amusement,
performing actions, sleeping, and waking. When his subdued thought is fixed on the Self
and free from desiring things, then we can say that he is harmonized. Just as a lamp in a
windless place does not flicker, so too will the subdued thought of the Yogi be absorbed
in the Yoga of the self. . . . The Yogi who harmonizes the self and puts away evil, will
enjoy the infinite bliss of unity with the eternal God. The self, harmonized by Yoga, sees
the Self abiding in all beings, and all beings in the Self. Everywhere he sees the same
thing. [Ibid]
 
Thus, if we succeed in being moderate, then we will see the unity of the Self in everything. In
response to Krishna, Arjuna objects that, for some people, their minds are so restless that it is
impossible to bring it under control as Krishna advises. Krishna replies that through practice and
the subduing of our passions we may successfully restrain our thoughts; this underscores the
challenge in bringing our Self under control, and why we may appropriately refer to Yoga as a
“discipline.” Pressing the issue, Arjuna asks what will happen to the person who attempts the
Yoga of Meditation, but fails. Krishna responds that, even if someone fails at the Yoga of
Meditation in his current incarnation, through good deeds we may be reincarnated as a Yogi who
finally succeeds at meditation. “In this reborn state, he retains the characteristics belonging to his
previous body, and with these he again works for perfection” (ibid).
 
Vedanta: Monism
In philosophy, monism is the view that the universe is composed of only one type of thing, and
Hinduism as a whole tends to be monistic, with its pantheistic conception of God enveloping
everything. Beginning in the eighth-century CE, the issue of monism was heavily debated by a
group of philosophers within Hinduism’s Vedanta tradition, which drew its inspiration directly
from the Upanishads. The debate started with the views of a scholar named Sankara (788-820
CE). Philosophically, there are two ways that we can understand the notion of monism. The first,
which we will call weak monism, is the view that the universe consists of one basic thing, but
that thing is divided into sub-units. An orange, for example, is a unified whole insofar as it is a
self-contained biological unit. On the other hand, an orange clearly has parts to it, such as its
outer peal, inner sections, and seeds. The second kind of monism, which we will callstrong
monism, is the view that the universe consists of one undifferentiated thing that has no sub-units.
A cannon ball, for example, is composed of a single metallic stuff through and through, and has
no obvious internal parts that differentiate it. When reflecting on the monistic themes in
the Upanishads, Sankara had to decide between interpreting them as weak monism or strong
monism. He took the Upanishad’s notion of unity literally and went with strong monism.
            There are dramatic implications to strong monism. If reality as a whole is the single,
unchanging God, then there is something unreal about our commonsense perception that the
world has parts. That is, as I look around me, I visually perceive a world that is composed of
distinct elements, such as cars, houses, mountains, and rocks. Further, I also ordinarily see
myself as a distinct thing from the people and objects that surround me. For Sankara, all of these
commonsense perceptions are unreal, and the truth of the matter is that beneath these
commonsense perceptions is the underlying unity of God beneath the unreal appearance of
things. In the following, Sankara argues that individual selves and the world of appearances are
unreal. The only reality is the unchanging, undifferentiated God:
 
When accepted as the doctrine of the Vedas, this doctrine of the individual soul having its
Self in God does away with the independent existence of the individual soul. This is just
as the idea of the rope does away with the idea of the snake [for which the rope had been
mistaken]. And if the doctrine of the independent existence of the individual soul has to
be set aside, then the view of the entire phenomenal world having an independent
existence must likewise be set aside insofar as it is based on the individual soul.
[Commentary on the Vedanta Sutra 2.1.14]
 
As Sankara suggests above, suppose that when walking down the road I see a snake. On closer
inspection, though, it is not a snake at all, but only a rope. In the same way, the world
deceptively appears differentiated, but on closer inspection it is undifferentiated. There is an
unreality to how we ordinarily perceive the world as having parts.
            According to Sankara, the strong monistic view of the world is embedded in the famous
phrase from the Upanishads “You are that”:
 
 everything has its Self in God, [and so] the whole world of appearances is non-existent,
including actions, agents, and consequences of actions. Nor can it be said that this non-
existence of the phenomenal world is declared by Scripture to be limited to certain states.
For the passage “You are that” shows that the general fact of God being the Self of all is
not limited by any particular state. [Ibid]
 
For Sankara this means that all (not just some) elements of the world of appearances are unreal.
Thus, the tree I see in front of me may seem to be there, but it is actually unreal. Similarly,
although I seem to be a real physical person that performs actions, this component of me is
unreal too. Why, though, do I perceive the world of appearances in this illusory and deceptive
way? According to Sankara, this deception is caused by a force called Maya, sort of like a
magician who has the ability to create illusions. It shields us from knowledge of the true nature
of God, and makes me think that the illusory world of appearances is real. My goal, then, is to
overcome this ignorance and see the undifferentiated nature of God as it truly is.
            A rival Vedanta scholar named Ramanuja (1017–1137 CE) rejected strong monism in
favor of the theory of weak monism, and here’s why. Suppose that Sankara’s strong monism is
correct. That is, suppose that the only thing that exists in the universe is a single, unchanging and
undifferentiated God. Anything else that I think exists is a matter of deception. A consequence of
this is that it makes no sense at all for me to worship God. First, if God is completely without
parts, then God has no personality and is much like a huge glob of clay. There’s no point in
worshipping that kind of thing. Second, if my true inner Self is this God, then by worshipping
God I am worshiping myself, which also seems silly. Third, any acts of worship that I perform,
such as prayer, sacrifice, or charity, would be part of the world of appearances. But the world of
appearances is not real, so any acts of worship I perform would also be unreal. Strong monism,
then, undermines the whole notion of religious worship; thus, Ramanuja concludes, we must
reject it in favor of weak monism.
            According to Ramanuja’s weak monism, although the world is unified in a single God,
God has differentiated parts. Like the different internal parts of a single orange, individual souls
and the physical world make up the body of God. So, we are in one sense united with God, but in
another we are distinct from God. This approach rescues the world of appearances, which
Sankara rejected as unreal. For Ramanuja, when I perceive various cars, houses, mountains and
rocks around me, they are all real parts of God. When I distinguish between my own personal
identity and other beings around me, I am again perceiving a genuine distinction within God.
This approach also rescues the meaningfulness of religious worship. Since I am only a small
component of God, it is reasonable for me to show devotion to the totality of God.
            To make his point, Ramanuja offers his own interpretation of the phrase “You are that”
from the Upanishads:
 
The words “That” and “You” denote a God distinguished by difference. The word “that”
refers to God as omniscient, etc., which had been introduced as the general topic of
consideration in previous passages of the same section, such as “It thought, may I be
many.” The word “you,” which stands in relation to “that,” conveys the idea of God
insofar as its body consists of the individual souls connected with non-intelligent matter.
[Commentary on the Vedanta Sutra, 1.1.1]
 
For Ramanuja, the terms “That” and “You” clearly have different meanings, and so there is some
difference within God which allows me and the world of appearances to have distinct existences,
even though they are all unified within God.
 
B. BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY
Buddhism was founded in India by a former Hindu monk named Gautama Siddhartha (563-483
BCE), better known as Buddha, a term which means the “enlightened one.” Buddha came from a
wealthy family in what is now the country of Nepal, where his father was a feudal lord. The
night before he was born his mother dreamed that a white elephant entered her womb through
her side. Hindu priests interpreted the dream as a dual destiny: he would either be a universal
monarch, or universal teacher. Hoping that his son would take the path of a monarch, his father
confined him to the family estate, sheltering him from the ugly experiences of illness and death.
At age 29, he had three occasions to glimpse the outside world, and each time he was shocked to
learn about the suffering that humans experience. First he saw an old man, then a sick man, and
then a dead body. On a fourth occasion he saw a Hindu monk, which inspired him to leave his
family estate to pursue a life of religious devotion. Buddha wandered for six years, learning what
he could from holy people about the solution to the human predicament. He joined a band of five
ascetic monks who taught him the practice of self-renunciation. So austere were Buddha’s
efforts, though, that he almost died of starvation. He started eating again to regain health, and his
ascetic colleagues left him in disgust. Disheartened by his failures, Buddha sat under a fig tree,
vowing to not rise until he achieved supreme awakening. He stayed up all night, and at the first
glimpse of the morning star he became enlightened. He eventually drew a large crowd of
followers and set up monasteries in every major city. Buddha eventually died by accidentally
eating poisoned mushrooms at the home of a close disciple.
            Through his early experiences as a monk, Buddha became dissatisfied with many
traditional Hindu teachings, such as the role of the priests and the authority of their scriptures.
Nevertheless, Buddha’s underlying philosophy draws heavily from Hinduism, and one
contemporary scholar has gone so far as to say that Buddhism is Hinduism stripped for export.
Buddha himself wrote nothing, and the oldest accounts of his teachings are in a voluminous
collection called the Pali Canon, compiled during the first five centuries after Buddha’s death.
The texts are written in a language related to Sanskrit, called “Pali”, hence the designation “Pali
Canon.”
 
