Bodhidharma & the Birth of Zen
Because the Chan (Chinese) or Son (Korean) or Zen (Japanese) school continued to thrive in Japan, I will consistently use the Japanese names and terms in this lecture, even thought Zen started as Chan in China. Zen means ‘sitting’, and the school concentrates not on the chanting of sutras or the support of deities but on meditation and study. It is known for using radical and unorthodox means, such as shouting, slapping, joking, and any other way of breaking through rigid understandings to achieve insight and enlightenment.
In Zen, we can see a mix of Indian abstract psychology with Chinese concrete analogy as we discussed last week. In particular, Zen is heavily influenced by Daoism and uses its teachings and metaphors regularly. Unlike Pure Land Buddhism and other schools of the Mahayana tradition, Zen originated in China and had no precedent in India according to modern scholarship. The Zen tradition, however, traces an unbroken chain of an “inexpressible transmission, outside the sutras” all the way back to the Buddha himself. It is considered the first koan, the first case, It serves not only as a historical record of the lineage but as an object of study for students. It appears in many koan collections, including The Gateless Gate, the most popular collection.
Once the Buddha came before the assembly to lecture, but instead of speaking held up a lotus flower. Everyone was silent, but Mahakashapa smiled. The Buddha said, “I have the eye of the true teaching, not expressible in words, but transmitted beyond teaching. I have given it to Mahakashapa.
According to the tradition, after Mahakashapa there were twenty six patriarchs who received the inexpressible transmission before Bodhidharma left India and traveled to China to spread the inexpressible there. Though this makes him the twenty eighth patriarch, he is called the fist patriarch of the Chinese tradition. In fact, it is quite likely that he was the first and the twenty six were invented after the tradition spread to link his own focus on sitting meditation to the original Buddha. In much of what follows, we will learn from the tradition as taught while remaining aware that modern scholarship has called much of the historical accuracy of each event into question today.
Bodhidharma came to southern China and is said to have arrived at the palace to speak with Emperor Wu, a great patron of Pure Land and other schools of Buddhism.
The emperor asked Bodhidharma, “I have built many temples, copied many books, and supported many monasteries of monks and nuns. What merit have I gained?”
Bodhidharma replied, “None whatsoever. These things are shadows. Real merit is wisdom.”
The emperor, taken aback, asked, “What is the principle of the sacred dharma?”
Bodhidharma replied, “Everything is empty. Nothing is sacred.”
The emperor, enraged, asked, “Who is this who stands before me?”
Bodhidharma replied, “I do not know”, and left the palace.
Bodhidharma is said to have practiced wall-sitting, staring at a wall while meditating, which he did in caves and at the Shaolin monastery where he is also said to have started Kung Fu as a set of physical exercises for the monks there. Shaolin is known today to have been a Daoist god who became a Buddhist goddess, and it could be that Kung Fu is derived from earlier Daoist Tai Chi exercises, which may have been influenced by Indian yogic postures.
After Bodhidharma, Hui Neng (638 - 713 CE), the sixth patriarch, is the most revered in the tradition. He was an illiterate wood cutter from Canton who became enlightened on hearing a passage from the Diamond sutra and decided to join a monastery. Hongren, the fifth patriarch and master of the monastery told him that he was a southern barbarian, and could not expect to achieve buddhahood. Hui Neng replied that north and south make no difference with regard to buddha-nature, and the master accepted him. Hui Neng was ridiculed by other monks, but he continued to practice and achieve understanding. When the time came for Hongren to appoint a successor, he asked that monks write a verse to show what understanding of Zen they had achieved. The head monk, who was expected to become the successor, wrote:
The body is the Bodhi Tree
The mind is a clear mirror on a stand
Take care to wipe it continuously
Never letting dust cling
Late at night, Hui Neng had a boy read the verse to him write the following reply:
There is no Bodhi Tree
Nor is there a stand with a mirror
All things are originally empty
Where can the dust cling?
According to the tradition, Hongren gave the lineage to Hui Neng, who went on to found the Southern School, the school that survived to become the tradition today. Modern scholarship has revealed that Hui Neng founded the school, but he may never have known Hongren. Hui Neng is said to have taught:
No permanence, no impermanence
No arrival, no departure
No exterior, no interior
No origination, no extinction
Another famous even in Hui Neng’s story that is found as a koan for study in The Gateless Gate:
Two monks were arguing about a flag as Hui Neng was passing by. One monk was argued that the flag was moving, while the other argued that the wind was moving.
Hui Neng replied, “It is your minds that are moving.”
Koans of The Gateless Gate
The Gateless Gate (Mumonkan in Japanese) was compiled by Wumen in 1228 for teaching at a monastic retreat. He claims that the collection, including the title, were thrown together without much thought. Along with The Blue Cliff Record, it is the most popular collection of koans in the tradition for hundreds of years. It contains many of the central moments of Zen.
A monk asked Joshu, “Does a dog have Buddha-nature or not?”
Joshu replied, “Not” (mu, ‘empty’ or ‘non-being’)
Gutei raised one finger whenever asked about Zen. A boy began imitating him, and when anyone would ask him about Gutei’s teaching he would raise one finger. Gutei saw him doing this, and cut off the boy’s finger. As the boy ran off screaming, Gutei called out to him. When the boy turned around, Gutei raised one finger, and the boy was enlightened.
Kyogen said, “Zen is like a man hanging in a tree by his teeth, asked ‘Why did Bodhidharma come to China from India?’ If the man does not answer, he fails, and if he does answer, he falls and loses his life. Now what shall he do?”
Joshu went to see a monk and asked him, “What is, is what?” The monk raised his fist.
Joshu replied, “Ships cannot remain where the water is too shallow” and left.
A few days later Joshu returned and asked him the same question. The monk raised a fist.
Joshu said, “Well given, well taken, well killed, well saved” and bowed to the monk.
Zuigan would say to himself every day, “Master”, and answer, “Yes, sir””
“Become Sober”, “Yes Sir”, “And do not be deceived by others”, “Yes, sir. Yes sir.”
When Joshu was still studying with Nansen (Nanquan), Nansen saw the monks of the eastern and western halls fighting over a cat.
He took the cat and said, “If any of you can say a turning word, you can save the cat.”
No one answered, and Nansen cut the cat in two. Later Joshu returned to the monastery and Nansen told him about it. Joshu removed his sandals, placed them on his head, and walked out.
Nansen said, “If he had only been here, he could have saved the cat.”
Hyakujo decided to test the assembly and put a water vase on the ground.
He asked, “Who can say what this is without calling its name?”
The chief monk said, “No one can call it a wooden shoe.”
Isan, the cook, kicked over the vase and walked out.
Hyakujo smiled and said, “The chief monk loses.”
A monk asked Kembo, “All Buddhas of the universe enter by one road. Where is it?”
Kembo drew the number one in the air and replied, “Here it is.”
The monk went to Ummon and asked the same question. Ummon said, “This fan will reach to the 33rd heaven and hit the nose of the presiding deity there.”
Koans from The Blue Cliff Record
The Blue Cliff Record was compiled in the Song Dynasty in 1125 CE. It is the second most popular koan collection after The Gateless Gate, containing 100 koans, 82 of which were taken from the earlier koan collection, The Transmission of the Lamp. It has extensive commentaries written by generation after generation of Zen roshi (masters). The commentary is always amusing, as whenever someone seems to win, the commentary calls him the loser, as if to keep the student from ever settling down in conceptions.
Joshu said to the assembly, “The ultimate way is without difficulty. Just avoid picking and choosing. As soon as there are words spoken, ‘this is picking and choosing’, ‘this is clarity’. This old monk does not abide in clarity. Do you still preserve anything or not?”
A monk asked, “Since you do not abide within clarity, what do you preserve?”
Joshu replied, “I don’t know either.”
The monk asked, “Since you don’t know, why do you say that you do not abide in clarity?”
Joshu said, “It is enough to ask about the matter. Bow and withdraw.”
A monk asked, “What is the meaning of the patriarch coming from the West?”
Hsiang Lin said, “Sitting for a long time becomes tiresome.”
The hermit of Lotus Flower Peak held up his staff before the assembly and said, “When the ancients got here, why didn’t they agree to stay here?”
No one answered, so he replied, “Because they gained no strength on the path.”
He then asked, “In the end, how is it?”
No one answered, so he replied, “With my staff accross my shoulders, I pay no heed to people. I go straight into the endless mountains.”
A monk asked, “The many things return to the one. Where does the one return to?”
Joshu said, When I was in the state of Chou, I made a hempen shirt. It weighted 7 pounds.”
The Recorded Sayings of Zen Master Joshu
Zhaozhou (778 - 897 CE), Joshu in Japanese, is my favorite Zen master of ancient China and the koan tradition. He trained with Nanquan (709 - 788 CE), and both appear in prominent positions in the Gateless Gate and Blue Cliff Record koan collections. The famous koan about Nanquan killing the cat with Joshu walking out was one of the most discussed koans in monasteries of China and Japan. In the Gateless Gate, Joshu’s famous koan about the dog’s buddha nature is the first koan of the collection and he is featured in five of the 48 of the collection. Joshu’s koan about “not picking and choosing” is the second case of the Blue Cliff Record. He is not in the official line from patriarch to patriarch, but he is one of the most famous Zen masters of the tradition in spite of this.
Joshu is a trickster, and it is debated whether he was inspired by Daoist sages. Many of his koan cases sound like jokes. In two he seems to say sexually suggestive things to nuns. He sometimes bursts out laughing as his final response to monk’s questions. His koan collection is by far one of the most entertaining to read.
A monk asked, “What is the Buddha’s true experience of reality?”
The master said, “Is there anything else you don’t like?”
A monk asked, “What is Zhaozhou’s master?”
The master shouted, “You hooped barrel!”
The monk answered, “Yes?”
The master said, “Well done, hooped barrel.”
A monk asked, “What is an imbecile?”
The master said, “I’m not as good as you.”
The monk said, “I’m not trying to be anything.”
The master said, “Why are you being an imbecile?”
A monk asked, “How can you not lead the multitudes of the world astray?”
The master stuck out his foot.
The monk took off one of the master’s sandals.
The master brought back his foot.
The monk could say nothing more.
A monk asked, “What is that which is spiritual?”
The master said, “A puddle of piss in the Pure Land.”
The monk said, “I ask you to reveal it to me.”
The master said, “Don’t tempt me.”
A monk asked, “‘The Great Way has no root’, how can it be expressed?”
The master said, “You just expressed it.”
The monk said, “What about ‘no root’?”
The master said, “There is no root. Where is it that you are being bound up?”
A monk asked, “The solitary moon is in the sky. From where does its light emanate?”
The master said, “From where does the moon emanate?”
The master said, “I can make one blade of grass a sixteen foot golden Buddha, and I can make a sixteen foot gold Buddha into one blade of grass. Buddha is compulsive passions. Compulsive passions are Buddha.”
A monk asked, “For the sake of whom does Buddha become compulsive passions?”
The master said, “For the sake of all people Buddha becomes compulsive passions.”
The monk asked, “How can they be escaped?”
The master said, “What’s the use of escaping?”
A monk asked, “What about it when the three-pronged sword has not yet fallen?”
The master said, “Densely packed together.”
The monk asked, “What about after it has fallen?”
The master said, “Wide open spaces.”
A monk asked, “What is the fact that I accept responsibility for?”
The master said, “To the ends of time you’ll never single it out.”
A monk asked, “I have just come here and know nothing. What are my duties?”
The master said, “What is your name?”
The monk said, “Hui-han.”
The master said, “A fine ‘knowing nothing’ that is.”
A monk asked, “It’s not yet clear to me, who is the patriarch of this land?”
