Eastern Philosophy

1. Eastern Philosophy

2. Eastern Religion & Philosophy • Hinduism • Buddhism • Islamic Philosophy • Taoism • Confucianism • Zen Buddhism • The way of the Warrior- Samurai

3. Hinduism • Vedas • Vishnu

4. 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.

5. Shaivism • Shiva- • The supreme being and creator of the universe. • Parvati, Sakti- wife • Ganesha-child • Nandi- Bull

6. Saktism • Sakti- wife of Siva, the female part of the universe. • Destroyer or destructive force in this realm.

7. Vaisnavism • Vishnu- Is a personal god. • Protector in this realm The Buddha was an incarnation of the God Vishnu according to Hindus.

8. Vedas • “Those who know it, do not speak it… Those who speak it, do not know it.”

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

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

14. Buddhism • Buddha • Four Noble Truths • Eightfold Path

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. 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.

18. 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.

19. Islamic Philosophy • Al-Kindi • Al-Farabi • Avicenna • Al-Ghazali • Averroes • Sufism Mulla Sadra & Kabir

20. 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.

21. 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.

22. 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 Aristotle’s argument of the unmoved mover.

23. 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.

24. 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.

25. Practical and Speculative • Philosophy , he says, which is the general name for scientific knowledge, includes speculative and practical philosophy.

26. Speculative Philosophy • Speculative philosophy is divided into the inferior science physics, and middle science (mathematics), and the superior science (metaphysics including theology).

27. 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).

28. 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.

29. 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.

30. 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.

31. Averroës • 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.

32. 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.

33. Sufism • Represents a mystical, theosophical, and ascetic strain of Muslim belief that seeks union with God (Allah).

34. 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.

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

36. Taoism • Lao Tzu • Chuang Tzu • Sun Tzu • Lieh Tzu • Yin and Yang

37. 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.

38. 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.

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

40. 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…”

41. 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.

42. 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;

43. 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.

44. Chuang Tzu • The most important Taoist after Lao Tzu and stressed the equality of opposites and the danger of usefulness.

45. 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.

46. 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

47. 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.

48. Yin and Yang • Contractive and expansive forces in the universe.

49. 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.

50. 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..