Since
this is the first lecture of the course, and because we are studying
Eastern philosophy rather than Western, it is important to introduce
philosophy and why the West does not have a monopoly on it.
Human
thought, and thus the human world, is dominated by pairs of opposites.
It is often useful to think of these opposites in terms of positive and
negative. Good is positive, while bad is negative. Happy is positive,
while sad is negative. Being is positive, while non-being is negative.
Full is positive, while empty is negative.
Notice
that "positive" does not always mean happy or good and "negative" does
not always mean sad or bad. When we say "order" and "chaos", closure
(stability) sounds good and openness (instability) sounds bad. However,
when we say "freedom" and "restraint", openness (unconstrained) sounds
good and closure (constrained) sounds bad. When we want stability or
order, openness is bad ("chaos"). When we want to be free and
unconstrained, openness is good ("freedom"). A person, place or thing
can be positive in some ways and negative in others. It depends on
context, position and location. In many ways, places and times,
happiness and solidity are good and in others they are bad. Also, no
particular thing is perfectly good or completely solid. We judge the
table (and the wheel, as Lao Zi the patriarch of Daoism will explain
soon) to be simply solid and the space around it to be simply empty, but
no table is immortal or unbreakable, and no space is a perfect vacuum.
Even outer space is full of dust, light and everything else in the
universe. In the same way, particular things that are good or make us
happy do not always make us happy and do not make everyone happy.
Often, things that make one person happy continue to make another
unhappy because they make the first person happy.
Human
belief/judgment has its own special pairs of opposites. The most basic
is belief (positive) and doubt (negative). Belief is an answer or
answering, and doubt is a question or questioning. In politics,
conservatives lean towards believing and affirming the institution
(often looking to the stability and consistency of the past) while
progressives lean towards doubting and questioning the institution
(often looking to the openness and change of the future). In systems of
thought, dogmatists (also called positivists today) lean towards answers
and affirming the truths of the system ("There are certain facts,
morals and truths.") while skeptics lean towards questions and doubting
the truths of the system ("Are there certain facts, morals and
truths?"). According to Hegel, one of my favorite philosophers, human
thought is an endless battle between dogmatism and skepticism. This
battle is also a symbiotic evolution requiring both sides.
When
we look at the history of human thought, from its origins in shamanism
to its evolution and specialization with religion, philosophy, art and
science, we can see that both dogmatism and skepticism play necessary
roles. Without a base that is assumed and unquestioned, nothing new can
be produced. However, without reaching for the new and questioning the
old there is no growth to improve and fit new circumstances. The great
thinkers in human thought, across all systems, incorporate the old while
bringing us the new. Often they are called heretics in their time and
only canonized after they are safely dead because they have to question
the very system that they stand for.
Many
unfortunately believe that philosophy was born in ancient Greece, when
in fact wisdom is universal to human kind even though it is difficult to
achieve. The wise, though rarer than we would like, have been
celebrated in all cultures, and their wisdom has similarity across all
cultures even though their beliefs can differ widely. While the word
‘philosophy’ is an ancient Greek word, great thinkers and questioners
can be called philosophers and sages in any culture.
Consider
the following passage from Euclid in the Rainforest (first published in
2006) by Mazur, a professor of Logic and Mathematics. I like much
about this work, which examines how logic and math require not only
deductive rule following but individual leaps of intuition and
interpretation. Keep in mind that “Western” is a recent word that has
replaced “European race” only within the last century:
Sometime
early in the sixth century B.C., two things happened to dramatically
alter the way Western civilization explained the world. The first was
the use of cause and effect, as opposed to the supernatural in
explaining natural phenomena; we might say that nature was first
discovered then. The second was the practice of rational criticism and
debate. These fresh developments occurred after a time of great
political upheaval in the eastern Mediterranean, which led to profound
changes in the political structures of Greek cities. Democracy in
Athens meant that citizens could participate in government and law,
freely debating and questioning political ideas. Before the
establishment of the Greek city state, a change in rule usually meant
merely a change from one tyrant to another.