The master said, “Bodhidharma has come, so here we are all patriarchs.”
The monk said, “What number generation are you?” (What position in the Zen lineage?)
The master said, “I do not fall into any position.”
The monk said, “Where are you?”
The master said, “Inside your ears.”
Doctor Ts’ui asked, “Does an accomplished person go to hell or not?”
The master said, “I entered at the head of the line.”
The doctor asked, “You are an accomplished person. Why do you go to hell?”
The master said, “If I had not gone, how could I have met you?”
A monk asked, “The second patriarch cut off his arm, what sort of act is that?”
The master said, “He was throwing his whole self into it.”
A monk asked, “What is the perfect question?”
The master said, “Wrong!”
A monk asked, “What are honest words?”
The master said, “Your mother is ugly.”
A monk asked, “Two mirrors are facing each other. Which is the clearest?”
The master said, “Your eyelids hang over Mount Sumaru.”
A monk said, “I don’t have a special question. Please don’t give a special reply.”
The master said, “How extraordinary.”
A monk asked, “What is the unending depth of the deep?”
The master said, “Your questioning me is the unending depth of the deep.”
Hoju asked Koteiko, “Aren’t you Koteiko?”
Koteiko said, “You’re too kind.”
Hoju asked, “Can you nail up the sky or not?”
Koteiko said, “Please try to nail up the sky.”
Hoju slapped him and said, “After this some jabbering scholar will explain this for you.”
Koteiko told the master about this. The master said, “Why did you make him hit you?”
The master and an official were walking the the garden and saw a rabbit run away.
The official said, “You are a great and accomplished person. Why did the rabbit run away?”
The master said, “I like to kill.”
The master found the two sages Kanzan and Jittoju on Mount T’ien-tai.
The master said, “For a long time I have heard about Kanzan and Jittoju, but having come here I just see two water buffalo.”
The sages put their fingers on their heads like horns.
The master said, “Shoo! Shoo!”
The sages gnashed their teeth and glared at each other.
When asked about this later, the master laughed heartily.
The master came to Po-chang’s monastery. Po-chang asked, “Where have you come from?”
The master said, “From Nanquan.”
Po-chang asked, “What has Nanquan been saying to instruct people?”
The master said, “One time he said, ‘One with no attainment should be strict and solemn.”
Po-chang scoffed at this, and the master looked startled.
Po-chang said, “That’s a fine ‘strict and solemn.”
The master did a little dance and left.
Tales from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones
This book, complied by Paul Reps, was one of the first I encountered in grade school. After reading some of these stories, I knew that there was something extraordinary in Zen. He has collected some of the most striking stories from over 700 years of the tradition.
An old woman in China had supported a monk in a hut in her yard for over twenty years. She decided to test his progress. She told a young girl to embrace and caress him. When she did, the monk replied, “An old tree grows on a cold rock in winter. Nowhere is there any warmth.” When she heard this, the woman was outraged that, while he had done nothing passionate, he had done nothing compassionate towards the girl either, and she promptly burned down the hut.
Notice that an old woman trumps a monk in this story, and that if there is no warmth anywhere then the monk must not mind if his hut is on fire.
Two monks were traveling in the rain down a muddy town road. Around a bend, they found a beautiful girl in a kimono unable to cross. One offered his help, picked her up and carried her over the mud. After the monks had reached an inn later, the second turned to him and scolded him for dangerously becoming involved with the girl, and the first replied, “I left the girl back there. Why are you still carrying her with you?”
Mokusen was approached by a villager who was upset with the stinginess of his wife. Mokusen visited her, clenched his hand in a fist and asked her, “What if my hand were always like that?” She replied that it would be deformed. Then he stretched out his open hand and asked the same question again, and she replied again that it would be deformed. Mokusen nodded and left.
One night Shichiri was meditating when a thief broke in and demanded money. Shichiri replied that the money was in the drawer and he was not to be disturbed. As the thief was taking the money, Shichiri asked that some be left, as he had taxes to pay. As the thief went to leave, Shichiri added that he should be thanked for the gift. Later, after the thief was caught, Shichiri told the officials, “This man is no thief. I gave him the money and he thanked me.” After getting out of prison, the thief became Shichiri’s student.
A samurai came to Hakuin and asked whether there was in fact a heaven or a hell. Hakuin replied that the man was as ugly as a beggar, and when the soldier raised his sword to kill Hakuin, Hakuin said, “Here open the gates of hell.” The samurai understood, and put his sword away. Hakuin said, “Here open the gates of paradise.”
Hogen was visited by traveling monks who were arguing about subjectivity and objectivity. He asked them about a large stone in the yard, and whether it was inside or outside the mind. One said that from a Buddhist viewpoint the stone was inside the mind. Hogen replied that his head must be very heavy to carry around a stone like that around in his mind.
Sengai was asked to write calligraphy for the prosperity of a rich man’s family. On a large sheet of paper, he wrote, “Father dies, son dies, grandson dies.” The rich man became angry, but Sengai explained that if each generation passes away in the proper order, it would be the happiest course for the entire family.
Basho, Master of Haiku
Basho (1644 - 1694 CE) was not a Zen monk, but he did practice Zen meditation and Zen influenced his haiku poetry. He is revered as the greatest haiku master, and many of his poems reflect the natural simplicity of the Japanese Zen tradition. His most famous poem, the first below, reflects this well, as well as the others that follow.
The old pond
A frog jumps in
The splash of the water
In the morning dew
Dirtied, cool
A muddy melon
A day when Mount Fuji
Is obscured by rain
How interesting
The glory of the dawn
This too cannot be
my friend
Let my name
Be traveler
First rains
You are the butterfly
And I the dreaming heart
Of Zhuangzi
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Logic: Midterm Review
Form of the Midterm: First 20 – 30 multiple choice questions about the lectures (ex: Aristotle thinks that skeptics like Heraclitus are no better than PLANTS, Kanada believes there are 6 categories, including KARMA/action, etc). Second, 8 short answers that demonstrate your knowledge of the forms that we have learned so far (ex: recreate the square of opposition, the forms of syllogisms, Nyaya proof), essentially the questions from the assignments. No essay.
Logic, Magic and Riddles: We read in Malinowski’s Rational Mastery by Man of His Surroundings that tribes use all of the grammatical forms and pieces of reasoning that we all use. We saw difference of practice and theory, constantly intertwined, in the difference between shallow water fishing and deep sea fishing. We saw in the next article that in baseball, the same sort of split occurs between hitting/pitching and fielding. In wisdom tales, understanding contradiction. Logic switched from the study of debate in early cultures to foundations of mathematics in modern times with the rise of algebra.
Kanada: Karma as action/energy. We saw the basic structure of IF-THEN hypothetical statements. The Modus Tollens transformation: (If p then q), means also (if not q then not p). Ex: If we know “If there are clouds then there is rain”, we know “If there is no rain then there are no clouds”.
Nyaya: We saw the Nyaya form of the two sided debate: (X is Y) vs. (X is not Y). We saw that there are four sources of knowledge: perception, inference, comparison, and testimony.
Inference shows us induction leading to deduction, gathering leading to rules/principles.
The Nyaya proof: Rule, Example, Reason, Conclusion
Wherever there is smoke, there is fire. As in a kitchen.
Because the hill is smoky, therefore the hill is on fire.
Whatever is produced is not eternal, as a pot. (If p, then n, pot is both)
Because it is produced, Sound is not eternal. (Because s is p, s is n)
Note the subtle attack on the older tradition of the Vedas in the last two examples.
While Nyaya scholars believe X is Y or not Y, exclusively, we see that Jains think it must be some Y and some not Y, neither ALL or None. Buddhists argue that X can in some part, sometimes and somewhere be Y but also in other parts, other times and other places not be Y. Nagarjuna’s Catuskoti (is, is not, is and is not, neither is nor is not)
Aristotle: Genus and Species (ex: animal, human), substances can have contrary qualities but only at different times, “if someone admits contrary qualities, his contention is unsound”, skeptics are destroyers, plants.
Square of opposition, All X is Y, No X is Y, Some X is Y, Some X is not Y as four corners.
Top pair (universals) can’t both be true, bottom pair (particulars) can’t both be false.
If we know All X is Y is true, then we know two things are false: No X is Y & Some X is not Y.
If we know No X is Y, then we know All X is Y and Some X is Y are false.
If we know Some X is Y, then we know No X is Y is false.
If we know Some X is not Y, then we know All X is Y is false.
Exclusive and Inclusive OR:
Inclusive Or: X or Y and you can choose more than one.
Exclusive Or: X or Y but you can only choose one exclusively.
The Four Forms of the Perfect Syllogism:
First, the Positive Universal, ‘Barbara’:
All A are B, All B are C, therefore All A are C.
Example: If it’s a human, animal, living thing.
(Venn diagram of A within B, B within C, or partially/fully collapsed)
Second, the Negative Universal, ‘Celarent’
All A are B, No B are C, therefore No A are C.
Ex: All men are animals, No animals are stone, therefore No men are made of stone.
Third, the Positive Particular, ‘Darii’
Some A are B, All B are C, therefore Some A are C.
Ex: Some animals are humans, All humans are funny, therefore some animals are funny.
Fourth, the Negative Particular, ‘Ferio’:
Some A are B, No B are C, therefore Some A are not C.
Ex: Some animals are humans, No humans are reptiles, therefore Some H are not R.
Greek Skepticism: Heraclitus says do not trust experts, we are all a bunch of apes. Pyrrho argues anything against anybody, then the opposite. Sextus Empiricus says inference can be wrong.
Chinese Paradox: Lao Zi’s Wheel (positive, negative, both), Zhuang Zi’s perspective, sage’s this always has a that, Hui Shi’s left today arrived yesterday and greater and lesser similarity and difference, Gongsun Long’s white horse is not a horse argument and two uses of “is”.
Logic, Magic and Riddles: We read in Malinowski’s Rational Mastery by Man of His Surroundings that tribes use all of the grammatical forms and pieces of reasoning that we all use. We saw difference of practice and theory, constantly intertwined, in the difference between shallow water fishing and deep sea fishing. We saw in the next article that in baseball, the same sort of split occurs between hitting/pitching and fielding. In wisdom tales, understanding contradiction. Logic switched from the study of debate in early cultures to foundations of mathematics in modern times with the rise of algebra.
Kanada: Karma as action/energy. We saw the basic structure of IF-THEN hypothetical statements. The Modus Tollens transformation: (If p then q), means also (if not q then not p). Ex: If we know “If there are clouds then there is rain”, we know “If there is no rain then there are no clouds”.
Nyaya: We saw the Nyaya form of the two sided debate: (X is Y) vs. (X is not Y). We saw that there are four sources of knowledge: perception, inference, comparison, and testimony.
Inference shows us induction leading to deduction, gathering leading to rules/principles.
The Nyaya proof: Rule, Example, Reason, Conclusion
Wherever there is smoke, there is fire. As in a kitchen.
Because the hill is smoky, therefore the hill is on fire.
Whatever is produced is not eternal, as a pot. (If p, then n, pot is both)
Because it is produced, Sound is not eternal. (Because s is p, s is n)
Note the subtle attack on the older tradition of the Vedas in the last two examples.
While Nyaya scholars believe X is Y or not Y, exclusively, we see that Jains think it must be some Y and some not Y, neither ALL or None. Buddhists argue that X can in some part, sometimes and somewhere be Y but also in other parts, other times and other places not be Y. Nagarjuna’s Catuskoti (is, is not, is and is not, neither is nor is not)
Aristotle: Genus and Species (ex: animal, human), substances can have contrary qualities but only at different times, “if someone admits contrary qualities, his contention is unsound”, skeptics are destroyers, plants.
