Eastern Philosophy

Eastern Religion & Philosophy

Hinduism
Buddhism
Islamic Philosophy
Taoism
Confucianism
Zen Buddhism
The way of the Warrior- Samurai
Hinduism
Vedas
Vishnu

Hinduism
The term refers to the collect faiths that
originated in India.
Hinduism does not have a clear origin.
There is not one holy book or text.
There is not a single founder.
Shaivism
Shiva-
The supreme being
and creator of the
universe.
Parvati, Sakti- wife
Ganesha-child
Nandi- Bull
Saktism
Sakti- wife of Siva,
the female part of the
universe.
Destroyer or
destructive force in
this realm.
Vaisnavism
Vishnu- Is a
personal god.
Protector in this
realm
The Buddha was an
incarnation of the
God Vishnu
according to
Hindus.
Vedas
Those who know it,
do not speak it
Those who speak it,
do not know it.
Vedic Scriptures
Are writing that reveal the hidden nature
of reality.
The Vedas were the religious writings of
the Aryans, a nomadic people that invaded
India in the around 1500 B.C.
Hold the universe to be one, monism.

What is the meaning of Life?
According to some versions of Hinduism
the purpose of life is to find enlightenment.
Most people cannot discover these truths
in one lifetime- as such we are
reincarnated.
Samsara
Samsara- The cycle of birth and death.
Humans are basically good, but are
caught up in a cycle of desire of and
suffering that is a direct result of ignorance
and ego.
Humans are tormented by many desires.
Desire is the root of evil.

Karma
Karma- chain of causes & consequences

Actions we perform today can have
consequences for us far into the future
all of our actions will eventually have
consequences.

Nirvana
Nirvana- permanent liberation from life
Liberation from the cycle of samsara, we
cease to exist and become one with the
universe.

Buddhism
Buddha
Four Noble Truths
Eightfold Path
Buddhism
A philosophical tradition, founded by Gautama
Siddhartha Buddha in the fifth century b.c., that
took on various forms as a religion and spread
throughout Asia; It is a branch of Hinduism
Buddhism attempts to help the individual
conquer the suffering and mutability of human
existence through the elimination of desire and
ego and attainment of the state of nirvana.

Eightfold Path
The way or practice recommended in
Buddhism that includes:
Right View,
Right Aim,
Right Speech,
Right Action,
Right Living,
Right Effort,
Right Mindfulness,
Right Contemplation.

Four Noble Truths
Buddha's answer to the central problem of
life (1) There is suffering; (2) suffering has
specific and identifiable causes; (3)
suffering can be ended; (4) the way to end
suffering is through enlightened living, as
expressed in the Eightfold Path.

Different planes of reality
For some Buddist, this plane of existence
is not the only one.
You can be reincarnated as a higher or
lower being, depending upon your karma
at death.
Islamic Philosophy
Al-Kindi
Al-Farabi
Avicenna
Al-Ghazali
Averroes
Sufism
Mulla Sadra & Kabir
Neo-Platonism
A further development of Platonic
philosophy under the influence of
Aristotelian and Pythagorean philosophy
and Christian mysticism; it flourished
between the third and sixth centuries,
stressing a mystical intuition of the highest
One or God, a transcendent source of all
being.
Al-Kindi
A ninth-century Islamic
thinker, used Greek
ideas to define God as
an absolute and
transcendent being.
God created the world by
means of his will.
All of reality comes from
God.
Al-Farabi
A ninth-century Islamic philosopher,
posited the philosopher-prophet as the
one providing the necessary illumination
for his society.
Also claimed God to be Absolute Being,
and that God was the first cause.
He based this view on Aristotles argument
of the unmoved mover.
Avicenna
A tenth-century Islamic thinker, felt that
there is a parallelism between philosophy
and theology.
Arabian physician and philosopher, born in
980; died at Hamadan, in Northern Persia,
1037.
Avicenna was actually Persian, not
Arabian.
Roots of his Philosophy
Avicenna's philosophy, like that of his
predecessors among the Arabians, is
Aristoteleanism mingled with neo-
Platonism, an exposition of Aristotle's
teaching in the light of the Commentaries
of Thomistius, Simplicius, and other neo-
Platonists.
Practical and Speculative
Philosophy , he says, which is the general
name for scientific knowledge, includes
speculative and practical philosophy.

Speculative Philosophy
Speculative philosophy is divided into the
inferior science physics, and middle
science (mathematics), and the superior
science (metaphysics including theology).
Practical philosophy
Practical philosophy is divided into ethics
(which considers man as an individual);
economics (which considers man as a
member of domestic society); and politics
(which considers man as a member of civil
society).
Conceptualist
A favourite principle of Avicenna, which is
quoted not only by Averroes was
intellectus in formis agit universalitatem,
that is, the universality of our ideas is the
result of the activity of the mind itself.
Avicenna is a conceptualist. The mind
makes ideas real.
Our mind can know the truth.
He explicitly maintains that the individual
mind retains its individuality and that,
because it is spiritual and immaterial, it is
endowed with personal immortality.
He claims that souls are capable of
arriving at a very special kind of union with
the Universal, Active, Intellect, and of
attaining thereby the gift of prophecy.
Al-Ghazali
A late eleventh-century and early-twelfth-
century Islamic philosopher, attacked
Avicenna regarding the eternity of the
world and the reduction of religious law to
a mere symbol of higher truths.