This
is the sort of view that is orthodox in academics today, and one I love
to hate. Many claim that the Greeks invented or discovered nature,
explaining things through material cause and effect, rational criticism
and debate, Democracy, and questioning political ideas. This is odd,
considering the democratic assembly of Athens, put Socrates to death for
encouraging the youth to question truth, tradition and politics.
Let
us carefully work through this, point by point. First, cause and
effect are basic to human explanation, whether that explanation could be
called supernatural or natural. The spirits and gods were thought to
cause things, they were considered part of the natural world and made of
fire as was the individual soul or mind, and most ancient Greek
thinkers, including Socrates, Plato and Aristotle all believed in
polytheistic gods even as they pushed towards a more
monotheistic/monistic cosmos beyond the many gods which is why Plato and
Aristotle were, even though polytheists, revered and brought to us by
the Islamic and Christian traditions. Doing Logic was largely doing
Aristotle to many of the Islamic and Christian logicians we will study
in this class, though others questioned Aristotle.
Second,
rational criticism and debate are basic to human cultures. Athens was
the only temporary democracy in ancient Greece, so it was not a profound
change to the structure of the Greek city state nor was it established
with the Greek city state, as there were several. During most of
ancient Greek history, change in rule was merely a change from one
tyrant to another. As far as democracy being invented in Athens, in the
Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh we can see that king Gilgamesh wants a war,
so he goes to the higher senate, composed of the rich elites like
Athenian democracy, and they reject his proposal, so he then appeals to
the lower house composed of lesser but a greater number of elites, who
accept and help him to override the consensus of the senate. In African
villages, we can see everyone sitting down and men and women standing
one at a time and airing their grievances, and then the chief makes a
decision based on the debate. The brief period of Athenian democracy
was not categorically free debate, nor was previous politics categorical
tyranny. Individual and group decision making are found in complex
arrangements in all cultures, including the earliest and most primitive,
ancient Athens, and our America today.
It
should also be mentioned that philosophers were not welcome in ancient
Greece as they questioned the ways of things (traditional polytheism)
and as such Socrates was put to death for “inciting the youth to riot”,
Aristotle was chased out of Athens after the death of his student
Alexander (a foreign Macedonian who conquered Athens by the sword,
Aristotle being an unwelcome foreigner from Strageira in Athens
himself), and Heraclitus, my favorite Greek philosopher, complains that
his city state Ephesus exiled their best thinker for questioning things
and it would be best if all Ephesians went and hanged themselves to
leave the city in the abler hands of children.
What
is philosophy? Philosophy has been called "thinking about thinking",
questioning and answering the very process of questioning and answering
itself. The ancient Greek philosophers (such as Heraclitus, Socrates and
Plato) critically examined their own thinking and their traditions of
thought and brought new answers by questioning the human mind and
society. While these Greek thinkers should be read and admired, they
were not the first or only ancient thinkers to ask abstract questions
about thought itself.
The
Greek word "philosophy" means "love of wisdom". What is wisdom? The
German philosophers Kant and Hegel tell us that there are dueling parts
of our individual mind that fight and cooperate on the individual level
just as dogmatism and skepticism fight and cooperate on the social
level. These two parts are understanding and reason, and these
correspond to knowledge and wisdom. Understanding tries to hold things
set and steady (the conservative force) while reason tries to challenge
and rearrange things (the progressive force). Knowledge is a set
understanding, while wisdom is the ability to reason. All systems of
thought use both understanding and reason to produce both knowledge and
wisdom.
The
Greek philosophers were known for wisdom, for questioning the ways that
individuals and societies can have knowledge, beliefs and answers. Were
the Greeks the first or only ancient people to have philosophers? In
Miguel Leon-Pontilla's book Aztec Thought and Culture, he argues that
the Aztec and Mayan poets questioned their societies and systems of
knowledge, asking open ended questions such as "Do we know the gods
exist?", "Is there an afterlife, like the ancestors said there is?", and
"Can we ever know these things?". Indeed, when we look at ancient
cultures we find both questioning and answering, knowledge as well as
wisdom, in ancient Greece and ancient everywhere else. No society would
survive without pushing in both directions. Systems of thought are
always sites of disagreement as much as they are of agreement.