Four Noble Truths
The most famous part of the Pali Canon is a section known as “The First Discourse,” which,
according to tradition, Buddha delivered to his ascetic friends immediately after his
enlightenment. The content of the discourse is the foundation of all Buddhist teaching. The
discourse presents “four noble truths” concerning the quest for enlightenment. The first truth is
that life is suffering:
 
Now this is the noble truth concerning suffering. Birth is attended with pain, decay is
painful, disease is painful, and death is painful. Union with the unpleasant is painful, and
separation from the pleasant is painful. Any craving that is unsatisfied is also painful. In
brief, the five components which spring from attachment are painful. This then is the
noble truth concerning suffering. [Samyutta-nikaya, 56.2]
 
The Pali word for suffering is sometimes translated as anxiety or frustration, but a good
description is dislocation. For example the pain that I experience from a dislocated shoulder is
the result of my arm being yanked out of its normal position. Similarly, the root of all suffering
involves some twisting or distortion of our true nature. A poignant illustration of suffering is the
birth process. From the moment we come into the world as infants, we find suffering. With each
contraction the mother is gripped with perhaps the greatest physical pain that she will experience
in life, while anxious friends and relatives stand by helplessly. Physically contorted as it
emerges, the baby is forced to cry so that it may begin breathing. Once giving birth, the mother
remains in pain for some time, and the frail baby requires continual monitoring at the risk of
dying. Buddhist writings offer an endless list of suffering that we experience throughout our
lives, such as that from sickness, old age, fear of death, failure to fulfill ambitions, separation
from loved ones, and association with people we dislike. Even on a good day – if we can escape
some actual human tragedy – our lives are nevertheless dominated by preemptively avoiding
suffering. We monitor our diets, struggle to keep up with an exercise routine, cautiously drive
around town, lock our doors, and stay clear of hostile people.
            The second noble truth is that the cause of suffering is desire:
 
Now this is the noble truth concerning the origin of suffering. It is that thirst or craving
which causes the renewal of existence, accompanied by sensual delight, and the seeking
of satisfaction first here, then there. That is to say, it is the craving for the gratification of
the passions, or the craving for a future life, or the craving for success in this present life.
This then is the noble truth concerning the origin of suffering. [Ibid]
 
The above quote describes desire as an insatiable craving for private fulfillment. We cling or
grasp to virtually anything that might satisfy our yearnings, much like a child that jealously
clutches a favorite toy. Ultimately, our cravings can never be truly satisfied, and so we suffer –
as a child does when we attempt to wrench a toy from his hands. The central point of this noble
truth is that for every type of suffering we experience, there is some misguided craving that is at
its source. Suppose, for example, that my leg gets broken in a car accident on my way to the
store. Chronologically, I had several desires that led up to the accident. One desire impelled me
to buy a car to begin with, rather than simply to walk everywhere. Another desire inclined me to
purchase something that I don’t currently own. Yet another desire had me go shopping at that
particular time, rather than stay home. And, once I’m at home in my leg cast, lying in bed, my
present desires perpetuate my suffering. I want to go back to work, but I can’t. I’d like to go to a
restaurant, but I can’t. I’d prefer to walk around outside but I can’t. The more things that I desire
and cling to, the more I increase my suffering. Why are we driven to cling so ferociously to so
many things? Buddha has an answer. Desire arises from five distinct components of our human
nature. These components are matter, sensation, perception, predisposition, and consciousness.
Each of these five components has me rely on something outside of me. Even if I want to do
something as simple as walk from the living room into the kitchen, I rely on the material
construction of the house itself, my raw sense perception of it, and how these perceptions
automatically register in my mind. Since the human condition is shaped by desire – many if not
most of which go unfulfilled – then our condition is one of suffering.
            The third noble truth is that the end of suffering is achieved by extinguishing our desire;
this is the state of nirvana, a term that literally means “to extinguish.” Of the virtually endless
number of desires that bubble up from my five components, my goal should be the destruction of
these, as Buddha describes here:
 
Now this is the noble truth concerning the elimination of suffering [i.e., the attainment of
nirvana]. It is the destruction of this very thirst, in which no passion remains. It is the
laying aside of, the getting rid of, the being free from, and the harboring no longer of this
thirst. This, then, is the noble truth concerning the destruction of suffering. [Ibid]
 
In this passage Buddha depicts nirvana as a state in which “no passion remains.” Most people
can understand the task of eliminating some desires – such as the desire for unhealthy foods. But
the idea here is that we should extinguishall desires, and this will bring on a mental state of
enlightenment.
            Addressing the goal of the third noble truth, the fourth is that nirvana is achieved by
adopting a series of moral attitudes, beliefs, and actions, which Buddha collectively calls
the eightfold path: “This is the noble truth concerning the path that leads to the elimination of
suffering. It is the noble eightfold path.” Briefly, these are the eight recommendations. (1) We
should adopt right views that are free from superstition or delusion. (2) We should have right
aimsthat are high and worthy of the intelligent and earnest person. (3) We should practice right
speech, which is kindly, open, and truthful. (4) We should perform right conduct that is peaceful,
honest, and pure. (5) We should adopt aright livelihood that brings no harm or danger to living
things. (6) We should put forth the right effort in self-training and self-control. (7) We should
have right mindfulness insofar as we have an active and watchful mind. (8) We should engage
in right contemplation, which involves earnest thought on the mysteries of life.
            On the surface, the eightfold path endorses many of the values that, since our childhoods,
we’ve been taught to adopt. In fact, these eight recommendations appear integral to simply
conducting our normal desire-filled lives in a civilized manner. How, then, do these eight
recommendations lead to nirvana, the extinguishing of all desires? Buddha’s explanation is that
they all involve adopting a Middle Way, which is the calm detachment achieved by avoiding the
extremes of asceticism and self-indulgence:
 
There are two extremes, fellow monks, which a holy person should avoid: the habitual
practice of ... self-indulgence, which is vulgar and profitless ... and the habitual practice
of self-mortification, which is painful and equally profitless. There is a middle path
discovered by the Buddha – a path which opens the eyes and bestows understanding
which leads to peace of mind, to the higher wisdom, to full enlightenment, and to
Nirvana. Truly, it is the noble eightfold path. [Ibid]
 
For each of the recommendations in the eightfold path, we can see how we must follow a middle
course. For example, with the first path of right aims, I should strive to be free from superstition
and delusion. If we look at common superstitions and delusions today, such as belief in alien
abduction or racial superiority, these are clearly extremist views that we should steer clear of.
This middle course “opens the eyes and bestows understanding,” which eventually leads to
nirvana. The Middle Path is a stepping-stone towards nirvana insofar as it creates a mental
disposition, which in turn enables us to be receptive to the nirvana experience.
 
Improper Questions and the No-Self Doctrine
Philosophers and theologians worldwide devote a great amount of attention to speculative issues
that cannot be easily demonstrated. What is God’s nature? How did the world come about? Is
there life after death? What kind of existence can I expect to have in the afterlife? In fact, many
religions feel that their main mission is to give decisive answers to these questions and convey
their answers to as many people as they can. We readily recognize that some religious
speculations are superfluous to the central aim of religion – for example, speculations about how
many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Where, though, do we draw the line between the
superfluous and essential? The starting point is to determine what in fact is the main goal of
religion. Buddha’s single complaint about the formal religion of his time was that its rituals and
speculations detracted from religion’s main goal, namely, enlightenment.
            Buddha makes this point in a dialogue with a student. The student, who has heard
Buddha teach for some time, is puzzled that Buddha apparently ignores a number of issues that
philosophers commonly address. Foremost among these are whether the world is eternal and
whether there is life after death. In response, Buddha says that he refuses to discuss these topics
since they do not help attain enlightenment. In the passage below, he uses an analogy to explain
his resistance to these questions. If someone is shot with a poisoned arrow, his main concern
should be to have his wound treated, and not to inquire after details about his assailant’s social
caste:
 
Suppose that a man had been wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with poison. When
friends and relatives went to procure for him a physician, suppose the sick man said, “I
will not have this arrow taken out until I have learned whether the man who wounded me
belonged to the warrior caste, priestly caste, worker caste, or servant caste.” Or again,
suppose he said, “I will not have this arrow taken out until I have learned the name of the
man who wounded me, and to what clan he belongs.” . . . That man would die without
ever having learned these things. Suppose similarly someone said “I will not lead the
religious life under the Buddha until he explained to me that the world is eternal or not
eternal ... or that the saint exists or does not exist after death.” That person too would die
before the Buddha ever explained this to him. [Majjhima-Nikaya, 63]
 
Buddha continues arguing that speculations on such things do not address the basic problem of
the human condition. We are in a state of seemingly endless suffering, and the only way to
overcome this is to extinguish our desires. Ultimately, these are the truths that matter:
 
I have not explained that the world is eternal, ... that the world is not eternal, ... and that
the saint neither exists nor does not exist after death. And why have I not explained this?
Because this does not profit us, it has nothing to do with the fundamentals of religion, and
does not tend to aversion, absence of passion, cessation, calm, the supernatural faculties,
supreme wisdom, and nirvana. ... And what have I explained? Misery, the origin of
misery, the cessation of misery, and the path leading to the cessation of misery. And why
have I explained this? Because this does profit and concerns the fundamentals of religion.
[Ibid]
 