Averros
Arabian philosopher, astronomer, and
writer on jurisprudence; born in 1126; died
at Morocco, 1198.
A twelfth-century Islamic thinker, was
thought of as holding two separate truths,
that of religion and that of philosophy.

Knowledge thru Faith
Averroes openly admitted his inability to
hold on philosophic grounds the doctrine
of individual immortality, being content to
maintain it as a religious tenet.
Averroes' greatest influence was as a
commentator.
Sufism
Represents a mystical, theosophical, and
ascetic strain of Muslim belief that seeks
union with God (Allah).
Mulla Sadra
A late sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-
century thinker who was influenced by the
mystical tendencies in Neo-Platonism,
sought a return to the first principle of
being.

Kabir
A late-fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-
century Indian poet, was considered one
of the great mystical poets in the tradition
of Sufism.

Taoism
Lao Tzu
Chuang Tzu
Sun Tzu
Lieh Tzu
Yin and Yang
Tao
Taoism is based on the idea that behind
all material things and all the change in the
world lies one fundamental, universal
principle: the Way or Tao.
Tao Continued
This principle gives rise to all existence
and governs everything, all change and all
life. Behind the bewildering multiplicity and
contradictions of the world lies a single
unity, the Tao. The purpose of human life,
then, is to live life according to the Tao,
which requires passivity, calm, non-striving
(wu wei ), humility, and lack of planning,
for to plan is to go against the Tao.

Lao Tzu
Founder of Taoism,
held that the Tao is
ineffable and beyond
our ability to alter. He
emphasized the
importance of
effortless nonstriving.

Tao Te Ching
The whole world recognizes the beautiful
as the beautiful, yet this is the ugly; the
whole world recognizes the good as the
good, yet this is bad.
Thus Something and Nothing produce
each other.
The difficult and the easy complement
each other
Seek peace
Lao Tzu believed that human life, like everything
else in the universe, is constantly influenced by
outside forces.
He believed "simplicity" to be the key to truth
and freedom.
Lao Tzu encouraged his followers to observe,
and seek to understand the laws of nature; to
develop intuition and build up personal power;
and to use that power to lead life with love, and
without force.

The way
Look, it cannot be seen - it is beyond form.
Listen, it cannot be heard - it is beyond
sound.
Grasp, it cannot be held - it is intangible.
These three are indefinable, they are one.
From above it is not bright;

The way Continued.
From below it is not dark:
Unbroken thread beyond description.
It returns to nothingness.
Form of the formless,
Image of the imageless,
It is called indefinable and beyond imagination.
Stand before it - there is no beginning.
Follow it and there is no end.
Stay with the Tao, Move with the present.
Knowing the ancient beginning is the essence of
Tao.
Chuang Tzu
The most important Taoist after Lao Tzu
and stressed the equality of opposites and
the danger of usefulness.

Sun Tzu
Sun Tzu A sixth-century B.C. Taoist
philosopher and general, applied Taoist
philosophy to military strategy.
Some scholars have concluded that Sun Tzu's
work was actually authored by unknown
Chinese philosophers and that Sun Tzu did not
actually exist as a historical figure. There is more
evidence to support this theory than the
traditional one of Sun Tzu as an individual
historical figure.
Lieh Tzu
Lieh Tzu was born around 450 B.C. As for
the events of his lifetime, his trade etc. -
we know nothing.
Wrote book: The Perfect Emptiness
Lieh Tzu: Free your Mind
My mind was frozen, my body in
dissolution, my flesh and bones all melted
together. I was wholly unconscious of what
my body was resting on, or what was
under my feet. I was borne this way and
that on the wind, like dry chaff or leaves
falling from a tree. In fact, I knew not
whether the wind was riding on me or I on
the wind.
Yin and Yang
Contractive and expansive forces in the
universe.
The universe divided
The essentials of the yin-yang school are
as follows: the universe is run by a single
principle, the Tao, or Great Ultimate. This
principle is divided into two opposite
principles, or two principles which oppose
one another in their actions, yin and yang.
All the opposites one perceives in the
universe can be reduced to one of the
opposite forces.
5 agents or causes
The yin and yang accomplish changes in the
universe through the five material agents, or wu
hsing , which both produce one another and
overcome one another. All change in the
universe can be explained by the workings of yin
and yang and the progress of the five material
agents as they either produce one another or
overcome one another. Yin-yang and the five
agents explain all events within the universe..
Everything is explained
All phenomena can be understood using
yin-yang and the five agents: the
movements of the stars, the workings of
the body, the nature of foods, the qualities
of music, the ethical qualities of humans,
the progress of time, the operations of
government, and even the nature of
historical change.