Recently,
the Attorney General of Arizona crafted legislation against teachers
who provide programs celebrating Latino culture as they are dangerously
“anti-Western”, and pointed specifically to teaching that Aztecs and
Mayans had philosophers as Leon-Pontilla argues. Apparently, it is
biased and thus un-Western to teach that concepts such as “you are my
other self” (much like Confucius, who we will study) and “continue to
investigate things endlessly” (much like Heraclitus, who we will study)
is evidence that the Aztecs and Mayans had philosophy. It is perceived
as a threat to American culture to equate the ancient Mayans with the
ancient Greeks. It is not just the Attorney General who thinks this,
but academics with PhDs who continue to provide the ground for this
belief in their publications.
As
far as the ancient Greeks or the Attorney General of Arizona being part
of a specifically rational culture, let us consider the definition of
logical validity. An argument is logically valid if the conclusion
follows necessarily from the premises. Consider the following argument:
“Because all elevators play jazz music, jazz is the Devil’s playground,
and one should avoid the Devil, elevators are to be avoided.” You can
follow this argument because it is logical. It does not matter whether
or not the premises are true, but only that IF they are true so would
the conclusion. You can construct logical arguments that include the
premise, “All puppies are green”, which is useful to show how logic
works. The elevator argument is in the form of Aristotle’s first
syllogism, and because human reasoning employs chains so frequently it
does not appear that he invented the form but rather examined it
critically.
Introducing Indian Thought
Now,
on to introducing Indian thought, but first a note on pronouncing
Indian (and for later, Japanese) terms correctly for English speakers.
In order to pronounce Indian terms correctly, it is important to
remember that, just like in Japanese but unlike in English and other
European languages, often, but not always, the third to last syllable is
accented or stressed (like in the word ‘SYllable’, which is not
pronounced ‘sylLAble’), not the second to last (as in ‘disCOvery’, which
is not pronounced ‘DIScovery’). English and European speakers often
pronounce Indian and Japanese terms wrong because of this difference.
For instance, while many say ‘suDOku’ or ‘kaTAna’, in Japanese these
are properly pronounced ‘SUdoku’ and ‘KAtana’. In Indian dialects,
likewise, the Buddhist movement is pronounced ‘MaHAyana’, not
‘MAhaYAna’, as it is often said, a Jain patriarch is a ‘tirTHANkara’,
the Hindu epic is the ‘MAhaBHArata’, not ‘MAhabhaRAta’, and the Buddhist
doctrine of codependent arising is ‘praTITyasaMUDpada’. Note that the
emphasis is always the third to last syllable as much as possible given
the number of syllables in the word.
‘Hindu’
is the Persian name for India (Persia and India are next door to each
other and have traded for thousands of years). Our society borrows the
term from the British, who get the term from the Persians. As we read
in the Vedas, Hinduism brought together many traditions from many
regions with many gods, but there are three levels that are equally
interchangeable and separable. First, each can have a particular god
that is the emphasis of one’s particular branch of the tradition.
Second, the many gods are each one aspect of a single god, often the
great father and creator, named by most traditions Brahma. Third, there
is a philosophical monism that goes beyond god or not god, living or
dead, conscious or unconscious, that is the One. Locals practicing
devotional worship often operate on the first level, priests who study
the Vedas often operate on the second level, while philosophers and
unorthodox Indian schools that do not accept the authority of the Vedas
such as Jains, Buddhists and the materialist Charvakas operate on the
third.
As
Hinduism was brought together as a tradition that brought together many
separate people with separate traditions, first the Vedas spoke largely
though not entirely on the first level, then particular passages of the
Vedas and the later Upanishads spoke on the second level, and then many
schools went beyond the Upanishads and understood a simple, neither
theistic nor atheistic One to be the real underlying truth of the first
and second levels. Vedanta, literally “Veda’s End”, debated back and
forth between the second and third levels in the tradition of the
Upanishads.
This
came together over many periods in the history of Indian thought.