Accordingly, Buddha distinguishes between essential and nonessential religious speculations on
the basis of whether they bring about the end of suffering through nirvana.
            Buddha’s resistance to nonessential speculations is seen clearly in how he addresses the
issue of personal identity, and questions like “Do I exist?” and “What does my self consist of?”
My commonsense notion of my conscious self is that it is a fixed and permanent feature of my
identity. Just as my arms and legs are features of my body, my consciousness is a feature of my
non-physical self. As I travel through life, a conscious part of me receives new experiences
through my senses, reflects on them, recalls other experiences from my memory, and has me act
out in a variety of ways. There is always some permanent me that is watching, thinking, and
acting. However, Buddha denies the meaningfulness of such notions of the self, a position
known as the no-self doctrine. He explains that our ordinary notion of the self consists of five
components or aggregates, namely, matter, sensation, perception, predisposition, and
consciousness. However, if we examine each of these one by one, we will see that they cannot be
the foundation of a permanent self. For example, sensations come and go in rapid succession and
are far too fleeting to have any permanence. One moment I’m having a pleasant sensation, the
next moment a painful one. The other four components of the self are equally temporary and
changing. In the end, there is not a shred of permanence to be found in the self, and all that these
five components will give is us suffering:
 
When a follower hears and sees this, he will find suffering in matter, suffering in
sensation, suffering in perception, suffering in predisposition, suffering in consciousness.
[Samyutta Nikaya 22:59]
 
By rejecting this common notion of the self and its five components, we thereby free ourselves
of suffering associated with it. Embracing the no-self doctrine is thus integral to the very act of
nirvana, which has us extinguish our identities and frees us from suffering.
 
Doctrine of Dependent Origination
The Hindu law of karma maintains that our actions have moral consequences that will affect us
either in this life or in a reincarnated life. The mental image we might have of this Hindu
position is that an invisible supreme judge watches us and tallies up our good and bad deeds. He
then appropriately rewards or punishes us as time permits, and, if time runs out in this life, then
he carries the rewards and punishments over to the next life. Buddha rejected this particular
picture of the doctrine of karma. There are no mysterious tally sheets with our names on them.
However, Buddha does not completely reject the notion of karma, but instead gives it an earthly-
grounded spin. According to Buddha, all events that take place are the result of precise causal
chains of events. When I trace back the series of causes of any given unfortunate event, I find
that it causally rests upon my desire, and, ultimately, on an unjustified concept I have of my
conscious self. This notion of causal connectedness is called the doctrine of dependent
origination.
            In a discussion from the Pali Canon, one of Buddha’s followers claims to have a perfectly
clear conception of the doctrine of dependent origination. Buddha, though, is not impressed and
explains how complicated the notion really is:
 
Dependent origination appears complicated and is indeed complex. It is through not
understanding and penetrating this doctrine that humankind is accordingly like an
entangled twist, an ensnared web, or like jumbled grass. It fails to disengage itself from
punishment, suffering, destruction, and rebirth. [Digha-nikaya 256, Mahanidana sutta]
 
In the final sentence Buddha suggests that misconceptions about punishment owe to our failure
to grasp true causal connections. Suppose, for example, that my friend gets injured in an
automobile accident shortly after he and I visited with each other. I might then feel partly
responsible for the accident because our visit lasted too long, which put him in the wrong place
at the wrong time. I might then expect to receive some karmic punishment for my role. However,
I may have a more realistic view of my responsibility if I better understand all of the causal
forces at work in the accident – particularly the mental states of those involved as well as the
long string of sorrowful consequences that follow from the accident.
            We know from the first two Noble Truths that desire is the ultimate cause of suffering.
According to Buddha, the doctrine of dependent origination allows us to explain the connecting
links between desire and suffering in very precise terms. Focusing on the suffering associated
with old age and death, Buddha traces these back to their initial sources:
 
If one asks whether old age and death depend on anything, the reply should be that old
age and death depend on birth. . . . birth depends on existence . . . existence depends on
attachment . . . attachment depends on desire . . . desire depends on sensation . . .
sensation depends on contact . . . contact depends on mental and physical phenomena . . .
physical phenomena depend on consciousness. [Ibid]
 
Human consciousness, then, kicks off the entire series of causal events that results in the
suffering from old age and death. The successive links are these: consciousness > mental and
physical phenomena > contact > sensation > desire > attachment > existence > birth > old age
and death. To attack the problem at its source, we should subdue our consciousness, and this is
the message of the third noble truth, namely, nirvana.
 
Emptiness and Zen Buddhism
Around 100 CE, Buddhism split into two main denominations, Theravada and Mahayana. While
Theravadists held fast to the teachings of the Pali Canon, Mahayanists argued that Buddha’s
more advanced teachings were transmitted orally and ultimately recorded in newer Mahayana
texts. A running theme within these new Mahayana works is the notion of emptiness, the view
that all reality is devoid of any discernable content or description. The view here is not a
nihilistic denial that reality exists; instead, it is a denial that reality has any describable
distinctions. The metaphor of emptiness presumes that there is something like a container that
has nothing in it. The container, in this case, has a label on it that reads “reality”. But is the
container literally empty in the sense that nothing at all exists within it? No. It is one thing to say
that reality is not as it initially appears, and it is another to say simply that nothing exists. The
point of the metaphor is this: when we look inside the container we find that it has no
distinguishable parts or qualities that define its true nature. It is for all practical purposes empty,
but there is still some characterless thing in the container.
            One anonymously written Mahayana text, the Heart Sutra, pushes the notion of
emptiness to its extreme. It starts by maintaining that everything about our identities and the
ordinary world we live in are empty and have no true content. However, the author continues
with the more radical claim that even the four noble truths and nirvana are empty:
 
 There is no knowledge, no ignorance, or no destruction of knowledge. There is no decay
and death, or no destruction of decay and death. There are no [four noble truths, namely,] 
pain, the origin of pain, the elimination of pain, and the path to it. There is no knowledge,
no obtaining, no not obtaining of nirvana. [Heart Sutra]
 
It’s not enough to merely concede that the ordinary realm of life and death are empty of
descriptive content. What’s more is that nirvana, the very solution to our misery, also has no
descriptive content. Why is this so dramatic? We’ve seen that Buddhist teachings in the Pali
Canon make a fundamental distinction between (a) the ordinary realm of life, death and
suffering, and, (b) the realm of nirvana in which suffering is extinguished. But the point of
the Heart Sutrais that even this distinction is not justified. Stated most forcefully, the ordinary
realm and the nirvana realm are the same thing; that is, the world itself does not change when
viewing it in nirvana. The entirety of reality is one huge empty thing that is incapable of
distinction or descriptive content.
            Grasping the notion of emptiness is a genuine challenge, and one branch of Mahayana
Buddhism devised an innovative method for conveying the idea. Founded in China around the
fifth-century CE, Zen Buddhism is renown for its paradoxical meditative puzzles, such as “what
is the sound of one hand clapping?” Zen resists any verbal formula, and has no creeds. The focus
of Zen is experience, and rational discourse and doctrine play no role in gaining enlightenment.
In Zen, the experience of enlightenment is transmitted from the mind of a seasoned teacher to the
student in training. It is sometimes compared to a flame that is passed from candle to candle.
            The Zen approach is based on one of Buddha’s discourses known as the Flower Sermon,
in which he simply held up a golden lotus. No one in the crowd understood Buddha’s cryptic
meaning except his leading disciple. The historical origin of Zen is attributed to a possibly
fictitious figure named Bodhidharma (470-543 CE) who reportedly moved from Northern India
into China. For nine years he sat in meditation and was eventually approached by a young man
named Hui-K’o who wanted to be Bodhidharma’s disciple. Bodhidharma resisted, until, in an act
of desperation, Hui-K’o cut off his left arm and said to Bodhidharma, “My mind is not at peace;
please bring it peace.” In reply Bohdhidharma said, “If you bring me your mind I will give it
peace.” Hui-K’o replied, “When I look for it, I cannot find it.” Bodhidharma answered, “There! I
have pacified it for you.” Hui-K’o then became enlightened.
            Some centuries later Zen made its way into Japan, and one of its main schools developed
what is known as the koan system. Koans are absurd riddles, such as the famous “what is the
sound of one hand clapping?” which defies any logical response. The koan system involved a
Zen master having his student answer a series of up to 50 absurd riddles over the course of many
years. Around the eleventh-century famous koans were assembled in written collections. Some
classic beginners’ koans found in these collections are “What was your face like before you were
born?” and “Does a dog have the Buddha-nature?” By struggling with these conceptually
paradoxical questions, the student’s mind would be loosened from traditional reasoning, he’d see
that ultimate reality is not discoverable, and experience the emptiness of all things. Some
classical “correct” responses include lifting one finger, kicking a ball, and slapping the face of an
inquirer. There are also intermediary level koans which request impossible tasks, such as “Stop
that ship on the distant ocean,” or “Take the four divisions of Tokyo out of your sleeve.” A
solution in this latter one might be to take out a paper handkerchief folded in four sections, which
symbolically become the four divisions of Tokyo. In a series of formal consultations, the student
would meet with his master twice daily to discuss progress on the solution. Usually the master
would criticize the student’s solution, and, ultimately, the student will recognize by himself when
he gets it right. The end result is enlightenment.
 