Square of opposition, All X is Y, No X is Y, Some X is Y, Some X is not Y as four corners.
Top pair (universals) can’t both be true, bottom pair (particulars) can’t both be false.
If we know All X is Y is true, then we know two things are false: No X is Y & Some X is not Y.
If we know No X is Y, then we know All X is Y and Some X is Y are false.
If we know Some X is Y, then we know No X is Y is false.
If we know Some X is not Y, then we know All X is Y is false.
Exclusive and Inclusive OR:
Inclusive Or: X or Y and you can choose more than one.
Exclusive Or: X or Y but you can only choose one exclusively.
The Four Forms of the Perfect Syllogism:
First, the Positive Universal, ‘Barbara’:
All A are B, All B are C, therefore All A are C.
Example: If it’s a human, animal, living thing.
(Venn diagram of A within B, B within C, or partially/fully collapsed)
Second, the Negative Universal, ‘Celarent’
All A are B, No B are C, therefore No A are C.
Ex: All men are animals, No animals are stone, therefore No men are made of stone.
Third, the Positive Particular, ‘Darii’
Some A are B, All B are C, therefore Some A are C.
Ex: Some animals are humans, All humans are funny, therefore some animals are funny.
Fourth, the Negative Particular, ‘Ferio’:
Some A are B, No B are C, therefore Some A are not C.
Ex: Some animals are humans, No humans are reptiles, therefore Some H are not R.
Greek Skepticism: Heraclitus says do not trust experts, we are all a bunch of apes. Pyrrho argues anything against anybody, then the opposite. Sextus Empiricus says inference can be wrong.
Chinese Paradox: Lao Zi’s Wheel (positive, negative, both), Zhuang Zi’s perspective, sage’s this always has a that, Hui Shi’s left today arrived yesterday and greater and lesser similarity and difference, Gongsun Long’s white horse is not a horse argument and two uses of “is”.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Intro Philosophy: Confucius
Introduction to Chinese Philosophy
As we have seen in the course so far, systems of thought are not simply dogmatic answers, but cultures of questioning as much as answering. We saw Shamans go on vision quests to learn the sources of problems, and the Egyptian wisdom proverbs question authority, social status, consumption (over eating and drinking), expertise, and other aspects of human life and society. Now, we move to China and examine one of the foremost ethical geniuses of world history: Grand Master Kong, Kong Fu Zi, or as he is known to us, Confucius, the Latinized name transliterated by Catholic Jesuit missionaries who got to China in the 1600s and were astounded to find that the most influential philosopher in thousands of years of Chinese history has teachings very similar to Jesus. Confucius was dedicated to the idea that the individual can obtain fullness and happiness by placing others before oneself and by recognizing the desires of others as equal to the desires one has for oneself.
Before we start in on the schools and sages of the Chinese tradition, first we must cover the shift in transliteration of Chinese into Phoenician/Roman alphabetic characters. Today, we use the Pinyin system, adopted by the People’s Republic of China in 1958, adopted by other countries by the 1980s. It still has problems, but is vastly superior to the Wade-Giles system invented in Britain in the 1800s. When you read books from the 60s and 70s, you find the word Dao spelled ‘Tao’. This is because the Wade-Giles ‘t’ became ‘d’, and so the Daoist classic the ‘Tao Te Ching’ became today the ‘Dao De Jing’. What was once the capital city ‘Peiking’ is now ‘Beijing’. Important for Chinese Philosophy, while the Latinized names ‘Confucius’ and ‘Mencius’ remained the same, all other names changed, particularly the suffix for ‘master’, which was ‘Tzu’ but is today ‘Zi’ (pronounced something like ‘tzih’ with a soft ‘t’ in front). My favorite Chinese philosopher used to be ‘Chuang Tzu’, but is today ‘Zhuangzi’, or Master Zhuang. Similarly ‘Lao Tzu’ is today Laozi, Master Lao, and ‘Mo Tzu’ is Mozi, Master Mo. None of these names unfortunately appear in spell check either way. Luckily, Wikipedia is a good tool for dealing with this annoying situation, for if you search for a name either way, it sends you to the right page with the modern Pinyin name. I use this all the time, even though I have studied these guys for years.
Chinese Philosophy and The Period of the Hundred Philosophers/Schools
One would like to think that times of peace and prosperity are good for systems of thought, but times of civil war and disintegration of empires seems best for thinkers and systems of thought. This was true in ancient Egypt, India, Greece, and true in the golden age of ancient Chinese thought as well. Human beings only rethink problems when they are faced with them, and they are only able to teach new and countercultural solutions when the orthodoxy is weak and failing. In Confucius’ China there were great problems in the Warring States period (500 – 220 BCE) as many kings came and went, each calling themselves ‘mandated by heaven’. Interestingly, this same period is known as the golden age of Chinese thought, the Period of the Hundred Philosophies, also called the Period of the Hundred Schools and Period of the Hundred Sages.
As we have learned with ancient cosmology, the worldview of ancient Egypt and Persia that influenced all three of the axial age powers (ancient India, Greece and China), the world was thought to be built like a person and order was thought to be spoken downward from the heavens to the earth. In ancient China, it was said that if a king was good he would be supported and affirmed by the voice of heaven, which in speaking for a king gave the king the ‘mandate of heaven’ and allow him and the empire to prosper. This is very similar to most other polytheistic and monotheistic cultures of the ancient world. If the king does not follow the way of heaven, the gods or god stops speaking for the king, and someone else comes along and takes the king’s place. Each new king claims that the old king was ‘no longer spoken for’, so the populations of Greece, India etc. find themselves wondering: who or what kind of king exactly does heaven (the heavens) speak for, and why?
The Period of the Hundred Philosophers or Hundred Schools, as it is called, came with the Warring States Period after the Zhou dynasty crumbled and ended with the Han dynasty. While there may not have been a hundred separate schools, there were many schools of thought in this time but many and their teachings did not survive. The four most popular and famous philosophies were Confucianism, Daoism, Moism, and Legalism. The Han did not like the authoritarianism of the Legalists, who believed in harsh punishments and strict laws (likely because the Han were trying to win over the people at a prosperous time with many options), but they also did not like the communalism of the Moists who believed that war should be abolished and, like in Plato’s ideal republic, all property and family shared in common (likely because the Han were trying to hold down a prosperous and diverse empire).
The Han chose, in supporting education, scholarship and the arts, to patronize Confucianism and Daoism. Confucianism included Confucius (550 – 480 BCE), and the two central and early Confucians, Mencius (Men Zi, 370 – 290 BCE) and Xun Zi (312-230 BCE). Daoism included Lao Zi (600 – 500? BCE), supposed author of the Dao De Jing, and Zhuang Zi (370 – 300 BCE), though these two figures would not have known themselves to be ‘Daoists’ any more than Confucius would have known his followers would go on to found the central system of Chinese thought and politics.
Confucius and the Daoists we will examine next week proposed different solutions to this problem. The Daoists believed that going off into nature and rejecting human ways was best for cultivating the individual, while Confucius believed that the city, morality and study were best for cultivating human virtues. Thus, while Confucius and the Daoists were both questioners of individual desires and judgment, Confucius believed we should turn to civilization and cultivation to realize our true nature and the Daoists believed we should turn away from civilization and back to simplicity and the natural to realize our true nature.
Confucius, the Daoists and others speak of the ‘Mandate of Heaven’ (Tianming) and the ‘Way’ (Dao) of heaven (Tiandao) but not of the Lord of Heaven. In India, Greece, China, and many other places, we can see that first many tribes and their gods were drawn into polytheistic (many gods) systems (as we focused on last week), and then after this these were drawn into monotheistic (one god) systems. We can see that many gods with human like desires become one god with human like desires, and then this one god becomes more and more abstract. We see the same pattern in China, where polytheism grew into a monotheistic and then abstract monist ‘Way’ or ‘Mandate’. Essentially, the All Lord becomes simply the mind of the universe or the ‘way’ or ‘order’ of things. The Zhou and earlier empires spoke of the Lord of Heaven, but Confucius and the Daoists in the Warring States period do not speak of the Lord of Heaven, but rather the Mandate and Way, showing us that, like the golden age of thought in ancient India and Greece, the revered thinkers were challenging the old tradition with philosophical monism that questioned the very shape of cosmology itself while extending it.
Confucius and his System of Thought
Just like we had with Egypt last week, Confucius (550-480 BCE) believes that the heart is the center of the human being. Notice that this ‘center’ is both mental and physical, fitting with cosmology, psychology and medical practices. Confucius is often understood as a champion of traditional order and ritual, as he is a proponent of civilization and education against the Daoists who are proponents of nature and meditation. However, it is clear from the Analects that Confucius believed it was more important to have right insight rather than right ritual or tradition, to have right intentions than right actions, i.e. ‘one’s heart is in the right place’.
Confucius was a master of ritual, an official position important for civil ceremonies and legal practice as they still are in courts of law and political processes today. Confucius believed that ritual was the strength of a society and one should perform the rituals, but he also believed that the worst thing was to do ritual without the proper intention. Confucius would say to a churchgoer today: it is more important to enjoy your church than to attend your church, for if you do not enjoy it whole heartedly you should not go. Consider the more secular example of giving a gift to a friend. If you give gifts so that you can borrow someone’s car, you corrupt the act of giving gifts, which should be done without expectations of repayment. It would be better, according to Confucius, to not give gifts to friends than to give them expecting repayment. Empty ritual, ritual simply for the motions rather than authentic love for and continuity with one’s society, is the worst thing, and thus it would be better in such a case to avoid false ritual and simply not perform the ritual at all. This point is often lost when people focus on Confucius’ great love of ritual and traditional culture.
A good example of this point is Analects 5.5 (and yes, these are standardized so no matter the translation, ‘5.5’ is always the fifth aphorism of the fifth chapter or book, just like the Bible and Koran are standardized with numbers): Confucius says that Ran Yong does not need eloquence (civilized speech) if he is not good. Another good example is 11.10, where Confucius is grieving ‘inappropriately’ for his favorite student, and tells his students who complain that genuine love and expression of emotion is more important than being polite or pleasant (right intention trumps right outer form). However, the best example is clearly 3.26, “Authority without generosity, ceremony without reverence, mourning without grief, these things I cannot bear to contemplate”.
Because the Han and many later Chinese dynasties used Confucius as a voice supporting subordination to authority, and because Confucius does indeed say to obey the father and obey the chain of command, it is often overlooked that, just as intention is more important than tradition, unjust fathers and unjust states must be corrected. Many times Confucius says that truth must be spoken to power. How will things change if no one complains? In one passage, Confucius tells his students they should rise up and overthrow an unjust local prince. One should be subordinate to authority, but only just and good authority and tradition.
Confucius was a great champion of scholarship. Like Plato, Confucius believed that society should not be an aristocracy but rather a meritocracy. Confucius believed that scholarship was necessary for developing the heart, and the ‘gentleman’, Confucius’ word for the great person, developed love for others and knowledge through study of the classic texts. As scholars have pointed out, while it has often been translated ‘gentleMAN’, the term is gender neutral and Confucius was talking about the righteous rather than the nobly born, though the term was used before Confucius to refer exclusively to nobles before him. When we see the term in the text, it can also be translated as ‘the noble’, meaning anyone of either gender or social status who is an excellent human being.