Let the stars be your guide?
All things follow this order so that all things
can be related to one another in some
way: one can use the stars to determine
what kind of policy to pursue in
government, for instance.

Male and female
The yin and yang represent all the
opposite principles one finds in the
universe. Under yang are the principles of
maleness, the sun, creation, heat, light,
Heaven, dominance, and so on, and under
yin are the principles of femaleness, the
moon, completion, cold, darkness,
material forms, submission, and so on.
Heaven and Earth
Each of these opposites produce the
other: Heaven creates the ideas of things
under yang, the earth produces their
material forms under yin, and vice versa;
creation occurs under the principle of
yang, the completion of the created thing
occurs under yin, and vice versa, and so
on.
Cyclical existence
This production of yin from yang and yang from
yin occurs cyclically and constantly, so that no
one principle continually dominates the other or
determines the other. All opposites that one
experienceshealth and sickness, wealth and
poverty, power and submissioncan be
explained in reference to the temporary
dominance of one principle over the other. Since
no one principle dominates eternally, that means
that all conditions are subject to change into
their opposites.

Confucianism
Confucius
Mencius
Confucius
Founder of the most dominant system of
Chinese thought, emphasized the perfectibility of
people as well as their ability to affect things for
the better.

Confucius himself had a simple moral and
political teaching: to love others; to honor one's
parents; to do what is right instead of what is of
advantage; to practice "reciprocity," i.e. "don't do
to others what you would not want yourself"; to
rule by moral example instead of by force and
violence; and so forth.
Govern not kill
Confucius thought that a ruler who had to
resort to force had already failed as a ruler
-- "Your job is to govern, not to kill"
(Analects XII:19). This was not a principle
that Chinese rulers always obeyed, but it
was the ideal of benevolent rule.
Self Control
Confucius thought that government by
laws and punishments could keep people
in line, but government by example of
virtue and good manners would enable
them to control themselves (Analects II:3).
"The way the wind blows, that's the way
the grass bends" (Analects XII:19).
No need for Money
Although Confucius himself says, "Wealth
and high station are what men desire"
(Analects, IV:5), later Confucians turned
warnings against the temptation of profit
into a condemnation of profit, which meant
that their influence was often turned
against the development of Chinese
industry and commerce.

Later followers did not follow the
way.
Confucians themselves were perfectly
happy to seek "high station," while stiffling
the ability of ordinary Chinese to produce
"wealth." Over time, this was an evil
influence in Chinese history.


Mencius
A Confucian thinker second in importance to
Confucius.
One cannot discuss Confucianism without at
least mentioning the man the Chinese call "The
Second Sage," Meng Tzu, or, in Latinized form,
Mencius (372-289 B.C.) Mencius, like
Confucius, concerned himself entirely with
political theory and political practice; he spent
his life bouncing from one feudal court to
another trying to find some ruler who would
follow his teachings.
Did not change his Government
Like Confucius he was largely
unsuccessful in his endeavor. In fact,
China had degenerated precipitously in
Mencius's time: individual states were
preying on and conquering others and the
rulers of the time had no patience for what
they considered prattling about the
ancients and their ways.

Radical Thinker
Mencius several times throughout Chinese
history has been regarded as a potentially
"dangerous" author, leading at times to
outright banning of his book. This is
because Mencius developed a very early
form of what was to be called in modern
times the "social contract."
Purse your purpose
Mencius also highlighted other desirable
qualities such as a steadfastness of purpose that
enables one to follow what is proper without
being swayed by fear or uncertainty. He urged
that one should cultivate oneself so that one
follows what is proper and willingly accepts
unfavorable conditions of life that are not within
one's control or are of such a nature that altering
them requires improper conduct.
One should devote effort to ethical pursuits and
not worry about these external conditions of life.
Zen Buddhism
Zen
Chan
Hui Neng
Murasaki Shikibu
Dogen Kigen
Samurai
Zen
A form of Buddhism that reached its zenith
in China and later developed in Japan,
Korea, and the West; its name (Chinese
Ch'an, Japanese Zen) derives from the
Sanskrit dhyana (meditation).
In early China, the central tenet of Zen
Buddhism was meditation rather than
adherence to a particular scripture.
Chan
Chinese Zen Buddhism.

Hui Neng
Sixth patriarch of Chinese Zen,
emphasized the oneness of all things.

Murasaki Shikibu
An influential Japanese Mahayana
Buddhist philosopher of the late tenth and
early eleventh centuries, held that women
were responsible moral agents who were
capable of enlightenment and could
influence their destines, reach nirvana,
and achieve salvation.

Dogen Kigen
A Japanese Zen monk, stressed the
importance of acquiring the perspective of
the universal Self, given the
impermanence of life.

Samurai
Miyamoto Musashi
Yamamoto Tsunetomo
Samurai writers who helped record and
preserve samurai ideals of preparedness;
indifference to pain, death, and material
possessions, wisdom, and courage.

Bushido
The way or ethic of the samurai warrior,
based on service and demanding rigorous
training, usually both in the military and
literary arts.