C: CONFUCIAN PHILOSOPHY
Around 500 BCE, China was in social upheaval and went through what is called its Warring
States period. National emperors lost control over China’s various territories while local rulers
increased their strength, waging wars against each other to the point that only the strongest states
could survive. Although exaggerated, stories reported that as many as 400,000 people were
slaughtered in battles. In response to the problem of social chaos that impacted nearly everyone’s
life, a Period of 100 Philosophers emerged in which sages proposed various solutions. Some
recommended a totalitarian system, concentrating power in the ruler. Others recommended
loving everyone as a means of attaining peace. It was in this context that China’s great teacher
Confucius emerged, offering his own solution to the problem of social chaos.
            Confucius (551–479 BCE) was born in what is now China’s Shandong province, along
the country’s mid costal region. His family name was Kung, and the name “Confucius,” by
which we know him in the West, is a Latinized version of “Kung Fu-tzu”, which means master
Kung. His father, a distinguished soldier, and his mother both died when he was a child. He
married at 19, had a son and daughter, and worked as a clerk in a temple in which he learned
rituals from elders. Confucius set his eye on governmental work and eventually, in his 50s, held
posts including police commissioner and imperial ambassador for a peace conference.
Disillusioned by these jobs, he traveled for 13 years to the various states in China, giving advice
on government. He made the grandiose claim to show concrete social improvements within one
year, and achieve complete change within three years. No ruler took him up on his offer and,
disillusioned again, he returned to his home state. He continued teaching his followers and died
at age 73. Although he considered himself a failure, his followers preserved and developed his
teachings, which ultimately resulted in the flourishing of the Confucian school that heavily
impacted Chinese intellectual life for 2,000 years.
            Confucius’s solution to the problem of anarchy was to return to the old Chinese customs
before social turmoil broke out. To aid in that effort he researched China’s old cultural traditions
and edited several books of ancient Chinese history and literature. Confucius wrote nothing of
his own views, though, and the principal record of his teachings is work called the Analects, or
“digested conversations,” which is unsystematic collection of discussions, recorded by his
students after his death. While the Analects is somewhat sketchy and does not record any of
Confucius’s organized discourses, it does offer a picture of his central teachings. As a
philosopher, Confucius was foremost and ethicist who emphasized the importance of virtuous
conduct. Much of his ethical thought focuses on four specific themes: ritual conduct, humanity,
the superior person, filial obedience, and good government.
 
Ritual Conduct
Foremost among Confucius’s teachings is the notion of ritual conduct (li), which is the effortless
adherence to social norms and the performance of customs. By Confucius’s time, ritual conduct
became associated with ceremonial formality, particularly in religious practices. But Confucius
uses the notion more broadly to include customs as diverse as major holiday celebrations and
simple greetings.
            For Confucius, rituals and traditions are the visible glue that binds society together. For
virtually every activity, there is a proper way of behaving. If we don’t follow these customs,
then, in spite of our best intentions, we behave like bumbling fools. He makes this point here:
 
Respectfulness without the rules of ritual conduct becomes laborious bustle. Carefulness
without the rules of ritual conduct becomes timidity. Boldness without the rules of ritual
conduct becomes insubordination. Straightforwardness without the rules of ritual conduct
becomes rudeness. When those who are in high stations properly perform all their duties
to their relations, the people are inspired towards virtue. When old friends are not
neglected by them, the people are preserved from meanness. [Analects, 8.2]
 
Here’s an example of how ritual conduct might apply to political life. Imagine that, during a city
council meeting, I want to propose the development of a new park. As I make my case I need to
be duly respectful and careful, yet bold and straightforward. If I don’t know the rules of ritual
conduct, my efforts will be strained, and in the course of the discussion I can too easily either
understate my view or inadvertently insult the council members. On the other hand, if I am
properly skilled in the ritual conduct of business discussions, then I’ll be able to make my case
easily and effectively.
            There is both an inward and outward component of ritual conduct. The outward
component concerns the visible ritual itself. The inward component involves having the proper
attitude in ritual conduct, rather than simply going through the motions with no thought of their
significance. Confucius argues that the true development of ritual conduct requires that we
subdue ourselves. Also, when performing our various duties, it is important that our actions flow
from within ourselves, and are not motivated by outward pressures:
 
Yen Yuan asked about perfect virtue. The Master said, “To subdue one’s self and return
to ritual conduct is perfect virtue. If a person can for one day subdue himself and return to
ritual conduct, all under heaven will attribute perfect virtue to him. Is the practice of
perfect virtue from a person himself, or is it from others?” Yen Yuan said, “I beg to ask
the steps of that process.” The Master replied, “Do not look at what is contrary to ritual
conduct; do not listen to what is contrary to ritual conduct; do not speak what is contrary
to ritual conduct; do not make movements which are contrary to ritual conduct.” Yen
Yuan then said, “Though I am deficient in intelligence and vigor, I will make it my
business to practice this lesson.” [ibid, 12.1]
 
For Confucius, learning ritual conduct involves active social participation, similar to how we
learn any skill or art form through direct involvement. Insofar as it is a skill, Confucius groups
ritual conduct together with the skills of learning poetry and music. What all of these skills have
in common is that they involve cultivating a special aesthetic sense of appreciation. They also
refine us, elevate the quality of our lives, and serve as a tool for moral instruction.
 
Humanity and the Superior Person
The Confucian notion of humanity (jen), is the attitude of goodness, benevolence, and altruism
towards others. Again, there is a distinction between one’s mere outer expressions of humanity
and one’s inner sense of it: “Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated
with true humanity” (ibid, 1.3). When we think of humane behavior, we think of the various
ways that we relate to other people, has Confucius relates here:
 
 The Master said, “It is humane manners that constitute the excellence of a neighborhood.
If a person in selecting a residence does not fix on one where such prevail, how can he be
wise?” The Master said, “Those who are without humanity cannot abide long either in a
condition of poverty and hardship, or in a condition of enjoyment. The virtuous rest in
humanity; the wise desire humanity.” The Master said, “It is only the truly humane
person who can love, or who can hate, others.” The Master said, “If one’s will is set on
humanity, there will be no practice of wickedness.” [Ibid, 4.1-4]
 
To acquire humanity, I should develop the virtues of dignity and patience, which will help me be
at peace regardless of the difficulties that I face in life.
            Central to the concept of humanity is the Confucian principle of reciprocity (shu), which
is “Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you.” This principle is similar to the
famous Golden Rule in the New Testament, namely, “Do to others what you would want done to
yourself.” The principle difference, though, is that the Golden Rule puts forward a positive duty,
that is, I should treat you benevolently or charitably since that is how I prefer to be treated. The
principle of reciprocity, on the other hand, involves negative duties to avoid harm. For example,
I should not steal from or lie to you since I would not want that kind of treatment myself.
Because of this difference in emphasis, the principle of reciprocity is sometimes called the
“Silver Rule.” We find Confucius state the principle of reciprocity in a several of passages
throughout the Analects. In one case he chastises a student for not following the principle: “Tzu-
kung said, ‘What I do not wish people to do to me, I also wish not to do to people.’ The Master
said, ‘you have not attained to that’” (ibid, 5.11). In another passage Confucius states that the
principle of reciprocity should be the guiding principle of ones life: “Tzu-kung asked, saying, ‘Is
there one word that may serve as a rule of practice for all one’s life?’ The Master said, ‘Is not
reciprocity such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others’” (ibid,
15.23). In another passage, the principle appears among a longer list of moral recommendations:
 
Chung-kung asked about perfect virtue. The Master said, “It is, when you go abroad, to
behave to everyone as if you were receiving a great guest; to employ the people as if you
were assisting at a great sacrifice; not to do to others as you would not wish done to
yourself; to have no murmuring against you in the country, and none in the family.”
Chung-kung said, “Though I am deficient in intelligence and vigor, I will make it my
business to practice this lesson.” [Ibid, 12.1-2]
 
            Because of its emphasis on mere avoidance, the principle of reciprocity is sometimes
criticized for being too passive: it is one thing to say that I should simply avoid harming you, but
it is another and much better thing to say that I should actively seek your improvement.
However, the wording of the principle of reciprocity is flexible enough to include positive as
well as negative duties. For example, since I would not want anyone to withhold charity from
me, then I should not withhold charity from others.
            For Confucius, the superior person (chun-tzu) is the ideal human who personifies the
virtue of humanity. The term originally referred to children of aristocrats who inherited their
family estates, but, like the term “gentleman” in English, the notion of a superior
person acquired a broader ethical meaning. In the Analects, Confucius sees the superior person
as the ideal to which his followers should strive. The superior person consistently exhibits a
range of virtuous qualities, including humility, respectfulness, kindness, justice, impartiality,
honesty, consistency, caution, and studiousness. Although this is a somewhat abstract list of
qualities, a set of passages in the Analects points out some very particular attitudes of the
superior person:
 