Needless to say, Confucius’ Analects became one of the central texts for devoted study in Chinese society, and Confucius became an ancestor revered by devotees with ritual. Confucius is credited as the father of China’s civil service system, a system in which anyone who tested well, regardless of their position in society, was given a government position. This is similar to the development of types of scribes in Egypt. It is just such a development that we call ‘the middle class’, the individuals who through study and work can rise or fall in position to fit the many niches required to run large cities and systems. What Plato recognized in Egypt, Confucius was much more successful in implementing in Chinese society, though unfortunately only after his death. Confucius himself always hoped for a good position, but did not succeed in obtaining one during his own life though he did teach many students and was revered by many of them, including powerful nobility.
Just as Confucius taught that intention is more important than action, he hated scholarship for show without genuine love of learning and discovery of human nature. A good example is 4.9, ‘if a scholar is ashamed of his shabby clothes or poor food, he is not worth listening to’. He also taught that we should balance learning with critical reflection, just as Buddha did, though Buddha, like Daoists, argued that study and critical reflection also needed meditation whereas Confucius saw study as superior to meditation. In the analects, Confucius says that studying without thinking is useless, but thinking without studying is dangerous, showing us that he does believe in individual insight but is traditional and believes in studying the traditional classics. He says, “The noble person is not a pot”, meaning that we are not containers for knowledge but should transform and reflect on what we study.
Confucius was a genius at seeing himself as equal to everyone, and he encouraged this attitude as the path to excellence itself. It was this point that the Jesuits found fascinating in comparing Confucianism to Christianity. Most of us have likely heard the ‘Golden Rule’, which is paraphrased from Confucius: ‘treat others the way you want to be treated’. While Jesus says, ‘don’t treat others how you do NOT want to be treated’, we can understand them to be one and the same. My favorite example is 7.22: Confucius says that if you put yourself with any two people at random, you can take their strengths as a model to follow and their faults as a warning. Clearly, Confucius believed that we all share the same set of strengths and faults, no matter how talented (or horrible) we happen to individually be or where our talents are. Confucius taught that NO ONE is perfect, not even himself, but there is good in everyone and everything, and we had best remember that we will never lose any of our connection to our fellow human beings if we only remember to look hard enough for it. Another excellent example from the Analects: “When you see a worthy man, seek to emulate him…When you see an unworthy man, examine yourself”.
Mencius & Xunzi
Confucius had two followers who became the famous two poles of interpretation of the Analects. Mencius or Menzi, the second patriarch of Confucianism by popular consent in the tradition, believed that Confucius taught that the human being is basically good and develops the heart, growing and developing the virtues through love. He argued that because the human individual is essentially good, we need ritual to guide our growth but love is the true essence. Xunzi, the third patriarch of Confucianism, a cynic and conservative, argued that the human being is essentially evil and without the rituals and tradition to hold our nature back we would be selfish and uncivilized. This remains the major split in Confucian thought, which accommodates both opinions while leaning more toward Menzi.
Menzi uses the famous example of a child about to fall into a well, arguing that anyone watching a child near a well would naturally grow anxious, even the most evil of people. Menzi argues that civilization began when people saw the corpses of relatives being attacked by animals and insects and felt compassion and grief. It is true that burial sites are some of the first archeological finds we have of human culture. Both Menzi and Xunzi, who attacks Menzi’s position later by name, use the example of little children to argue that human beings are good and human beings are evil. Menzi says that we know little children are good, before they are educated and taught manners. Xunzi says we know little children are evil, before they are educated and taught manners. Happy children are indeed lovable, and angry children are indeed immature. Many great thinkers, including Jesus and Nietzsche, teach us ‘be like a little child’, but we often tell others, ‘don’t be like a little child’. Opposite truths are often equally true.
Neo-Confucianism, Zhu Xi & Wang Yang Ming
About 1100 CE, Confucianism merged with Daoist and Buddhist ideas to form a Confucian revival called Neo-Confucianism by scholars today. Buddhist metaphors such as the pearl at the bottom of the muddy lake and the sun emerging from behind the clouds were reinterpreted in light of Confucianism and Daoism. The major figure of this revival was Zhu Xi (1130-1200 CE), who argued that all three traditions were teaching the same truth but that Confucius was the superior and primary teacher. The Neo-Confucians were trying to put Confucianism back into its primary place in Chinese culture after losing much ground to Buddhism over the previous five hundred years.
Wang Yang Ming (1470 – 1530 CE) one of the most revered Neo-Confucians, was famous for the idea of the unity of knowledge and action. While Confucius taught that intention and action are distinct things, Wang Yang Ming taught the complementary truth that the two are interactive as one whole. While someone can say that they know something, we can judge whether they truly know or not by how they act. An example he uses is if someone says they know that a smell is bad, but they do not act like it is bad (gagging, opening a window, pointing at their younger sibling), we could say that they do not really know that the smell is bad but only saying the smell is bad. In the same way, if we know someone is a good person we do not get nervous around them or hide our valuables when they come over. If we did, it could be said that we do not truly know they are good because we do not act like they are trustworthy.
Confucius’ Analects
Confucius shows us a brilliant development of questioning the individual and state that we have already seen develop elsewhere. When people gather, they can see each other and see groups, and are questioning and skeptical of themselves, other individuals, and group organizations.
First we look at the criticism of the individual, clearing the individual heart and putting oneself in tune with the Way. Then we look at criticism of the state, and see that the same shape applies.
Second, notice the passages where Confucius is criticizing sages who go to nature and do not study. Pay attention to this for next week, as these are early Daoists who have different opinions than Confucius about the cultivation of the human individual.
Criticism of the Individual:
(4.12) He who acts out of self interest arouses much resentment.
(5.5) ‘Ran Yong is good but not eloquent’- I don’t know if he is good, but he certainly does not need eloquence if he isn’t.
(11.10) Yan Hui died. ‘Master, this grief isn’t right’ C; ‘What sort of grief for such a man is right?
Criticism of Luxury:
(5.18) Master said: Zang Sunchen built a house for his tortoise, with pillars in the shape of mountains and rafters decorated with duckweed. Has he lost his mind?
(7.16) Even if you have only coarse grain, water and your arm for a pillow, you may still be happy. Riches and honors without justice are to me as fleeting clouds.
Criticism of Ritual without Virtue:
(3.26) authority without generosity, ceremony without reverence, mourning without grief, these things I cannot bear to contemplate.
(4.13) If one cannot govern by observing ritual and showing compassion, what is the use of ritual?
Scholarship without greed or want of career:
(4.9) If a scholar is ashamed of his shabby clothes or poor food, he is not worth listening to.
Haven’t seen someone who studies without any thought of career.
Good is at Hand (7.30) but no one is perfect (7.26)
Says again and again that he is not perfect, nor has he met perfection…
(7.33) My seal is as strong as anyone’s, but I have not succeeded in living nobly.
yet: ‘Is goodness out of reach? As soon as I long for goodness, goodness is at hand.’
(7.34) I make no claims to wisdom or to human perfection- how would I dare? Yet my aim never flags and I never tire of teaching people.
Disciple: ‘This is what we fail to follow.’
Criticism of Selfishness and Pride:
Whatever one’s position, you always share the faults and talents of everyone.
Thus, you have to work to compare self with others, as not intuitive.
You should compare yourself to others, reflect yourself through others no matter how you judge them to be, and work to get over selfishness and become compassionate and balanced (the way of heaven, opposed to selfish desire for lower).
Confucius values joining all of humanity, not being selfish.
(7.22) Put me with any two people at random- they will invariably have something to teach me. I can take their qualities as a model and their defects as a warning.
(9.8) Am I knowledgeable? No. A Bumpkin asked me a question, and my mind went blank. Still, I hammered at his problem from all sides, till I worked out something.
(1.16) Don’t worry if others don’t recognize your merits: worry that you may not
recognize theirs.
(2.13) Practice what you preach.
(4.17) When you see a worthy man, seek to emulate him. When you see an unworthy man, examine yourself.
(5.12) Zigong ‘I do not want to do to others…’ C: you’re not that far yet…
(11.4) Yan Hui is of no help to me: whatever I say pleases him.
(9.28) It is in the cold of winter that you see how green the pines and cypresses are.
(15.23) A gentleman does not approve of a person because he expresses a certain opinion, nor does he reject an opinion because it is expressed by a particular person.
(15.24) ‘Single word to guide one’s life?’ C- Reciprocity: do not do to others…
(19.21) A gentleman’s mistake is like an eclipse of the sun or moon.
When happens, everyone notices, and when corrected everyone looks up in admiration.
Good as Unknown, Beyond Judgment and Opinion:
(9.17) The master stood by a river and said: ‘Everything flows like this, without ceasing’
(note Heraclitus)
(2.17) Master said: Knowledge is to take the known as known and unknown as unknown.
(pre 3.14) (quoted by Wittgenstein) About what we don’t know we must keep silent.
(5.13) Our master’s views on culture can be gathered, but you can’t hear his views on the nature of things or the Way of Heaven.
(7.21) The master never talked of miracles, violence, disorders, spirits.
(7.35) Confucius is ill, student: ‘pray to spirits above & spirits below’
Con: In that case, I have been praying for a long time already.
(note not a rejection of the spiritual, but a knowing unknowing)
(11.12) Asked how to serve spirits, says: You have not yet learned how to serve man, how could you learn to serve the spirits?
Death: You do not yet know life, how can you learn about death?
Middle Way: (Buddha, Heraclitus)
(6.17) Who would leave a house without using the door? Why do people seek to walk outside the way?
(6.29) The power of the middle way is supreme, and yet it is not found among the people anymore. (notice restore the golden age)
Reform the old, bring in the new:
(2.11) He who by revising the old knows the new is fit to be a teacher.
(2.12) A gentleman is not a pot.
(Pre 3.4 cut off) each generation has added and dropped from the ritual, so we know what people will look like 100 generations from now (they will add and drop)
In pursuit of virtue, do not be afraid to outpace your teacher (15.36)
Criticism of the State:
Confucius is not a compliant sheep when it comes to the state.
His criticism of individual judgment and pride is matched by criticism of the state.
(11.17) Rich student tyrant: C- attach him: you have my permission.
Sees private interest trapped in the state (nobles disunifying Zhou court, into warring states).
(13.15) asked by Duke: Is there a single maxim/rule that could ruin a country?
C- The prince should never suffer contradiction. When in error, prince should be told.
(13.24) ‘What if everyone likes a man?’ C- Not enough
‘What if everyone hates him?’ C- Not enough: Good should love, bad should hate.
(13.20) ‘present politicians?’ Those puny creatures are not even worth mentioning.
(9.26) One cannot deny the humblest man his free will.
Criticism of Daoism and its sages retreat into Nature:
Just as Confucius appears in Daoist texts as an ally but inferior rival, so do proto-Daoist sages in the Analects. This is very much like Buddha vs. the Jains, in that other group isn’t mentioned by name, but found not to be in balance but extremists. Daoists wanted to escape into nature, while Confucians believe in the value of the city and embracing not escaping humankind. Believe in balance, like Daoists, but seek to balance the city, not escape into the perfect balance of nature from the city. Daoists are more skeptical of society.
(18.16) One cannot associate with birds and beasts. If the world were following the way, I would not have to reform it.
It is not right to be a hermit, and discard human relationships to preserve one’s purity.
(18.18) I do things differently. I follow no rigid prescriptions on what should or should not be done.
(4.1) It is beautiful to live amidst humanity. It is hardly wise to live in a place destitute of people (don’t be a Daoist hermit).
Criticism of Meditation (D and later B), to Confucians not as good as study:
(15.31) I once to meditate went without food for a day and a night without sleep.
It was no use. It is better to study.
Numerous criticisms of inactivity, inferior to activity, study and effort:
(2.1): At 15, I set my mind upon learning. At 30, I took my stand. At 40 I had no doubts. At 50, I knew the will (mandate) of heaven. At 60, my ear was attuned. At 70, I follow all the desires of my heart without breaking any rule.
