Eastern Philosophy: Key Readings

Oliver Leaman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134689187
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Through key readings from primary and secondary sources this book communicates at first hand the principal features of a remarkable range of Eastern thought - from Buddhism, Confucianism, and Hinduism to Islam, Shinto, and Zoroastrianism. Passages from key texts guide the reader through over ninety major terms, from abhidharma to Zen. Material is drawn not only from such cornerstone texts as the Bhagavad-gita and the Lao-tzu, but also from modern writings on Eastern philosophy and religion.

LIST OF ENTRIES AND THEIR SOURCES

ABHIDHARMA

Sanskrit term for the body of literature and doctrines from around 400–300 BCE in India (Abhidhamma in Pali), referring to a systematic organization of the dharmas, the basic teachings and ideas of Buddhism

1 Pervading the Buddhist teaching were several notions about the nature of existence and the meaning of spiritual insight. One of the most important of these notions was the assertion that a human being has no permanent essence (atman) and is only a changing conglomerate of material, mental, and psychic factors (dharmas). These factors interact to form the experienced world as we are aware of it in everyday living, and all objects of perception or ideas are seen to be without independent bases of existence. The “arising of existence,” which generally is also the arising of turmoil, comes about through interdependent and reciprocal forces of the factors (dharmas) —forces which find their roots in man’s ignorant clinging to the objects that “he” unwittingly is fabricating! For “the arising of existence” to cease, the fabricating ignorance must cease; and the quelling of ignorance requires spiritual insight (prajña). When fabricating ignorance is overcome and the residue of the fabricating force has dissipated, then there is nirvana—the “dying out” of the flame of desire for illusory objects.

During the seven centuries between the life of the Buddha and the Buddhist adept Nagarjuna, this doctrine was elaborated and explained in different ways. In the Abhidharma the many factors of existence (dharmas) were defined, analyzed, and catalogued for a more perfect understanding by those who sought wisdom.
Together with intellectual comprehension went the meditational practices, each providing a reciprocal thrust into new possibilities of insight. About three hundred years before Nagarjuna, a body of literature began to develop which emphasized the perfection of wisdom (Prajñaparamita literature) whereby one understood how phenomena arose, the interdependent nature of all factors of existence, and the release from fabricated attachment that was achieved as understanding deepened. At its highest point the perfection of wisdom led to the awareness that all things are “empty.” It was in this intellectual and religious milieu that Nagarjuna systematized his understanding of the Buddhist Middle Way (Madhyamika)….

The term “Abhidharma” applies both to a method of understanding and to the treatises formulating the understanding which became the third section of the Buddhist canonical writings. Though there was a concern to clarify and classify different aspects of the teaching (dharma) very early in the life of the Buddhist community, the development and formulation of the Abhidharma texts which are available to us now took place primarily between the time of Asoka (third century B.C.) and Kaniska (first century A.D.). This period was a time for consolidating doctrines, for expressing new conceptions, and for grouping into “schools.” While there developed more than one recension of the Abhidharma, all the schools recognized the four trends of logical analysis (catu-patisam-bhida).These were (1) the analysis of the meaning (attha) of words and sentences, (2) analysis of the teaching (dharma), which means analysis of causes, (3) analysis of nirutti, which may mean here grammar and definitions, and (4) analysis of knowing (patibhana) from a psycho-epistemological standpoint.

The purpose for the elaborate classification of elements in the Abhidharma was not to add to the Buddha’s teaching. Rather, it was to help the faithful community eliminate false assumptions about man and existence that supported clinging to illusion.The intent was soteriological, not speculative. Originally the Abhidharma literature systematized the tenets found scattered in different sermons by the Buddha as an aid for instruction, and in time it developed a technique of its own in which the nature of reality and the cause of suffering were analyzed topically. The techniques include: (1) a strict treatment of experience in terms of momentary cognizable states and definition of these states, (2) creation of a “schedule” consisting of a double and triple classification for sorting these states, and (3) enumeration of twenty-four kinds of conditioning relations.

Streng, F. (1967) Emptiness:A Study in Religious Meaning, Nashville: Abingdon Press, pp. 30–1

See also MADHYAMAKA

ACTION

1 Lao Tzu (Laozi) presents a Taoist (Daoist) analysis of the nature of action. The references are to parts of the book Lao-tzu or Dao dejing:

…to be content safeguards one from going too far, and therefore from reaching the extreme. Lao Tzu says: “To know how to be content is to avoid humiliation; to know where to stop is to avoid injury.” (Ch. 45.) Again: “The sage, therefore, discards the excessive, the extravagant, the extreme.” (Ch. 29.)

All these theories are deducible from the general theory that “reversing is the movement of the Tao.” The well-known Taoist theory of wu-wei is also deducible from this general theory. Wu-wei can be translated literally as “having-no-activity” or “non-action.” But using this translation, one should remember that the term does not actually mean complete absence of activity, or doing nothing. What it does mean is lesser activity or doing less. It also means acting without artificiality and arbitrariness.

Activities are like many other things. If one has too much of them, they become harmful rather than good. Furthermore, the purpose of doing something is to have something done. But if there is over-doing, this results in something being over-done, which may be worse than not having the thing done at all. A well-known Chinese story describes how two men were once competing in drawing a snake; the one who would finish his drawing first would win. One of them, having indeed finished his drawing, saw that the other man was still far behind, so decided to improve it by adding feet to his snake. Thereupon the other man said: “You have lost the competition, for a snake has no feet.” This is an illustration of over-doing which defeats its own purpose. In the Lao-tzu we read: “Conquering the world is invariably due to doing nothing; by doing something one cannot conquer the world.” (Ch. 48.) The term “doing nothing” here really means “not over-doing.”