The Master said, “The superior person is distressed by his want of ability. He is not
distressed by people not knowing him.” The Master said, “The superior person dislikes
the thought of his name not being mentioned after his death.” The Master said, “What the
superior person seeks is in himself. What the inferior person seeks is in others.” The
Master said, “The superior person is dignified, but does not wrangle. He is sociable, but
not a partisan.” The Master said, “The superior person does not promote someone simply
on account of his words, nor does he put aside good words because of the person.” [Ibid,
15.18-22]
 
In the above we see that, paradoxically, the superior person is not driven by a need for fame, yet
at the same time he “dislikes the thought of his name not being mentioned after his death.” What
Confucius had in mind is something like this. The drive for fame while we are alive is too
frequently tied with how wealthy, powerful, or successful we are. The underlying passions here
are pride and arrogance, which the superior person should clearly reject. On the other hand, when
we consider our life-long legacy and how people remember us after our deaths, we think more
about how good we’ve been as human beings, and less about the degree of wealth and power that
we’ve obtained. It is, then, admirable to hope to be remembered for our legacy as a good person.
            In spite of the lengthy list of values that the superior person holds, Confucius stresses that
the superior person is not a by-the-book rule follower, whose beliefs are rigidly fixed. On the
contrary, “The superior person in the world does not set his mind either for anything, or against
anything. What is right he will follow” (ibid, 4.10). That is, the superior person’s attitudes and
conduct will be guided by an overall sense of justice, and not by a nitpicky set of regulations. In
keeping with his emphasis on the internal aspects of moral attributes, Confucius describes the
psychological state of tranquility to which the superior person must rise. Distress, anxiety, and
fear are all obstructions: “The superior person is satisfied and composed; the inferior person is
always full of distress” (ibid, 7.36). Regardless of how much tragedy we might experience, our
internal sense of virtue should give us peace: “When internal examination discovers nothing
wrong, what is there to be anxious about? What is there to fear?” That is, if I know that my
internal character contains the marks of virtue, then I can take faith in this, even if I’m plagued
with misfortunes such as family tragedy or financial disaster.
            Becoming a superior person involves an ongoing process that cannot be quickly attained,
and an anecdote about a 17th century Confucian monk illustrates this point. Upon turning 90, the
monk commented that he now saw how foolish he was at 80, and he looked forward to when
he’d have better knowledge at a later age. Similarly, Confucius did not believe that he himself
was a perfectly superior person: “In matters of learning I am perhaps equal to other people, but I
have not yet attained to the character of the superior person, who carries out in his conduct what
he professes” (Ibid, 7.33). That is, Confucius did not yet fully embody the values he knew that he
should possess.
 
Filial Obedience and Good Government
Confucius held that there are five relationships (wulun) that underlie the order of society,
namely, (1) father and son, (2) elder brother and younger brother, (3) husband and wife, (4) elder
friend and junior friend, and (5) ruler and subject. Confucian writings sometimes refer to a
shorter list of relationships called the “Three Bonds”, which include those of the father-son,
husband-wife, and ruler-subject. Each of these involves a superior and a subordinate, and special
duties are required of both parties:
 
What are “the things which people consider right?” Kindness on the part of the father,
and filial duty on that of the son. Gentleness on the part of the elder brother, and
obedience on that of the younger. Righteousness on the part of the husband, and
submission on that of the wife. Kindness on the part of elders, and reverence on that of
the juniors. Benevolence on the part of the ruler, and loyalty on that of the minister.
These ten are the things which people consider to be right. [Book of Rites]
 
With each of these five relationships, the subordinate person is duty bound to show obedience,
and the superior person to show kindness. Of the five relationships, the two that Confucius
discusses the most are the father-son and the ruler-subject, which we’ll consider here in more
detail
            The relationship between father and son – commonly known as filial obedience (hsiao)
--  sets a standard for the others. Respect for all superiors is ultimately an extension of respect for
one’s parents, and we should treat all elders with respect almost as if they were surrogate
parents” (Analects, 1.6). By respecting parents we will respect elders in general, and by doing
this we will be less likely to stir up confusion and thereby undermine social order, either in or
outside of the home. Virtually all cultures stress the obligations that children have to respect and
obey their parents and, to that extent, this value is not a Confucian invention. Like other virtues,
though, Confucius gives a unique twist to this one by emphasizing the importance of having the
proper attitude in fulfilling this duty, rather than simply abiding by the letter of the law. Without
this proper inner attitude, we are no better than animals that might help provide for older
members of its species: “Filial obedience nowadays means to support one’s parents. But dogs
and horses also are able to do something in the way of support. Without reverence, what is there
to distinguish the one support given from the other?” (Analects, 2.7). By having the proper
attitude of respect for our parents, we will perpetuate the value system that we learned at home,
long after we are grown and leave the house: “If the son for three years does not alter from the
way of his father, he may be called filial” (ibid, 4.10). The respect that we have for our parents
while they are alive continues in the form of ancestral veneration when they die, and requires
that we perform various sacrificial duties.
            Suppose that my father asks me to do something that was obviously wrong, such as steal
the neighbor’s wheelbarrow or rob a store. Would filial obedience obligate me to follow my
father’s instructions? Confucius’s reply to this question was “When a command is wrong, a son
should resist his father, and a civil servant should resist his noble ruler.” Respect for parents,
then, is not blind obedience. One benefit of resisting is that we will remind our father of his
moral duty and prevent him from committing some wrong: “If a man has a good friend to resist
him in doing bad actions, he will have his reputation preserved. So, if a father has a son to resist
his wrong command, he will be saved from committing serious faults” (Classic of Filial
Obedience). The prospect of resisting one’s parents and attempting to morally instruct them
places the child in an awkward situation. This highlights the obligation that parents are under to
cultivate a proper sense of morality within themselves and thus avoid forcing this dilemma on
their children.
            Turning next to the ruler-subject relationship, Confucius saw himself as a political
reformer, and he held that good governing consists of the ruler setting the moral example for the
whole country. His goodness will trickle down through the various layers of social hierarchy, and
the whole country will prosper when he is benevolent. According to Confucius, “He who
exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which
keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it” (Analects, 2.1).
            What, though, must the ruler himself do to acquire virtue? Confucius lists five kinds of
actions that will lead to good government:
 
“When the person in authority is beneficent without great expense; when he lays tasks on
the people without their grieving; when he pursues what he desires without being selfish;
when he maintains a dignified ease without being proud; when he is majestic without
being cruel.” (ibid, 20.2)
 
First on this list is beneficence, and, to display this, the ruler does not necessarily have to actively
shower his subjects with luxuries. Instead, the ruler can emphasize things from which people
naturally benefit, such as efficient governmental programs and honest governmental
administrators. Second, concerning laying tasks on people without making them grieve,
Confucius believes that the ruler should discover people’s natural capacities and encourage them
to work in those areas. A musician, for example, should not be forced to work as an accountant.
Third, a ruler can unselfishly pursue what he desires when he restricts his desires to cultivating a
good government. Fourth, without being arrogant, he should carry himself with dignity with
everything and everyone he comes in contact with. Fifth, without being fierce, a ruler should
appear majestic in everything that he does – right down to how he places a cap on his head.
            Good government is the theme of a later Confucian classic titled The Great Learning,
which tradition attributes to Confucius’s grandson. According to this work, good government is a
matter of rulers exhibiting their clear character to the world, that is, displaying their virtue as a
model for others to follow.  How does the ruler acquire clear character?  The Great Learning,
tells us that there are eight causal links that culminate in clear character and effective governing.
The underlying theme of these eight steps is intense moral and philosophical reflection:
 
The ancients who wished to exhibit their clear character to the world first brought order
to their states. Wishing to order their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to
regulate their families, they first cultivated their personal lives. Wishing to cultivate their
personal lives, they first corrected their minds. Wishing to correct their minds, they first
sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first
extended their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge rests in investigating things.
[The Great Learning]
 
According to the above, the first step in acquiring clear character is extending our knowledge by
“investigating things.” For Confucius this involved not only knowledge of arts and sciences, but
a knowledge of oneself and one’s limitations: “When you know a thing, to hold that you know it;
and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it; this is knowledge”
(Analects, 2.17).
 