(4.2) A good man rests in his humanity. A wise man profits from his humanity.
As we have seen in the course so far, systems of thought are not simply dogmatic answers, but cultures of questioning as much as answering. We saw Shamans go on vision quests to learn the sources of problems, and the Egyptian wisdom proverbs question authority, social status, consumption (over eating and drinking), expertise, and other aspects of human life and society. Now, we move to China and examine one of the foremost ethical geniuses of world history: Grand Master Kong, Kong Fu Zi, or as he is known to us, Confucius, the Latinized name transliterated by Catholic Jesuit missionaries who got to China in the 1600s and were astounded to find that the most influential philosopher in thousands of years of Chinese history has teachings very similar to Jesus. Confucius was dedicated to the idea that the individual can obtain fullness and happiness by placing others before oneself and by recognizing the desires of others as equal to the desires one has for oneself.
Before we start in on the schools and sages of the Chinese tradition, first we must cover the shift in transliteration of Chinese into Phoenician/Roman alphabetic characters. Today, we use the Pinyin system, adopted by the People’s Republic of China in 1958, adopted by other countries by the 1980s. It still has problems, but is vastly superior to the Wade-Giles system invented in Britain in the 1800s. When you read books from the 60s and 70s, you find the word Dao spelled ‘Tao’. This is because the Wade-Giles ‘t’ became ‘d’, and so the Daoist classic the ‘Tao Te Ching’ became today the ‘Dao De Jing’. What was once the capital city ‘Peiking’ is now ‘Beijing’. Important for Chinese Philosophy, while the Latinized names ‘Confucius’ and ‘Mencius’ remained the same, all other names changed, particularly the suffix for ‘master’, which was ‘Tzu’ but is today ‘Zi’ (pronounced something like ‘tzih’ with a soft ‘t’ in front). My favorite Chinese philosopher used to be ‘Chuang Tzu’, but is today ‘Zhuangzi’, or Master Zhuang. Similarly ‘Lao Tzu’ is today Laozi, Master Lao, and ‘Mo Tzu’ is Mozi, Master Mo. None of these names unfortunately appear in spell check either way. Luckily, Wikipedia is a good tool for dealing with this annoying situation, for if you search for a name either way, it sends you to the right page with the modern Pinyin name. I use this all the time, even though I have studied these guys for years.
Chinese Philosophy and The Period of the Hundred Philosophers/Schools
One would like to think that times of peace and prosperity are good for systems of thought, but times of civil war and disintegration of empires seems best for thinkers and systems of thought. This was true in ancient Egypt, India, Greece, and true in the golden age of ancient Chinese thought as well. Human beings only rethink problems when they are faced with them, and they are only able to teach new and countercultural solutions when the orthodoxy is weak and failing. In Confucius’ China there were great problems in the Warring States period (500 – 220 BCE) as many kings came and went, each calling themselves ‘mandated by heaven’. Interestingly, this same period is known as the golden age of Chinese thought, the Period of the Hundred Philosophies, also called the Period of the Hundred Schools and Period of the Hundred Sages.
As we have learned with ancient cosmology, the worldview of ancient Egypt and Persia that influenced all three of the axial age powers (ancient India, Greece and China), the world was thought to be built like a person and order was thought to be spoken downward from the heavens to the earth. In ancient China, it was said that if a king was good he would be supported and affirmed by the voice of heaven, which in speaking for a king gave the king the ‘mandate of heaven’ and allow him and the empire to prosper. This is very similar to most other polytheistic and monotheistic cultures of the ancient world. If the king does not follow the way of heaven, the gods or god stops speaking for the king, and someone else comes along and takes the king’s place. Each new king claims that the old king was ‘no longer spoken for’, so the populations of Greece, India etc. find themselves wondering: who or what kind of king exactly does heaven (the heavens) speak for, and why?
The Period of the Hundred Philosophers or Hundred Schools, as it is called, came with the Warring States Period after the Zhou dynasty crumbled and ended with the Han dynasty. While there may not have been a hundred separate schools, there were many schools of thought in this time but many and their teachings did not survive. The four most popular and famous philosophies were Confucianism, Daoism, Moism, and Legalism. The Han did not like the authoritarianism of the Legalists, who believed in harsh punishments and strict laws (likely because the Han were trying to win over the people at a prosperous time with many options), but they also did not like the communalism of the Moists who believed that war should be abolished and, like in Plato’s ideal republic, all property and family shared in common (likely because the Han were trying to hold down a prosperous and diverse empire).
The Han chose, in supporting education, scholarship and the arts, to patronize Confucianism and Daoism. Confucianism included Confucius (550 – 480 BCE), and the two central and early Confucians, Mencius (Men Zi, 370 – 290 BCE) and Xun Zi (312-230 BCE). Daoism included Lao Zi (600 – 500? BCE), supposed author of the Dao De Jing, and Zhuang Zi (370 – 300 BCE), though these two figures would not have known themselves to be ‘Daoists’ any more than Confucius would have known his followers would go on to found the central system of Chinese thought and politics.
Confucius and the Daoists we will examine next week proposed different solutions to this problem. The Daoists believed that going off into nature and rejecting human ways was best for cultivating the individual, while Confucius believed that the city, morality and study were best for cultivating human virtues. Thus, while Confucius and the Daoists were both questioners of individual desires and judgment, Confucius believed we should turn to civilization and cultivation to realize our true nature and the Daoists believed we should turn away from civilization and back to simplicity and the natural to realize our true nature.
Confucius, the Daoists and others speak of the ‘Mandate of Heaven’ (Tianming) and the ‘Way’ (Dao) of heaven (Tiandao) but not of the Lord of Heaven. In India, Greece, China, and many other places, we can see that first many tribes and their gods were drawn into polytheistic (many gods) systems (as we focused on last week), and then after this these were drawn into monotheistic (one god) systems. We can see that many gods with human like desires become one god with human like desires, and then this one god becomes more and more abstract. We see the same pattern in China, where polytheism grew into a monotheistic and then abstract monist ‘Way’ or ‘Mandate’. Essentially, the All Lord becomes simply the mind of the universe or the ‘way’ or ‘order’ of things. The Zhou and earlier empires spoke of the Lord of Heaven, but Confucius and the Daoists in the Warring States period do not speak of the Lord of Heaven, but rather the Mandate and Way, showing us that, like the golden age of thought in ancient India and Greece, the revered thinkers were challenging the old tradition with philosophical monism that questioned the very shape of cosmology itself while extending it.
Confucius and his System of Thought
Just like we had with Egypt last week, Confucius (550-480 BCE) believes that the heart is the center of the human being. Notice that this ‘center’ is both mental and physical, fitting with cosmology, psychology and medical practices. Confucius is often understood as a champion of traditional order and ritual, as he is a proponent of civilization and education against the Daoists who are proponents of nature and meditation. However, it is clear from the Analects that Confucius believed it was more important to have right insight rather than right ritual or tradition, to have right intentions than right actions, i.e. ‘one’s heart is in the right place’.
Confucius was a master of ritual, an official position important for civil ceremonies and legal practice as they still are in courts of law and political processes today. Confucius believed that ritual was the strength of a society and one should perform the rituals, but he also believed that the worst thing was to do ritual without the proper intention. Confucius would say to a churchgoer today: it is more important to enjoy your church than to attend your church, for if you do not enjoy it whole heartedly you should not go. Consider the more secular example of giving a gift to a friend. If you give gifts so that you can borrow someone’s car, you corrupt the act of giving gifts, which should be done without expectations of repayment. It would be better, according to Confucius, to not give gifts to friends than to give them expecting repayment. Empty ritual, ritual simply for the motions rather than authentic love for and continuity with one’s society, is the worst thing, and thus it would be better in such a case to avoid false ritual and simply not perform the ritual at all. This point is often lost when people focus on Confucius’ great love of ritual and traditional culture.
A good example of this point is Analects 5.5 (and yes, these are standardized so no matter the translation, ‘5.5’ is always the fifth aphorism of the fifth chapter or book, just like the Bible and Koran are standardized with numbers): Confucius says that Ran Yong does not need eloquence (civilized speech) if he is not good. Another good example is 11.10, where Confucius is grieving ‘inappropriately’ for his favorite student, and tells his students who complain that genuine love and expression of emotion is more important than being polite or pleasant (right intention trumps right outer form). However, the best example is clearly 3.26, “Authority without generosity, ceremony without reverence, mourning without grief, these things I cannot bear to contemplate”.
Because the Han and many later Chinese dynasties used Confucius as a voice supporting subordination to authority, and because Confucius does indeed say to obey the father and obey the chain of command, it is often overlooked that, just as intention is more important than tradition, unjust fathers and unjust states must be corrected. Many times Confucius says that truth must be spoken to power. How will things change if no one complains? In one passage, Confucius tells his students they should rise up and overthrow an unjust local prince. One should be subordinate to authority, but only just and good authority and tradition.
Confucius was a great champion of scholarship. Like Plato, Confucius believed that society should not be an aristocracy but rather a meritocracy. Confucius believed that scholarship was necessary for developing the heart, and the ‘gentleman’, Confucius’ word for the great person, developed love for others and knowledge through study of the classic texts. As scholars have pointed out, while it has often been translated ‘gentleMAN’, the term is gender neutral and Confucius was talking about the righteous rather than the nobly born, though the term was used before Confucius to refer exclusively to nobles before him. When we see the term in the text, it can also be translated as ‘the noble’, meaning anyone of either gender or social status who is an excellent human being.
Needless to say, Confucius’ Analects became one of the central texts for devoted study in Chinese society, and Confucius became an ancestor revered by devotees with ritual. Confucius is credited as the father of China’s civil service system, a system in which anyone who tested well, regardless of their position in society, was given a government position. This is similar to the development of types of scribes in Egypt. It is just such a development that we call ‘the middle class’, the individuals who through study and work can rise or fall in position to fit the many niches required to run large cities and systems. What Plato recognized in Egypt, Confucius was much more successful in implementing in Chinese society, though unfortunately only after his death. Confucius himself always hoped for a good position, but did not succeed in obtaining one during his own life though he did teach many students and was revered by many of them, including powerful nobility.
Just as Confucius taught that intention is more important than action, he hated scholarship for show without genuine love of learning and discovery of human nature. A good example is 4.9, ‘if a scholar is ashamed of his shabby clothes or poor food, he is not worth listening to’. He also taught that we should balance learning with critical reflection, just as Buddha did, though Buddha, like Daoists, argued that study and critical reflection also needed meditation whereas Confucius saw study as superior to meditation. In the analects, Confucius says that studying without thinking is useless, but thinking without studying is dangerous, showing us that he does believe in individual insight but is traditional and believes in studying the traditional classics. He says, “The noble person is not a pot”, meaning that we are not containers for knowledge but should transform and reflect on what we study.
Confucius was a genius at seeing himself as equal to everyone, and he encouraged this attitude as the path to excellence itself. It was this point that the Jesuits found fascinating in comparing Confucianism to Christianity. Most of us have likely heard the ‘Golden Rule’, which is paraphrased from Confucius: ‘treat others the way you want to be treated’. While Jesus says, ‘don’t treat others how you do NOT want to be treated’, we can understand them to be one and the same. My favorite example is 7.22: Confucius says that if you put yourself with any two people at random, you can take their strengths as a model to follow and their faults as a warning. Clearly, Confucius believed that we all share the same set of strengths and faults, no matter how talented (or horrible) we happen to individually be or where our talents are. Confucius taught that NO ONE is perfect, not even himself, but there is good in everyone and everything, and we had best remember that we will never lose any of our connection to our fellow human beings if we only remember to look hard enough for it. Another excellent example from the Analects: “When you see a worthy man, seek to emulate him…When you see an unworthy man, examine yourself”.