About 2000 BCE, India was invaded by a fire worshiping people who
likely came from modern day Iran. This was a big influence on the Vedas
and Indian culture, however today scholars are critical of just how
influential as it was said only recently that the Aryans civilized India
and brought the Vedas with them, but now archaeologists have uncovered
past civilizations who had incredible bathrooms with complex plumbing
and while the Vedas may have been strongly influenced by the Aryans, it
is debatable how much is composed of earlier native Indian pre-Aryan
traditions. The Nazis, following earlier German historians, believed
that the Aryans were Germanic tribes who civilized not only India but
Egypt, Greece, and Persia. The swastika, and Indian name for a symbol
that can be found in much of the world, including tribal German lands,
was thought to be the sun symbol of the Aryans, and so it was used by
the Nazis. Unfortunately for this Germanic theory of history, we know
that the Aryans were indeed from modern day Iran, what became Persia
very soon after the Aryan conquests in India.
Next,
in the Vedic period, 1500-800 BCE, the four Vedas were composed as oral
traditions that eventually were written down in texts, including the
foremost Rg Veda of which there are selections in your reader. The
golden age of Indian thought followed from 800-200 BCE, the time when
the Upanishads distilled the Vedic hymns to the gods into inner
philosophical/psychological teachings, the six orthodox schools that
follow the Vedas (Vedanta, Yoga, Mimamsa, Samkhya, Nyaya and
Vaisheshika) as well as the unorthodox schools (Charvaka, Jainism and
Buddhism) flourished, and the great Hindu epics (the Mahabharata and
Ramayana) were written. After this, from 200 BCE – 500 CE is a period
when the schools and traditions of the golden age were systematized into
sutras or central texts. Finally, after 500 CE and up to the present
time, is the period of commentaries written on the earlier systems and
their sutras. This persisted through the period of conquest by Muslims
of North India in the 1500s and then by the British in the 1800s.
There
are three paths of worship in Hinduism. First, there is devotional
worship, known as Bhakti Yoga (‘Yoga’ means ‘discipline’, or practice).
In Bhakti devotional worship, the devotee prays, sings hymns, lights
incense, and performs rituals to gain favor with the gods and heavens.
It is impossible not to notice that most of what we call ‘religion’ the
world over is in fact forms of Bhakti practice, devotion to particular
gods and ancestral spirits. The two most populous forms of Bhakti
Hinduism are Shaivism, the worship of Shiva (the transformer and
destroyer) and his incarnations such as Ganesh (the elephant headed
god), and Vaishnavism, the worship of Vishnu (the savior or preserver)
and his incarnations such as Krishna. Worship is often called
‘darshana’, or seeing/experiencing, and Hindus will say, I am going to
the seeing, meaning I am going to see and be seen by the god. Another
common form of Bhakti devotion is worship of a particular goddess such
as Kali. Notice that, like a scientist, Bhakti practitioners also
believe in learning by experience and seeing, but their subject matter
is quite different.
Raja
yoga, the second path, is worship by meditation and asceticism (living
in isolation, standing in place for days, fasting chanting the names of
gods for hours, sitting on spikes, and other means of hard activity)
meant to gain a meditative state of insight. Raja means ‘force’ or
‘effort’, and India is famous for its forest sages practicing these
techniques.
Jnana
yoga (“zshna-na”), the third path and my personal favorite, is worship
by acquiring knowledge, wisdom and understanding the order of things
through study and philosophizing. This class itself could be seen as a
form of Jnana yoga, designed to bring you closer to the core by studying
the ways of the world. All three paths, or any mixture of the three,
are understood to work towards the same goal: liberation from the bonds
of attachment and desire, rising into enlightenment and release from the
constraints of identity to join together with the whole.
There
are two ultimate goals to this process. First, there is hope for a
better next life. Many are familiar already with the Hindu idea of
reincarnation. This is not a form of afterlife particular to India, but
in fact there is evidence that many tribal cultures and early Egypt
believed that one’s present life will be reincarnated in another life on
earth based on one’s actions and intentions. This interconnection is
called ‘Karma’, which simply means ‘action’ in Sanskrit. Interestingly,
physical causation is ‘karma’, just as metaphysical causation (next
life physics) is ‘karma’, same word and understanding of cause and
effect applied to a different sphere of existence. If you punch someone
in the head, it is karma that makes their head reel backward, and karma
that also weighs down your chance for a favorable life after death in
the Hindu tradition.