Mencius: Inherent Human Goodness
The second most influential philosopher in the Confucian tradition is Mencius (390–305 BCE),
or Meng-tzu. A few generations removed from Confucius, Mencius studied under a disciple of
Confucius’s grandson and, like Confucius, Mencius traveled around China to promote political
reform. He confronted rival philosophical schools, typically those that emphasized human
selfishness. Mencius believed that governments should be run through exemplary conduct, with
goodness as the goal. The most well known aspect of Mencius’s thought is his view of the
inherent goodness of people. According to Mencius, our minds and hearts house our inherent
tendency towards moral goodness. Evil, he believes, results from bad social influences that
reduce our natural moral strength.
            Mencius presents this idea in a conversation between himself and a skeptical philosopher
named Kao. Kao argues that human nature is neither good nor bad, but can be molded either
way, just as we can mold a piece of wood into different things. “Human nature,” says Kao, “is
like a tree, and righteousness is like a wooden cup or a bowl. The fashioning of benevolence and
righteousness out of a person’s nature is like the making of cups and bowls from the tree”
(Mencius, 6a.1). But Mencius rejects Kao’s analogy and argues that any such “molding” – even
for the sake of moral goodness – would do violence to our nature. We would thus be forced to
see moral virtues such as benevolence and righteousness as distortions of who we are. Mencius
asks,
 
Without touching the nature of the tree, can you make it into cups and bowls? You must
do violence and injury to the tree before you can make cups and bowls with it. If you
must do violence and injury to the tree in order to make cups and bowls with it, on your
principles you must in the same way do violence and injury to humanity in order to
fashion from it benevolence and righteousness. Thus, your words would certainly lead all
people on to consider benevolence and righteousness to be calamities. [Ibid]
 
            As the conversation continues, Kao insists that human nature is neither inherently good
nor inherently evil. But, just as we might redirect the flow of water east or west, society is
capable of directing our nature towards good or towards evil. Thus, according to Kao, “Human
nature is indifferent to good and evil, just as water is indifferent to the east and west” (ibid, 6a.2).
But Mencius rejects this analogy too, and argues that human nature possesses potential goodness,
just as the nature of water is to flow down hill:
 
Water indeed will flow indifferently to the east or west, but will it flow indifferently up
or down? The tendency of human nature to do good is like the tendency of water to flow
downwards. All people have this tendency to good, just as all water flows downwards.
Now, by striking water and causing it to leap up, you may make it go over your forehead,
and, by damming and leading it, you may force it up a hill. But are such movements
according to the nature of water? It is the force applied which causes them. When people
are made to do what is not good, their nature is dealt with in this way. [Ibid]
 
Mencius tells us exactly what our inherently good nature consists of. First, he argues that we
naturally have four specific moral virtues, namely, commiseration, shame, respect, and approval.
Second, these four virtues naturally give rise to others, namely humanity, righteousness, ritual
conduct, knowledge. Mencius insists that nature has instilled these in all of us, which we can all
find if we just look for them: “We are certainly furnished with them. Any different view simply
owes to an absence of reflection” (ibid).
 
D. DAOIST PHILOSOPHY
Like Confucianism, Daoism emerged during China’s Warring States period, and its specific
recommendation for ending social chaos was that we should imitate nature and go back to the
primitive tradition of China before the appearance of kings and feudal systems. Tradition credits
the founding of Daoism to a figure named Lao-tzu, literally meaning “master Lao.” But virtually
nothing concrete is known about him, and some modern scholars argue he was created by early
Daoists as a kind of rival to Confucius. Tradition also credits him with composing Daoism’s
most important text, the Dao De Jing, which literally means The Book of the Way and its Power.
According to one story, as Lao-tzu was leaving his home town, the city gatekeeper was sorry to
see the great master go and asked that he write a book of his views by which people could
remember him. Lao-tzu sat down on the spot and composed the Dao De Jing. Although tradition
dates the Dao De Jing at around 450 BCE, scholars today place it at around 300 BCE based on
its literary style. The work is an anthology of sayings compiled to instruct kings on government;
specifically it recommends that kings should rule through an extreme “hands off” policy,
allowing social events to conform to nature.
            The second most important book in Daoism is the work attributed to and named after
Daoist philosopher Chuang-tzu (369-286 BCE)—or, “master Chuang”. Unlike the Dao de
Jing, the Chuang-Tzu is not a political treatise. Intended for a more general readership, it is
composed in a popular style with vivid stories and parables. We know few facts about Chuang-
tzu’s life, and tradition maintains that he held a minor political position. According to one story,
he was once invited to become a prime minister but replied, “I would rather leave myself to my
own enjoyment in the mire than be a slave to the ruler of a state. I will never take office. Thus, I
shall remain free to follow my own inclinations” (Chuang-Tzu, 37). We also find an anecdote
about his burial plans, which highlight the theme of naturalness in Daoism:
 
When Chuang-tzu was about to die, his disciples indicated their wish to give him a grand
burial. He replied, “I will have heaven and earth for my coffin and its shell; the sun and
moon for my two round symbols of jade; the stars and constellations for my pearls and
jewels; and all things assisting as the mourners. Will not the provisions for my burial be
complete? What could you add to them?” [Ibid, 32]
 
We will look at some of the more prominent themes that appear in both the Dao De Jing and
the Chuang-tzu.
 
The Dao
The notion of the Dao is the central concept in Daoism. Literally the term means “way” or
“path”, but it more specifically refers to the fundamental ordering principle behind nature,
society, and individual people. An initial obstacle to understanding the concept of the Dao is that
it has an unspeakable mystical quality and cannot be defined. We see this in the opening and
most famous passage of the book:
 
The Dao that can be named is not the eternal and unchanging Dao. The name that can be
spoken is not the eternal and unchanging name. The nameless is the source of heaven and
earth. The named is the mother of all things. Always be without desires and you will see
mystery. Always be with desire, and you will see only its effects. These two are really the
same, although, as development takes place, they receive the different names. They are
both a mystery, and where mystery is the deepest we find the gate of all that is subtle and
wonderful. [Dao De Jing, 1]
 
According to the above, if you try to name, speak, or describe the Dao, then you have missed the
point and distorted the Dao’s meaning. It is an indescribable source of all existence, and we
grasp the Dao only by mystically experiencing its subtlety. This experience begins with subduing
one’s desires. From the start, the Dao De Jing advocates a non-intellectual and even anti-
intellectual approach. We should abandon hopes of finding an adequate verbal description of
the Dao, and instead psychologically realign ourselves so that we are not driven by our desires.
With no mental conceptions or desires to muddy the waters, we then allow the Dao to exhibit
itself through our own lives, and we can recognize its presence in the natural world around us.
            Another passage early on in the Dao De Jing states that the indescribable nature of
the Dao is like an empty vessel, which we should never try to fill with concrete descriptions that
will invariably misrepresent it:
 
The Dao is like the emptiness of a vessel; and in our employment of it we must be on our
guard against all fullness. How deep and unfathomable it is, as if it were the honored
ancestor of all things. We should blunt our sharp points, and unravel the complications of
things; we should dim our brightness, and bring ourselves into agreement with the
obscurity of others. How pure and still the Dao is, as if it would continue forever. I do not
know whose son it is. It might appear to have been before God. [Ibid, 4]
 
The Dao’s nature, according to the above, is infinitely deep and as mysterious as any
investigation into the origin of things in the far distant past. To understand it, we must take an
approach that is opposite to what we might expect. For example, we typically learn about things
through our senses of sight, hearing, or touch. But the Dao lacks any sensory qualities that might
enable us to perceive it in those ways. In fact, if we try to investigate the Dao as though it were
just another physical object of perception, we will find that its nature actually consists
of lacking any tangible qualities: “We look at it, and we do not see it, and we name it ‘the
colorless.’ We listen to it, and we do not hear it, and we name it ‘the soundless.’ We try to grasp
it, and do not get hold of it, and we name it ‘the bodiless’” (ibid, 14). What is the Dao’s form? It
is formless. What is its appearance? It is invisible. Try as we might to list its qualities, we are left
with empty descriptions.
            In spite of the Dao’s unspeakable quality, the Dao De Jing tells us at least something
about the Dao’s nature. One recurring point is that the Dao both creates and sustains everything
that exists: “The Dao produces all things and nourishes them; it produces them and does not
claim them as its own; it does all, and yet does not boast of it; it presides over all, and yet does
not control them” (ibid, 10). Although the Dao is the originator of all things, it should not be
misconstrued as a kind of pre-existing God who created a universe distinct from itself. Rather,
before things originated, the Dao was in a formless state of potential. As it took on the state of
existence, the Dao produced things that remain part of its nature:
 
There was something undefined and complete, coming into existence before Heaven and
Earth. How still and formless it was, standing alone, and undergoing no change, reaching
everywhere and in no danger of being exhausted. It may be regarded as the Mother of all
things. I do not know its name, and I give it the designation of the Dao, the Way or
Course. [Ibid, 25]
 
The Dao De Jing repeatedly refers to the Dao as the mother of everything, and the metaphor of a
mother has important implications. A cosmic father evokes images of a craftsman or builder who
aggressively manufactures the world from some external raw material. But a
cosmic mother gives birth to things, generating them from within herself, and continually
nurturing them. It is like a great tree that sprouts branches, leaves, and fruit, continually feeding
them all from within. It is like a great river that spawns and sustains a myriad of life forms.
 