Mencius & Xunzi
Confucius had two followers who became the famous two poles of interpretation of the Analects. Mencius or Menzi, the second patriarch of Confucianism by popular consent in the tradition, believed that Confucius taught that the human being is basically good and develops the heart, growing and developing the virtues through love. He argued that because the human individual is essentially good, we need ritual to guide our growth but love is the true essence. Xunzi, the third patriarch of Confucianism, a cynic and conservative, argued that the human being is essentially evil and without the rituals and tradition to hold our nature back we would be selfish and uncivilized. This remains the major split in Confucian thought, which accommodates both opinions while leaning more toward Menzi.
Menzi uses the famous example of a child about to fall into a well, arguing that anyone watching a child near a well would naturally grow anxious, even the most evil of people. Menzi argues that civilization began when people saw the corpses of relatives being attacked by animals and insects and felt compassion and grief. It is true that burial sites are some of the first archeological finds we have of human culture. Both Menzi and Xunzi, who attacks Menzi’s position later by name, use the example of little children to argue that human beings are good and human beings are evil. Menzi says that we know little children are good, before they are educated and taught manners. Xunzi says we know little children are evil, before they are educated and taught manners. Happy children are indeed lovable, and angry children are indeed immature. Many great thinkers, including Jesus and Nietzsche, teach us ‘be like a little child’, but we often tell others, ‘don’t be like a little child’. Opposite truths are often equally true.
Neo-Confucianism, Zhu Xi & Wang Yang Ming
About 1100 CE, Confucianism merged with Daoist and Buddhist ideas to form a Confucian revival called Neo-Confucianism by scholars today. Buddhist metaphors such as the pearl at the bottom of the muddy lake and the sun emerging from behind the clouds were reinterpreted in light of Confucianism and Daoism. The major figure of this revival was Zhu Xi (1130-1200 CE), who argued that all three traditions were teaching the same truth but that Confucius was the superior and primary teacher. The Neo-Confucians were trying to put Confucianism back into its primary place in Chinese culture after losing much ground to Buddhism over the previous five hundred years.
Wang Yang Ming (1470 – 1530 CE) one of the most revered Neo-Confucians, was famous for the idea of the unity of knowledge and action. While Confucius taught that intention and action are distinct things, Wang Yang Ming taught the complementary truth that the two are interactive as one whole. While someone can say that they know something, we can judge whether they truly know or not by how they act. An example he uses is if someone says they know that a smell is bad, but they do not act like it is bad (gagging, opening a window, pointing at their younger sibling), we could say that they do not really know that the smell is bad but only saying the smell is bad. In the same way, if we know someone is a good person we do not get nervous around them or hide our valuables when they come over. If we did, it could be said that we do not truly know they are good because we do not act like they are trustworthy.
Confucius’ Analects
Confucius shows us a brilliant development of questioning the individual and state that we have already seen develop elsewhere. When people gather, they can see each other and see groups, and are questioning and skeptical of themselves, other individuals, and group organizations.
First we look at the criticism of the individual, clearing the individual heart and putting oneself in tune with the Way. Then we look at criticism of the state, and see that the same shape applies.
Second, notice the passages where Confucius is criticizing sages who go to nature and do not study. Pay attention to this for next week, as these are early Daoists who have different opinions than Confucius about the cultivation of the human individual.
Criticism of the Individual:
(4.12) He who acts out of self interest arouses much resentment.
(5.5) ‘Ran Yong is good but not eloquent’- I don’t know if he is good, but he certainly does not need eloquence if he isn’t.
(11.10) Yan Hui died. ‘Master, this grief isn’t right’ C; ‘What sort of grief for such a man is right?
Criticism of Luxury:
(5.18) Master said: Zang Sunchen built a house for his tortoise, with pillars in the shape of mountains and rafters decorated with duckweed. Has he lost his mind?
(7.16) Even if you have only coarse grain, water and your arm for a pillow, you may still be happy. Riches and honors without justice are to me as fleeting clouds.
Criticism of Ritual without Virtue:
(3.26) authority without generosity, ceremony without reverence, mourning without grief, these things I cannot bear to contemplate.
(4.13) If one cannot govern by observing ritual and showing compassion, what is the use of ritual?
Scholarship without greed or want of career:
(4.9) If a scholar is ashamed of his shabby clothes or poor food, he is not worth listening to.
Haven’t seen someone who studies without any thought of career.
Good is at Hand (7.30) but no one is perfect (7.26)
Says again and again that he is not perfect, nor has he met perfection…
(7.33) My seal is as strong as anyone’s, but I have not succeeded in living nobly.
yet: ‘Is goodness out of reach? As soon as I long for goodness, goodness is at hand.’
(7.34) I make no claims to wisdom or to human perfection- how would I dare? Yet my aim never flags and I never tire of teaching people.
Disciple: ‘This is what we fail to follow.’
Criticism of Selfishness and Pride:
Whatever one’s position, you always share the faults and talents of everyone.
Thus, you have to work to compare self with others, as not intuitive.
You should compare yourself to others, reflect yourself through others no matter how you judge them to be, and work to get over selfishness and become compassionate and balanced (the way of heaven, opposed to selfish desire for lower).
Confucius values joining all of humanity, not being selfish.
(7.22) Put me with any two people at random- they will invariably have something to teach me. I can take their qualities as a model and their defects as a warning.
(9.8) Am I knowledgeable? No. A Bumpkin asked me a question, and my mind went blank. Still, I hammered at his problem from all sides, till I worked out something.
(1.16) Don’t worry if others don’t recognize your merits: worry that you may not
recognize theirs.
(2.13) Practice what you preach.
(4.17) When you see a worthy man, seek to emulate him. When you see an unworthy man, examine yourself.
(5.12) Zigong ‘I do not want to do to others…’ C: you’re not that far yet…
(11.4) Yan Hui is of no help to me: whatever I say pleases him.
(9.28) It is in the cold of winter that you see how green the pines and cypresses are.
(15.23) A gentleman does not approve of a person because he expresses a certain opinion, nor does he reject an opinion because it is expressed by a particular person.
(15.24) ‘Single word to guide one’s life?’ C- Reciprocity: do not do to others…
(19.21) A gentleman’s mistake is like an eclipse of the sun or moon.
When happens, everyone notices, and when corrected everyone looks up in admiration.
Good as Unknown, Beyond Judgment and Opinion:
(9.17) The master stood by a river and said: ‘Everything flows like this, without ceasing’
(note Heraclitus)
(2.17) Master said: Knowledge is to take the known as known and unknown as unknown.
(pre 3.14) (quoted by Wittgenstein) About what we don’t know we must keep silent.
(5.13) Our master’s views on culture can be gathered, but you can’t hear his views on the nature of things or the Way of Heaven.
(7.21) The master never talked of miracles, violence, disorders, spirits.
(7.35) Confucius is ill, student: ‘pray to spirits above & spirits below’
Con: In that case, I have been praying for a long time already.
(note not a rejection of the spiritual, but a knowing unknowing)
(11.12) Asked how to serve spirits, says: You have not yet learned how to serve man, how could you learn to serve the spirits?
Death: You do not yet know life, how can you learn about death?
Middle Way: (Buddha, Heraclitus)
(6.17) Who would leave a house without using the door? Why do people seek to walk outside the way?
(6.29) The power of the middle way is supreme, and yet it is not found among the people anymore. (notice restore the golden age)
Reform the old, bring in the new:
(2.11) He who by revising the old knows the new is fit to be a teacher.
(2.12) A gentleman is not a pot.
(Pre 3.4 cut off) each generation has added and dropped from the ritual, so we know what people will look like 100 generations from now (they will add and drop)
In pursuit of virtue, do not be afraid to outpace your teacher (15.36)
Criticism of the State:
Confucius is not a compliant sheep when it comes to the state.
His criticism of individual judgment and pride is matched by criticism of the state.
(11.17) Rich student tyrant: C- attach him: you have my permission.
Sees private interest trapped in the state (nobles disunifying Zhou court, into warring states).
(13.15) asked by Duke: Is there a single maxim/rule that could ruin a country?
C- The prince should never suffer contradiction. When in error, prince should be told.
(13.24) ‘What if everyone likes a man?’ C- Not enough
‘What if everyone hates him?’ C- Not enough: Good should love, bad should hate.
(13.20) ‘present politicians?’ Those puny creatures are not even worth mentioning.
(9.26) One cannot deny the humblest man his free will.
Criticism of Daoism and its sages retreat into Nature:
Just as Confucius appears in Daoist texts as an ally but inferior rival, so do proto-Daoist sages in the Analects. This is very much like Buddha vs. the Jains, in that other group isn’t mentioned by name, but found not to be in balance but extremists. Daoists wanted to escape into nature, while Confucians believe in the value of the city and embracing not escaping humankind. Believe in balance, like Daoists, but seek to balance the city, not escape into the perfect balance of nature from the city. Daoists are more skeptical of society.
(18.16) One cannot associate with birds and beasts. If the world were following the way, I would not have to reform it.
It is not right to be a hermit, and discard human relationships to preserve one’s purity.
(18.18) I do things differently. I follow no rigid prescriptions on what should or should not be done.
(4.1) It is beautiful to live amidst humanity. It is hardly wise to live in a place destitute of people (don’t be a Daoist hermit).
Criticism of Meditation (D and later B), to Confucians not as good as study:
(15.31) I once to meditate went without food for a day and a night without sleep.
It was no use. It is better to study.
Numerous criticisms of inactivity, inferior to activity, study and effort:
(2.1): At 15, I set my mind upon learning. At 30, I took my stand. At 40 I had no doubts. At 50, I knew the will (mandate) of heaven. At 60, my ear was attuned. At 70, I follow all the desires of my heart without breaking any rule.
(4.2) A good man rests in his humanity. A wise man profits from his humanity.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Asian Philosophy: Buddhism in Tibet, China & Japan
Buddhism in Tibet
Tibetan culture was transformed by Buddhism, which arrived from India, Afghanistan and China shortly after 600 CE. Mahayana Buddhism became not only Tibet’s official religion but its social structure, art and architecture as well. The Tibetan written characters were created to translate Buddhist texts into the Tibetan language. Many Mahayana texts, including Nagarjuna’s, survived in Tibet as Islam took over India. Tibetans claim that Buddhism arrived centuries earlier, when the Buddha himself and other Buddhas came to Tibet to teach. One amusing story has Buddha asking about Tibet before journeying there, and he is told that the Tibetans are the nicest people ever. Buddha worries that if the Tibetans are so extraordinarily nice, he will lose his finely honed ability to deal with jerks, so he takes along a terrible tea servant who constantly mocks the Buddha and plays tricks on him.
Buddhism developed into many competing schools of thought in Tibet as it had in India and did in China, Japan and throughout Asia. Tibetan Buddhism is known for its elaborate rituals, tantric practices, meditation exercises, and systems of symbols, deities and demons. Tibetans believe that many demons were converted to Buddhism by great teachers, and so much artwork features demons who are protectors of Buddhism, its teachings and the community. Gazing at these demons, and similarly at skull bowls of blood, decapitated heads and other horrifying images is thought to purify the self of obstructions and identify with the lowest and most horrifying levels of the self and mind.