Second,
there is hope for release, for freedom from rounds of rebirth on earth.
This can be thought of as dwelling in a heaven with one’s personal or
family god, but also as a dwelling with the order of things without
residing in any particular place. Bhakti yoga tends to favor the
dwelling with a lord, while Raja and Jnana tends to favor the dwelling
with the universe as a whole, however it is important to remember that
some Hindus believe that both amount to the same exact thing (while
others will insist that their school’s truth is ‘more true’, the same
variation one finds in any religion and in our own culture). This
release is also called Moksha and Samadhi, but in America we know this
first and foremost by the same name as the famous grunge band, Nirvana.
While
moksha is the ultimate goal, via the more immediate goal of positioning
oneself favorably for moksha either in this life (dwelling in the
forest or a monastery) or in a next life, there are three other goals
that Indian philosophy points to as desirable making four in total. In
addition to moksha/nirvana, there is law or morality, ‘dharma’ (the term
Jains and Buddhists use to describe their traditions and rules),
pleasure, ‘kama’ (as from the Kama Sutra), and material well-being or
comfort, ‘artha’. Clearly, the overall idea is that pleasure and
comfort (kama and artha) are not in themselves evil, but one should
pursue liberation through discipline (moksha through dharma).
Ancient
India saw a great deal of development in science and technology. They
observed the natural world and put phenomena into families and
categories as did the ancient Greeks and as we still do today. The
Romans would trade Germanic and Celtic slaves to India in exchange for
Indian wootz, the metal most prized for weapons in the ancient world.
In mathematics the Indians were unsurpassed by ancient civilizations,
developing the base ten system and the Indian-Arabic numerals we use
today. They laid down the basics of symbolic equations, the concept and
symbolization of zero, and invented the variable (originally a thick
dot). All of this got picked up by the Muslims, who turned it into
algebra, which then got picked up by the Europeans, who turned it into
Calculus. Typically, we learn about Euclid and the Greeks doing
geometry as the source of the Western mathematical tradition. Muslims
were influenced by the Greeks and Euclid, but Euclid argued about lines
drawn in sand and did not use equations. It was the Indians who
invented the sorts of mathematical symbolism that the Muslims turned
into step by step symbolic mathematics as we know it today and teach it
up through high school.
In
spite of all of these developments, Indian thought is typically
anti-materialistic and concerned with spirituality or psychology
depending on one’s vocabulary. Knowing the mind/spirit is knowing the
essence of the whole as self-knowledge, or ‘atmavidya’. Hindus believe
that one has an eternal self/soul/mind, the ‘atma’, as opposed to Jains
and Buddhists who believe in ‘anatma’, or no-self (permanent, anyway).
On
a final note, it used to be the opinion not only of most Hindus but
also European scholarship until very recently, that Jainism and Buddhism
took parts of Hinduism and broke away to form their own traditions.
Recently, new studies have shown that Jainism and Buddhism were forming
at the same time as Hinduism was becoming an official tradition. The
Hindus accepted the Vedas and Upanishads while the Jains and Buddhists
broke from the Vedas to follow more Upanishad-like understandings, but
Hinduism as a centralized tradition was, in part, a reaction to the
development of the Jain and Buddhist traditions. Thus, similar
doctrines of reincarnation and psychological skepticism/idealism may
have developed at the same time or been borrowed by Hinduism in its
fully developed form rather than borrowed from Hinduism as it was
previously thought. Even so, there is some truth to the common Hindu
understanding that “Buddhism is Hinduism for export”, as Buddhists took
the ideas in the Upanishads and Indian tradition, removed the dietary
restrictions, caste system and other traditional purity laws, and became
possibly the world’s largest system of thought in history, although it
is debatable whether Christianity or Buddhism has that title.