Return
A central theme of Daoism is that of return: all things eventually decay and return to their
ultimate source within the Dao. There are clear natural cycles in the cosmos: everything around
us has been recycled and will again be recycled. We tend to praise human accomplishments that
have the most lasting value, such as timeless works of art, scientific discoveries, and moral
traditions. However, when we look at nature, we see that nothing is permanent and everything
comes and goes in cycles. Growth and decay are not just one-time events, but occur again and
again in an endless natural cycle. This is the pulse of the universe that we find in most everything
that we observe. Trees, animals, and even societies grow and die, and their elements will
ultimately be recycled. The passage below illustrates this point with plants, which first display
luxuriant growth, and then return to their origin:
 
All things alike go through their processes of activity, and then we see them return to
their original state. When things in the vegetable world have displayed their luxuriant
growth, we see each of them return to its root. This returning to their root is what we call
the state of stillness; and that stillness may be called a reporting that they have fulfilled
their appointed end. [Ibid, 16]
 
            Plants and animals die and decay, leaving their elements to become the raw materials of
other things. We too will wither, die and decay, whether we like it or not. Chuang-tzu gives a
story of a dying man whose body has become deformed. Rather than be angry and resistant to his
physical changes, he gladly accepts them:
 
If the creator transformed my left arm into a rooster, I would watch the time of the night.
If he transformed my right arm into a cross-bow, I would then be looking for a duck to
shoot for roasting. If he transformed my rump-bone into a wheel and my spirit into a
horse, I would then be able to ride in my own chariot. I’d never have to change horses. I
obtained life because it was my time. I am now parting with it in accordance with the
same law. [Chuang-Tzu, 6]
 
According to Chuang-tzu, then, we should submit to the natural process of transformation, and to
do otherwise amounts to disobedience: “If a parent tells a son to go east, west, south, or north,
the son simply follows the command. The yin and yang [forces of nature] are more to a man than
his parents are. If they are hastening my death and I do not quietly submit to them, I would be
obstinate and rebellious.” Ultimately, we have no say in the matter.
 
Non-Action and Non-Mind
The most practical advice of Daoism is that of non-action (wu wei), also called effortless action:
everything we do should flow with simple spontaneity and without contrivance. Artificial actions
run counter to the natural course of things, and usually involve aggression and competition.
Picture a log floating down a river with a large rock in its path. Rather than knocking the rock
over, the log gently bumps into it, casually floats around it, and continues on its course.
Passivity, rather than aggression, is the attitude towards life that we should adopt. In the natural
world, weakness is linked with life, and strength with death:
 
Man at his birth is supple and weak; at his death, firm and strong. So it is with all things.
In their early growth, trees and plants are soft and brittle; at their death they are dry and
withered. In this manner, firmness and strength are the accompaniments of death,
whereas softness and weakness are the accompaniments of life. [Dao De Jing, 76]
 
Chuan-Tzu gives a story that vividly describes non-action. A prince was watching his cook slice
meat with a rhythmical and harmonious cutting technique. The cook then explained his secret:
 
I am devoted to the method of the Dao, which is superior to any skill. . . . Observing the
natural lines in the meat, my knife slips through the great crevices and slides through the
great cavities, taking advantage of the accommodations thus presented. My skill avoids
the ligaments, and even more so the large bones. A good cook changes his knife every
year because he cleanly cuts. An ordinary cook changes his every month because
hehacks. Now I have used my knife for nineteen years. [Chuang-Tzu, 3]
 
By working in harmony with the meat and slicing between the joints, rather than hacking through
bone, the cook incorporated the practice of non-action. He lost awareness of the techniques of
butchering and cut the meat almost as if he was in a trance. Impressed by the cook’s explanation,
the Prince concluded, “I have heard the words of my cook, and learned how to care for life.”
            We might think that passivity and weakness would make us easy targets of attack, and
more vulnerable to manipulation than we otherwise might be. Paradoxically, though, the Dao De
Jing explains that non-action is actually the most successful means of self-defense and military
engagement: “The softest thing in the world dashes against and overcomes the hardest; that
which has no substantial existence enters where there is no crevice” (Dao De Jing, 43). We
overcome obstacles by homing in on an adversary’s vulnerabilities and then effortlessly
shattering their strength. A good illustration of this is the Marshal Arts, which distinguish
between hard and soft techniques. Hard defense forms such as Tae Kwon Do attempt to batter an
adversary into submission through forceful kicks and punches. By contrast, soft defense forms
such as Aikido attempt to redirect an adversary’s force against himself through techniques of
twisting and throwing. Daoists prefer a soft approach when engaging in combat: “The person
who relies on the strength of his forces does not conquer, just as a tree that has grown strong is
doomed by the lumberjack” (ibid, 76). The effectiveness of this soft approach is evident in the
devastating effects that water sometimes has: “There is nothing in the world more soft and weak
than water, and yet for attacking things that are firm and strong there is nothing that can outrank
it” (ibid, 14).
            Paralleling the notion of non-action is that of non-mind (wu-hsin): we need to eliminate
knowledge and act spontaneously through natural intuition. Accumulated knowledge hinders
creativity and can make one inflexible or subject to a false sense of security. Since the Dao runs
through each of us, everything that we need to know about life is already within ourselves.
Nature will automatically direct us when needs arise. The Dao De Jing rejects traditional
methods of education, such as learning from a master or traveling around and gaining knowledge
through experience.  The true sage never has to even leave home:
 
Without going outside his door, one understands all that takes place under the sky;
without looking out from his window, one sees the Dao of Heaven. The further that one
goes out from himself, the less he knows. Therefore the sages got their knowledge
without traveling, gave their right names to things without seeing them, and
accomplished their ends without any purpose of doing so. [Ibid, 47]
 
Not only should we avoid acquiring knowledge by conventional means, but we should also rid
ourselves of the cumbersome knowledge that we’ve acquired throughout the years. Most
importantly, our understanding of the Dao itself comes through the practice of non-mind: “Those
who are skilled in the Dao do not dispute about it, and those who dispute are not skilled in it”
(ibid, 81). Philosophical discourse and debate will be of no help, and the most perceptive Daoists
avoid debating about the Dao.
 
Minimal Governing
As a political treatise, the Dao De Jing insists that if rulers follow the Dao then their states will
be well ordered and in natural harmony: “If a prince or the king could hold onto the Dao, all
would spontaneously submit themselves to him” (Ibid, 32). To rule in accord with the Dao,
leaders must abandon common notions of governance, which typically involve authoritatively
imposing their wills on the people. Instead, a more Dao-centered way of ruling involves not
ruling at all, but allowing society to function naturally.
            Successful rulers should adopt the attitude of non-action when governing: the more
aggressive input and regulation a government imposes on its citizens, the more that disorder
results. But when a leader sits back and does nothing, society develops on its own. Nature needs
no help from rulers, and when the general public follows the Dao, each person will naturally find
peaceful and simple ways to flourish. Even a well-intentioned leader may disrupt the natural
flow of social order by imposing rules. The mere existence of rules will generate rule-breakers.
Daoism thus recommends political anarchy in the true sense of the word, namely, a peaceful
state of no rule in which we naturally find our place:
 
A sage has said, “I will do nothing with purpose, and the people will transform
themselves; I will keep still, and the people will correct themselves. I will not trouble
with them, and the people will become rich by themselves; I will show no ambition, and
the people will arrive at primitive simplicity by themselves.” [Ibid, 57]
 
            The best style of governing, then, is for the ruler to take a hands-off approach through the
practice of non-action. However, to the extent that rulers do intervene in society, they should try
to rid artificial values from their subjects’ minds through the practice of non-mind:
 
In exercising his government, the sage empties the people’s minds, fills their bellies,
weakens their wills, and strengthens their bones. He constantly tries to keep them without
knowledge and without desire, and where there are those who have knowledge, to keep
them from acting on it. When there is this abstinence from action, good order is universal.
[Ibid, 3]
 
While things in the natural world automatically follow the law of the Dao, people do so by
choice, and this may require rulers to help empty people’s minds of ideas that distract from the
Dao. The specific kind of knowledge that is most damaging to social harmony involves
conventional standards of value and worth. Nature does not teach us to value one style of clothes
over another, for example. The value that we place on specific luxury items, leisure activities,
concepts of beauty, or human accomplishments, are principally matters of cultural brainwashing.
Criminals break the law because they cannot easily acquire the endless array of things society
dangles before them. If rulers can get their citizens to practice non-mind and shed their
preconceived standards of value, then they won’t be seduced into criminal behavior.
            The perfect society envisioned by Daoism does not consist of large and complex cities of
the sort that exist throughout the world today. Instead, primitive simplicity is the ideal, which in
practical terms means small farming families and communities. Chuang-tzu describes this
original and more natural human living environment:
 
People originally wove and made themselves clothes; they tilled the ground and for food.
These are common to humanity. They all agreed on this, and did not form themselves
into separate classes. In this way they were constituted and left to their natural tendencies.
Therefore in the age of perfect virtue people walked along quietly, steadily looking
forward. At that time, on the hills there were no footpaths or excavated passages. On the
lakes there were no boats or dams. [Chuang-Tzu, 9]
 
This, according to Chuang-tzu, is how society originally was; but then rulers came along and
disrupted its natural simplicity by imposing rules and artificial standards:
 
When sages appeared, tripping people up with charity and constraining people with the
duty to one’s neighbor, then people universally began to be perplexed. The sages went to
excess in performing music and fussed over the practice of ceremonies. Then people
began to be separated from each other. . . . The injury done to the Dao in order to practice
charity and duty to one’s neighbor was the error of the sages. [Ibid]
 
Leaders first disrupted the natural order of things by introducing an alien standard of morality:
“they dangled charity and duty to one’s neighbor in order to comfort their minds” (ibid). Leaders
added to this an endless list of complex ceremonies, which only confused people and created
differences between them.  These differences prompted people to outdo each other by striving
for knowledge and pursuing personal gain. Finally, leaders created governments to assure that
people conformed to these new standards. The best rulers, then, are those that facilitate a
primitive society, and the worst rulers are those that try to force order on people through the
creation of rules.
 