Soon after Tibetan Buddhism was established, there was an influx of Chinese Chan (Zen, in the Japanese, which we will briefly cover today and move to koans exclusively in two weeks). Controversy arose between those who supported the elaborate Buddhist practices and those, including many nobles, who supported the simplicity of Zen, which taught that enlightenment could be achieved suddenly and without elaborate ceremonies and practices. Zen Buddhists do traditionally believe in deities and practice ceremonies, but meditation and enlightenment became the primary and simple focus. Interestingly, here in the Bay Area and in America the Beatniks loved Zen and its stark black and white imagery, while Hippies, many who did embrace Zen, were drawn to the colorful and elaborately beautiful art and practices of Tibetan Buddhism and Indian Hinduism. Legend has it that after a debate judged by the Tibetan King in 979 CE between both sides, the Chinese and their school was expelled and the King officially pronounced the Indian Nagarjuna to be affixed as patriarch of Tibetan Buddhism in opposition to Bodhidharma, the patriarch of Chan/Zen.
Between 1200 and 1500, many schools of Tibetan Buddhism arose in debate with each other over the vast store of Indian texts which survived only in Tibet. Education in Tibetan Buddhism largely consists of the memorization of texts and debate with others about various understandings of the texts and their teachings. Good debaters would achieve fame and following, much like athletes and celebrities today. Many debates revolved around the controversial concepts of emptiness and buddha-nature. As untranslated texts were being translated, schools based on the new texts (Gsar-ma) entered into debate with older schools based on the earlier translated and established texts (Rnin-ma).
According to modern scholarship, some of both the old and the new texts were never original Indian texts at all, but were written in Tibet and “discovered” by various figures at various times. Similar “discoveries” occurred in China and Japan with the development of Buddhism there. New schools would arise, and a member would “discover” a text hidden in a log or a cave that just happened to support their doctrines and argue against the doctrines of competing schools. Tibetans view Buddhism as evolving in India into the final form of Nagarjuna’s Madhyamaka school, and then each Tibetan school views this tradition as evolving in Tibet into their own position. This is very similar to Chan/Zen, each school viewing itself as the final evolution. As mentioned, this ‘final form’ takes drastically different forms in various places.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead has attracted a following in Europe and America, first among scholars such as the Theosophists and the psychoanalyst Karl Jung, who noted the similarities with the Egyptian Book of the Dead in his search for the primordial archetypes of the common human psyche, and later with Timothy Leary and hippies who viewed psychedelic experiences as a death and rebirth. The text is to be read to the dying and then to the corpse in the days after death to help it be released from rebirth and achieve nirvana. Again and again, the text implores the dead to embrace the clear light from above which appears bright and frightening to the ignorant, who prefer the dull light from below. Embracing the clear light, which they are now ‘set face to face’ with, results in liberation, while running into the softer dim light means being reborn in the world of suffering and desire.
In a series of talks in 2010, the Dalai Lama spoke to an audience on the need for compassion and discipline across religious and secular lines, and then taught from Nagarjuna’s central texts. We have already discussed Nagarjuna, and his importance for Tibetan Buddhism as well as Mahayana Buddhism across North East Asia. He says that the golden age of ancient Indian should be a model of how many religions and philosophies can coexist together. He says that he believes that only Buddhism truly believes in anatman, the absence of a permanent self, but he will ask Jain leaders about this at a Jain ceremony and series of dialogues he is going to attend in a month. He also mentions that some Jains attend these conferences completely naked, and giggles for awhile about it. He also mentions that religions such as Christianity and Islam which believe in heaven do believe in a permanent self, but neither he nor they know what this is for sure.
Teaching from the Nagarjuna texts, he says that the true self has no self particular to itself at all, and that through study, critical reflection, and meditation, as we saw last time, one can come to a greater and greater realization of this deepest level of reality. He follows Nagarjuna who criticizes the Yogachara or Mind Only school for maintaining a duality between mental conceptions and mind, saying that form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. Rather than ridding the mind of mental conceptions, we become not only the mental conceptions but the conceptions they oppose to realize mind. Realizing interdependence means maintaining distinctions while simultaneously overcoming them. This is the true cleansing of realization. Just as Buddha criticized Jains for trying to get rid of the self as a conception, Nagarjuna is criticizing the Yogachara for trying to get rid of conception, including the self. Negation of concepts is not their annihilation, but accepting the things that they negate. Overcoming the self is not annihilation of the self, but acceptance of the other as the self through compassion.
On a final political note, Tibet is currently occupied and claimed by China. While the Tibetan nobility did not treat the common people very well, a major factor that allowed the Communists to invade and take over, the Tibetans begged the Americans to help them and arm them against China, but American CIA agents evaluated the situation and did not see much value in protecting the vast Tibetan dessert lands, allowing Tibet to fall to China. Two years later, the world’s largest deposit of uranium was discovered in the Tibetan and Khazakstani mountains, putting this in Soviet Russian and Communist Chinese control. If those deposits had been discovered two years earlier, it is likely that America would have protected the Tibetans and Tibet would be free today.
Buddhism in China & Japan
We will cover the Period of the Hundred Schools (600-200 BCE) and the Han unification of China (220 BCE - 200 CE) at the beginning of the second half of the class before we cover Confucianism, Moism, and Daoism. The short story, to introduce Buddhism in China, is that many schools of thought flourished in the warring period before the Han unification of China, and that with the arrival of the Han dynasty came royal patronage and support for Confucianism and Daoism. In the latter half of the Han dynasty, between 65 and 200 CE, the third most prominent school of Chinese thought, Buddhism, began to spread and settle in China, arriving from India and central Asia.
The Han was a prosperous time, when there was much new money and much interest in philosophy and study and patronizing the arts and temples. The old moneyed families, the new money families coming up, and the scholars were now competing and collaborating voices. By the later half of the Han, there were 30,000 students at the government funded state university, where primarily Confucianism and other classic texts were studied.
Unfortunately, Confucianism had become a new orthodoxy, and skeptical calls for revisions as well as the weakening of Han power had many scholars looking to Daoism, particularly the two main texts of the Dao De Jing and the Zhuang Zi we will study, as well as other systems such as the paradoxical Logicians and authoritarian Legalists for new solutions and understandings to old problems just as Buddhism was coming over the border. The peasants, who were increasingly desperate, turned to Daoist religious communities of worship in large numbers and rebellions were common. The largest were the Yellow Turban rebellions of 184 and 189 CE which sought land and food distribution for the people. The Han triumphed and put down the rebellions, but infighting soon pulled the Han apart again once it was no longer unified against the Yellow Turbans. This power vacuum allowed Buddhism to take hold and thrive.
Daoism offered the strongest alternative for both the elite scholars and the common devotional communities. They centered on the ideals of a return to nature and the natural, the freedom of the community and individual from abuse of authority, and the absolute as mystical One. Buddhism increasingly offered an alternative also in line with these ideals. Some early Daoist tales sound much like later Buddhist koan stories. Liu Ling, a Daoist master, was often drunk and sometimes lay around completely naked, and when several men entered his house and saw him in this state, he replied, “Heaven and earth are my dwelling, and my house is my pants...What are you all doing in my pants?”. As uplifting as these stories were, the Daoists offered little structure for reordering society, some retreating into nature, others ignoring local tyrants or turning to religious devotion and ecstasy.
Buddhism was at first regarded as a strange foreign form of Daoism. The two fought and supported each other alternatively for centuries afterward. In spite of their profound similarities, centrally skepticism of human understandings and transcendence of attachment in the unification of all, Indian and Chinese language and culture had profound differences as well. Chinese language uses short terms, while Indian language strings incredibly long and complicated terms together. Similarly, Chinese philosophy values brevity and expresses itself in simple, concrete metaphors, while Indian philosophy values comprehensiveness and expresses itself in complex and abstract analysis. A comparison of Daoist and Buddhist texts shows this immediately. Compare the metaphor of the well frog in the Zhuang Zi with the middle length discourses of the Buddha on the categories of existence and how each is inherently empty. Consider that Buddhists would refer to ‘perfection’, while Daoists would refer to a thing being ‘round’, Buddhists would refer to ‘one’s true nature’, while Daoists would refer to ‘one’s original face’, and Buddhists would refer to ‘essence’, while Daoists would refer to ‘the pupil of the eye’. This was the same situation when Buddhism arrived in Japan around 550 CE, Daoism and Confucianism having arrived long before. The Japanese understood Buddhism in a Daoist natural world context.
Socially Chinese and Indian cultures were also at odds. Chinese society was familial, seeking value in the worldly prosperity of the family. Indian Buddhism valued the otherworldly, and advocated leaving the home in pursuit of enlightenment in the monastery. While Daoism did have its wandering and wilderness dwelling sages, this would be a sticking point for Buddhism for many centuries. Many competing Confucians and Daoists would routinely call for an expelling of the foreign culture that asked the young to abandon their families for the monastery. To overcome this, Buddhists, like Daoists, offered local communities support in education, medicine, and relief in times of crisis. Gradually, Daoism and Buddhism were interrelated, with the Buddhist Dharma (teaching) equated with the Dao (way), and Buddhist nirvana (liberation) equated with the Daoist wu-wei (non-action). These were crude equations, which were enriched over centuries of translation and scholarship.
Buddhist sutras continued to arrive from India, carried by both Indian and Chinese Buddhist monks on pilgrimages to spread the dharma. In architecture, the Indian stupa became the Chinese pagoda, one of the most common and recognizable forms of Chinese architecture. Chinese artists began portraying the Buddha and boddhisattvas in Chinese form. The Mahayana Completion of Wisdom sutras (Prajnaparamita sutras) were introduced, becoming the central texts of the most popular forms of Buddhism today, Chinese and Japanese Pure Land Buddhism, which focus on devotional chanting to bodhsattvas for good fortune and protection.
While Pure Land traditions were popular among common people and traditional noble families, the Chan (Chinese) or Zen (Japanese) tradition became popular among scholars and nobles who pursued philosophy, literature and the arts. The Pure Land tradition feeds off the faith practices of the Tiantai school, and the Chan/Zen feeds off the wisdom tradition of the Huayan school. Both teach the oneness of all things, but the Tiantai would say there are demons in the heavens and buddhas in the hells, while the Huayan say that One is All and All is One. Next week, we will exclusively study the Chan/Zen literature and the koan stories, some of my favorite philosophy texts. The history of Buddhism in Korea and Japan is also dominated by the duality of the Pure Land devotional traditions and the Chan/Zen meditation and koan practice.
In Japan, Amida (from the Indian Amitabha) worship reached a radical and popular form that bears interesting resemblances to Protestant Christianity. Shinran (1173-1262) founded one of the most popular forms of Japanese Buddhism, Jodoshinshu, which taught that other than the most dedicated sages human beings are too sinful to gain enlightenment, so the best way for all people to gain entrance to higher existence, in accord with the Mahayana tradition, was to rely entirely on the grace and power of Amida who could bring both the good and the bad to heavenly realms or pure lands. It is only in turning away from self accomplishment and entirely towards the salvation of all by grace that the most people could be saved from hell worlds. Shinran decided that no vow of celibacy would make much difference, and so he married and taught his priests to marry, for which he was persecuted for the rest of his life.
As texts arrived and were translated, the Chinese noticed that the Theravada and Mahayana had two different ideas of how one achieves enlightenment already mentioned. The Theravada teach that progress is gradual, much like the Confucians do, and that it is only study within the institution that brings slow and steady progress. The Mahayana teach that buddha-nature is already within, and that sudden breakthroughs and transcendent states are achievable by anyone, much like the Daoists do, and that this can occur either inside or outside of the institution. This dual understanding became complimentary but also developed into a conflict, the central conflict of the two schools of Chan/Zen and later a conflict within Neo-Daoism and Neo-Confucianism which had both subsumed much of Buddhism in later centuries.