Fung Yu-Lan (1948) A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, New York: Free Press, p. 100

See also DAOISM

2 A section from the Dao dejing (Too Te Ching) in which the point is made that what looks weak may well be strong, and so what looks like not acting may turn out to be very effective action:

The softest, most pliable thing in the world runs roughshod over the firmest thing in the world.

That which has no substance gets into that which has no spaces or cracks.

I therefore know that there is benefit in taking no action. The worldless teaching, the benefit of taking no action— Few in the world can realize these!

Laozi, trans. R.Henricks (1989) Lao-Tzu: Te Tao Ching, New York, Ballantine, Ch. 43 p. 12

See also DAOISM

3 An account of action in the Bhagavad Gita which questions how far our actions are really our own:

The Gita seems to hold that everywhere actions are always being performed by the gunas or characteristic qualities of prakrti, the primal matter. It is through ignorance and false pride that one thinks himself to be the agent. In another place it is said that for the occurrence of an action there are five causes, viz. the body, the agent, the various sense-organs, the various life-functions and biomotor activities, and the unknown objective causal elements or the all-controlling power of God (daiva). All actions being due to the combined operation of these five elements, it would be wrong to think the self or the agent to be the only performer of actions. Thus it is said that, this being so, he who thinks the self alone to be the agent of actions, this wickedminded person through his misapplied intelligence does not see things properly. Whatever actions are performed, right or wrong, whether in body, speech or mind, have these five factors as their causes.The philosophy that underlies the ethical position of the Gita consists in the fact that, in reality, actions are made to happen primarily through the movement of the characteristic qualities of prakrti, and secondarily, through the collocation of the five factors mentioned, among which the self is but one factor only. It is, therefore, sheer egoism to think that one can, at his own sweet will, undertake a work or cease from doing works. For the prakrti, or primal matter, through its later evolutes, the collocation of causes, would of itself move us to act, and even in spite of the opposition of our will we are led to perform the very action which we did not want to perform. So Krsna says to Arjuna that the egoism through which you would say that you would not fight is mere false vanity, since the prakrti is bound to lead you to action. A man is bound by the active tendencies or actions which necessarily follow directly from his own nature, and there is no escape. He has to work in spite of the opposition of his will. Prakrti, or the collocation of the five factors, moves us to work. That being so, no one can renounce all actions. If renouncing actions is an impossibility, and if one is bound to act, it is but proper that one should perform one’s normal duties. There are no duties and no actions which are absolutely faultless, absolutely above all criticism; so the proper way in which a man should purify his actions is by purging his mind of all imperfections and impurities of desires and attachment. But a question may arise how, if all actions follow necessarily as the product of the five-fold collocation, a person can determine his actions? The general implication of the Gita seems to be that, though the action follows necessarily as the product of the fivefold collocation, yet the self can give a direction to these actions; if a man wishes to dissociate himself from all attachments and desires by dedicating the fruits of all his actions to God and clings to God with such a purpose, God helps him to attain his noble aim.

Dasgupta, S. (1932) A History of Indian Philosophy, II Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 515–16

See also BHAGAVAD GITA, GUNAS, NYAYA-VAISHESHIKA, PRAKRITI

ADVAITA/ADVAITA VEDANTA

Advaita is the school of Vedanta which literally means ‘not two’ and whose major thinker was Shankara. It emphasizes the view that reality is one and undifferentiated.

1 In this passage we see the gist of the Advaita conception of what is real in terms of brahman, what does not change. The ordinary things in the world are not unreal, but they are far from unchanging, and so cannot strictly speaking be counted as real either:

Falsity must have a status above negation but below reality. It is not real (sat) like Brahman, but it isn’t unreal (asat) like nonsense either. It is sadasadvilaksana, “other than real or unreal.”

But, asks the ultra-realist such as the Nyaya-Vaisesika or Ramanuja, why isn’t the piece of silver real like Brahman? One might think immediately of answering that inasmuch as it at best has an inadequacy about it one may say that it is unreal since it is only a part of reality. But this would surely be an odd use of “real.” If something is, in ordinary usage, said to be real, a part of it would be admitted to be real too, though partial. So the question now becomes: what is the point of introducing a technical, un-common-sensical use of “real” at this juncture? The Advaitin has more in mind by calling something “unreal” than merely that it is part of Brahman. Everything is part of Brahman (or nothing is, depending on the meaning of “part”), it being a ticklish but perhaps inconsequential point whether Brahman is part of itself.

Specifically, the “real” is defined frequently in Advaita as trikalabadhya, “unsublated through the three times (past, present and future).” That is to say, the real is that which we don’t ever entertain and subsequently reject. Better, the real is that which we couldn’t possibly ever entertain and subsequently reject. It is, by definition, eternal. The unreal is, therefore, the non-eternal. It is that which comes into and goes out of existence, while the real—Brahman—is not subject to change at all.

Potter, K. (1972) Presuppositions of India’s Philosophies, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, pp. 221–2

See also BRAHMAN, NYAYA-VAISHESHIKA

2 Vivekananda explains how from the perspective of the Advaita the nature of the self must be eternal:

ACCORDING to the Advaita philosophy, there is only one thing real in the universe, which it calls Brahman; everything else is unreal, manifested and manufactured out of Brahman by the power of Mâyâ. To reach back to that Brahman is our goal. We are, each one of us, that Brahman, that Reality, plus this Maya. If we can get rid of this Maya or ignorance, then we become what we really are. According to this philosophy, each man consists of three parts—the body, the internal organ or the mind, and behind that, what is...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• LIST OF ENTRIES
• LIST OF ENTRIES AND THEIR SOURCES
• REFERENCES
• GLOSSARY
• GUIDE TO FURTHER READING