Lieh-Tzu: Following Natural Desires
After the Dao De Jing and the Chuang-Tzu, the third most important book in Daoism is the Lieh-
Tzu, meaning “master Lieh”. Tradition attributes it to a scholar named Lieh Yukou from period
of 100 philosophers, but scholars today date its composition at around 300 CE. Sometimes called
the Classic of Complete Emptiness, the Lieh-Tzu recommends pursuing the path of emptiness as
a means of becoming united with the Dao. As a whole, the work has a skeptical and dismal
undertone, emphasizing the certainty of our annihilation, resigning oneself to fate, and
abandoning efforts in life.  In view of the shortness of life, the work recommends that we follow
our own natural inclinations in pursuit of happiness.
            In the most famous part of the book (Section 7, titled Yang-Tzu), Lieh-tzu criticizes the
emphasis we often place on pleasing others and acquiring notoriety that will last beyond the
grave. This emphasis is especially strong in Confucianism, which holds that “The superior
person dislikes the thought of his name not being mentioned after his death” (Analects, 15.20).
Lieh-tzu begins his argument by noting how short life is. If we’re lucky we will live for at most
100 years, but most of our lives will be consumed by infancy, the incapacities of old age,
sleeping, suffering and illness. After all of this “there is less than an hour during which time we
are comfortable, satisfied and carefree.” Where, then, are we to find happiness during our brief
lives? Lieh-tzu’s answer is pleasure: “It is only found in beautiful things and good food, music
and sex” (Lieh-tzu, 7). Unfortunately, he continues, our efforts here are often thwarted. Often
these pleasures are out of our reach. Worse yet, we often voluntarily forego available pleasures
in the hopes of attaining fame or empty praise after our deaths. And even when alone we deny
ourselves pleasures simply to conform to what others expect. “We thus deny ourselves happiness
in our best years, and we cannot live freely for a moment” (ibid).
            Lieh-tzu’s solution is that we should enjoy life’s pleasures when the opportunities arise,
and avoid conforming for the sake of praise from others. It is irrelevant whether you leave an
honorable or dishonorable legacy after your death since, once dead, you won’t be conscious of
your legacy at all:
 
People of long ago understood that in life we are here temporarily and in death we are
gone temporarily. ... The wicked and foolish both die. While alive they were the virtuous
emperors Yao and Shun. When dead they are rotten bones. While alive they were the evil
emperors Chieh and Chou. When dead they are rotten bones. In either case, they are
rotten bones. Can anyone tell them apart? Enjoy your life right now while you still have
it. Why bother with what happens to you after you die? [Ibid]
 
On face value, Lieh-tzu’s emphasis on pursuing pleasure seems to run counter to the Daoist
rejection of desire, which we find in the opening verse of the Dao De Jing: “Always be without
desires and you will see mystery; always be with desire, and you will see only its effects.” But
there may be some wiggle room here. On the one hand, if we are preoccupied with desire then
we will not be able to see the Dao work through all things, including our own lives. On the other
hand, though, part of our nature is to have desires: our natural inclinations should guide our
conduct. The issue then rests on whether the desires for pleasure are natural or artificially
imposed. Leih-tzu’s list – which includes desires for beautiful things, good food, music and sex –
appears to be firmly grounded in our natural human inclinations.
 
CONCLUSION
This chapter opened stating that Eastern philosophies tend to be pantheistic—the view that God
is the totality of the cosmos. While the general notion of pantheism may be easy enough to grasp,
the devil is in the details, and the various Eastern philosophies wrestled with this concept in
different ways. Classical Hindu writings, like the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita, focused on the
pantheistic idea of God at the core of our true identities, and how we might discover the Self-
God through Yoga practices like meditation. Vedanta philosophers pushed the idea of monism—
the cosmos being composed of one divine stuff—but disagreed about whether God was
undifferentiated or had parts. Within Buddhism, the theme of pantheism emerges first with the
notion of nirvana, the idea that we should extinguish all desire and components of our ordinary
consciousness. Within the nirvana state, we subdue our individual selves and experience the
oneness of everything. Mahayana notions of emptiness stress that even the nirvana experience is
undifferentiated and empty of descriptive content. While classical Confucian philosophy focused
more on moral virtue than on the nature of God, its moral message has a strong theme of social
interconnectedness. Some later Confucian philosophers developed this idea of
interconnectedness in pantheistic ways. Daoism’s pantheism appears clearly in its view that the
Dao is the natural force of the universe, which underlies everything. While Hinduism and
Buddhism have us gain enlightenment by disassociating ourselves from the world of
appearances, Daoism takes the opposite approach and has us discover the interconnectedness of
ultimate reality within the cycles in the natural world.
            Eastern religions invariably maintain that understanding ultimate reality and reaching
enlightenment are difficult tasks: it is hard for us to find the Self-God within us, or reach
Nirvana, or become a Superior Person, or live in accord with the Dao. If Easterners themselves
must struggle to internalize these concepts, what chance do people in Western cultures have who
lack the benefit of life-long exposure to pantheistic ideas? Even if we can intellectually grasp the
central points of these Eastern philosophies, we may not be able to take them seriously or adapt
them into our already formed views of things. But while there is a gap between pantheistic and
nonpantheistic views of divine reality, some middle ground may still be found. It will invariably,
though, require at least some compromise of the Western view that God is a distinct being from
his creation.
            Those who doubt the existence of a divine being face yet a different obstacle when
approaching Eastern philosophy: is all this Eastern talk about undifferentiated ultimate reality
and mystical enlightenment just nonsense? But even here there may be some room for
compromise, since the pantheistic message of Eastern philosophy is capable of a naturalistic
spin. The natural world is interconnected, both with its general laws and forces of nature that
govern physical bodies throughout the universe, and with the ecological interdependence of
living things on earth. Daoism in particular has been adapted to a non-religious view of the
natural world: the Dao is just the flow of all the interconnected components of nature. On this
view, we humans can become enlightened about our part in this unified fabric through what is
called nature mysticism: we might experience a unity of all things when reflecting on some
dramatic component of the natural world. For some mystics, reflecting on something like a
sunset, a forest or an ocean can trigger a sense of connection with the natural world.
 
Questions for Review
Please answer all of the following questions for review.
 
1. In Hindu philosophy, what is the Self-God?
2. In Hindu philosophy, what is the doctrine of karma?
3. Describe the Hindu methods of action yoga and meditation yoga.
4. Describe Sankara’s strong monism and Ramanuja’s weak monism
5. Describe the Buddhist Four Noble Truths.
6. What is the Buddhist no-self doctrine, and how does that connect with Buddha’s notion of
essential and non-essential questions?
7. Describe the Buddhist doctrine of dependent origination.
8. What is the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness, and how do Zen koans lead to an awareness of
emptiness?
9. What is the Confucian principle of reciprocity, and how does it relate to the notion of
humanity?
10. What are the Confucian five relationships, and what are the obligations of the superior and
the subordinate in these?
11. What are some of the characteristics of the Confucian superior person?
12. How do Mencius and Kao differ on the issue of human goodness?
13. What is the Daost notion of the Dao?
14. What is the Daost notion of return?
15. What are the Daost notions of non-action and non-mind?
16. What is the Daoist method of governing?
 
Questions for Analysis
Please select only one question for analysis from those below and answer it.
 
1. Discuss the conceptual similarities between the notions of Hindu release, Buddhist nirvana,
and living in accord with the Dao.
2. Write a dialogue between Sankara and Ramanuja on the issue of strong vs. weak monism.
3. According to Buddha, the religious issues worth discussing are those directly related to
attaining enlightenment, specifically understanding the causes of suffering and the elimination of
suffering through nirvana. Give your own examples of religious issues that people speculate
about today, and explain why these might be unnecessary for understanding the causes or
elimination of suffering.
4. Discuss the debate between Mencius and Kao on the issue of inherent human goodness, and
defend one side over the other.
5. Discuss the Daoist view of minimal governing, and explain whether it could ever be an
effective method of ruling.
6. Pick either the notion of the Hindu Atman-Brahman, Buddhist emptiness, or the Dao, and
show how that concept might connect with a non-pantheistic view of reality in Western
philosophy or religion.