All of this resulted in a vast expansion of Buddhism, among common devotional worshipers who sought refuge in new divinities, practices and communities, among scholars who found new philosophical concepts and texts to study and re-read, and among the wealthy who gave immense amounts for new temples, monasteries and monuments with new designs and appeal to secure their own fortune not only with the deities but with the populace. Daoist priests and Buddhist priests alike served communities and noble families, providing relief for the suffering of both the poor through charity and the rich through consolation. Buddhist organizations funded hospitals, low cost hostels for travelers, bridges, and trees planted beside popular roads.
Unfortunately, this allowed many Buddhist monasteries to become extraordinarily wealthy, which attracted unwanted attention from competing systems and rulers who were wary of rivals. It was not lost on the ruling powers that Buddhism, like Daoism, served as a popular center of power that could, and sometimes did, result in rebellion. Mahayana Buddhism in particular had teachings that could be interpreted as supporting rebellion, especially by those in the suffering countryside. In the last age, when the buddha Maitreya was expected foretold by signs, no government was legitimate and the world was soon to be reformed and reborn. Many rebellions used the color white, the color associated with Maitreya, as a symbol for their movements.
In some periods, Buddhism or Daoism was persecuted depending on patronage, while in other periods each received vast contributions and thrived. This is entirely similar to Catholic monasteries in Europe, who not only fought amongst themselves (Franciscans, Dominicans, and Jesuits) after becoming wealthy civic centers of education, medicine and technology, but had to survive persecution of rulers who wanted their wealth as well. In later dynasties, after Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism were the three established schools of Chinese thought and were interwoven in official rituals and popular culture, rulers worked hard to work with Buddhist leadership, who had considerable sway over much of the population, while also making sure that they did not acquire too much unchecked power.
Around 1100 CE, Neo-Confucianism attempted to revive Confucianism to return it to its central place in society. While Zhu Xi, the greatest teacher of Neo-Confucianism, called Buddhism the enemy, he could not help but reincorporate Buddhist teachings such as the metaphors of the sun behind the clouds and the pearl at the bottom of the muddy pond, each implying that through study, as well as meditation, the inner truth and nature can be realized. While originally the term ‘li’ meant human order and tradition, in Neo-Confucianism Li became cosmic order, more like the Dharma of Buddhism and Dao of Daoism after being intertwined with Buddhism over centuries. While Confucius taught that one should benefit one’s own family as well as human kind, Neo-Confucians taught that one should benefit all conscious beings like Mahayana boddhisattvas. Wang Yang Ming (1472-1529 CE), one of the greatest Neo-Confucians who we will study, was called a Buddhist in disguise by his opponents for teaching Buddhist metaphors that were part of popular culture and sudden achievement of new understanding. Neo-Confucianism supported state funded hospitals, orphanages, homes for the elderly, and public cemeteries.
In the last two centuries, as China encountered Europeans, there were new favorable and unfavorable interpretations of Buddhism used to understand China’s relationship with the new foreigners. Some attempted to show that there was nothing new in European thought that could not be found in Buddhism, such as rationalism, humanism, democracy, dialectic, evolution, and later communism and existentialism. Others argued that Indian Buddhism and its transcendent visions had held China back such that it had not modernized as fast as Europe. Later, Chinese communists such as Mao would both condemn Buddhism as superstition of a past age as well as celebrate it as a common bond with Asia that transcended nationalism and demonstrated that Asia and the world could one day share a common culture.
One final modern figure to mention is Nishida Kitaro (1870-1966), a Japanese philosopher and Zen practitioner who founded an entire school of philosophy in Japan by comparing Zen and the Buddhist tradition to German philosophy, particularly the existentialism of Nietzsche and Heidegger. In his book The Self Overcoming of Nihilism, he argues that German and French existentialists have a preoccupation with the emptiness of existence as a negative, meaningless and frightening thing, and that Buddhism and Zen have gone beyond this to affirm the positive abundance and richness of the emptiness and void.
Tibetan culture was transformed by Buddhism, which arrived from India, Afghanistan and China shortly after 600 CE. Mahayana Buddhism became not only Tibet’s official religion but its social structure, art and architecture as well. The Tibetan written characters were created to translate Buddhist texts into the Tibetan language. Many Mahayana texts, including Nagarjuna’s, survived in Tibet as Islam took over India. Tibetans claim that Buddhism arrived centuries earlier, when the Buddha himself and other Buddhas came to Tibet to teach. One amusing story has Buddha asking about Tibet before journeying there, and he is told that the Tibetans are the nicest people ever. Buddha worries that if the Tibetans are so extraordinarily nice, he will lose his finely honed ability to deal with jerks, so he takes along a terrible tea servant who constantly mocks the Buddha and plays tricks on him.
Buddhism developed into many competing schools of thought in Tibet as it had in India and did in China, Japan and throughout Asia. Tibetan Buddhism is known for its elaborate rituals, tantric practices, meditation exercises, and systems of symbols, deities and demons. Tibetans believe that many demons were converted to Buddhism by great teachers, and so much artwork features demons who are protectors of Buddhism, its teachings and the community. Gazing at these demons, and similarly at skull bowls of blood, decapitated heads and other horrifying images is thought to purify the self of obstructions and identify with the lowest and most horrifying levels of the self and mind.
Soon after Tibetan Buddhism was established, there was an influx of Chinese Chan (Zen, in the Japanese, which we will briefly cover today and move to koans exclusively in two weeks). Controversy arose between those who supported the elaborate Buddhist practices and those, including many nobles, who supported the simplicity of Zen, which taught that enlightenment could be achieved suddenly and without elaborate ceremonies and practices. Zen Buddhists do traditionally believe in deities and practice ceremonies, but meditation and enlightenment became the primary and simple focus. Interestingly, here in the Bay Area and in America the Beatniks loved Zen and its stark black and white imagery, while Hippies, many who did embrace Zen, were drawn to the colorful and elaborately beautiful art and practices of Tibetan Buddhism and Indian Hinduism. Legend has it that after a debate judged by the Tibetan King in 979 CE between both sides, the Chinese and their school was expelled and the King officially pronounced the Indian Nagarjuna to be affixed as patriarch of Tibetan Buddhism in opposition to Bodhidharma, the patriarch of Chan/Zen.
Between 1200 and 1500, many schools of Tibetan Buddhism arose in debate with each other over the vast store of Indian texts which survived only in Tibet. Education in Tibetan Buddhism largely consists of the memorization of texts and debate with others about various understandings of the texts and their teachings. Good debaters would achieve fame and following, much like athletes and celebrities today. Many debates revolved around the controversial concepts of emptiness and buddha-nature. As untranslated texts were being translated, schools based on the new texts (Gsar-ma) entered into debate with older schools based on the earlier translated and established texts (Rnin-ma).
According to modern scholarship, some of both the old and the new texts were never original Indian texts at all, but were written in Tibet and “discovered” by various figures at various times. Similar “discoveries” occurred in China and Japan with the development of Buddhism there. New schools would arise, and a member would “discover” a text hidden in a log or a cave that just happened to support their doctrines and argue against the doctrines of competing schools. Tibetans view Buddhism as evolving in India into the final form of Nagarjuna’s Madhyamaka school, and then each Tibetan school views this tradition as evolving in Tibet into their own position. This is very similar to Chan/Zen, each school viewing itself as the final evolution. As mentioned, this ‘final form’ takes drastically different forms in various places.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead has attracted a following in Europe and America, first among scholars such as the Theosophists and the psychoanalyst Karl Jung, who noted the similarities with the Egyptian Book of the Dead in his search for the primordial archetypes of the common human psyche, and later with Timothy Leary and hippies who viewed psychedelic experiences as a death and rebirth. The text is to be read to the dying and then to the corpse in the days after death to help it be released from rebirth and achieve nirvana. Again and again, the text implores the dead to embrace the clear light from above which appears bright and frightening to the ignorant, who prefer the dull light from below. Embracing the clear light, which they are now ‘set face to face’ with, results in liberation, while running into the softer dim light means being reborn in the world of suffering and desire.
In a series of talks in 2010, the Dalai Lama spoke to an audience on the need for compassion and discipline across religious and secular lines, and then taught from Nagarjuna’s central texts. We have already discussed Nagarjuna, and his importance for Tibetan Buddhism as well as Mahayana Buddhism across North East Asia. He says that the golden age of ancient Indian should be a model of how many religions and philosophies can coexist together. He says that he believes that only Buddhism truly believes in anatman, the absence of a permanent self, but he will ask Jain leaders about this at a Jain ceremony and series of dialogues he is going to attend in a month. He also mentions that some Jains attend these conferences completely naked, and giggles for awhile about it. He also mentions that religions such as Christianity and Islam which believe in heaven do believe in a permanent self, but neither he nor they know what this is for sure.
Teaching from the Nagarjuna texts, he says that the true self has no self particular to itself at all, and that through study, critical reflection, and meditation, as we saw last time, one can come to a greater and greater realization of this deepest level of reality. He follows Nagarjuna who criticizes the Yogachara or Mind Only school for maintaining a duality between mental conceptions and mind, saying that form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. Rather than ridding the mind of mental conceptions, we become not only the mental conceptions but the conceptions they oppose to realize mind. Realizing interdependence means maintaining distinctions while simultaneously overcoming them. This is the true cleansing of realization. Just as Buddha criticized Jains for trying to get rid of the self as a conception, Nagarjuna is criticizing the Yogachara for trying to get rid of conception, including the self. Negation of concepts is not their annihilation, but accepting the things that they negate. Overcoming the self is not annihilation of the self, but acceptance of the other as the self through compassion.
On a final political note, Tibet is currently occupied and claimed by China. While the Tibetan nobility did not treat the common people very well, a major factor that allowed the Communists to invade and take over, the Tibetans begged the Americans to help them and arm them against China, but American CIA agents evaluated the situation and did not see much value in protecting the vast Tibetan dessert lands, allowing Tibet to fall to China. Two years later, the world’s largest deposit of uranium was discovered in the Tibetan and Khazakstani mountains, putting this in Soviet Russian and Communist Chinese control. If those deposits had been discovered two years earlier, it is likely that America would have protected the Tibetans and Tibet would be free today.
Buddhism in China & Japan
We will cover the Period of the Hundred Schools (600-200 BCE) and the Han unification of China (220 BCE - 200 CE) at the beginning of the second half of the class before we cover Confucianism, Moism, and Daoism. The short story, to introduce Buddhism in China, is that many schools of thought flourished in the warring period before the Han unification of China, and that with the arrival of the Han dynasty came royal patronage and support for Confucianism and Daoism. In the latter half of the Han dynasty, between 65 and 200 CE, the third most prominent school of Chinese thought, Buddhism, began to spread and settle in China, arriving from India and central Asia.
The Han was a prosperous time, when there was much new money and much interest in philosophy and study and patronizing the arts and temples. The old moneyed families, the new money families coming up, and the scholars were now competing and collaborating voices. By the later half of the Han, there were 30,000 students at the government funded state university, where primarily Confucianism and other classic texts were studied.
Unfortunately, Confucianism had become a new orthodoxy, and skeptical calls for revisions as well as the weakening of Han power had many scholars looking to Daoism, particularly the two main texts of the Dao De Jing and the Zhuang Zi we will study, as well as other systems such as the paradoxical Logicians and authoritarian Legalists for new solutions and understandings to old problems just as Buddhism was coming over the border. The peasants, who were increasingly desperate, turned to Daoist religious communities of worship in large numbers and rebellions were common. The largest were the Yellow Turban rebellions of 184 and 189 CE which sought land and food distribution for the people. The Han triumphed and put down the rebellions, but infighting soon pulled the Han apart again once it was no longer unified against the Yellow Turbans. This power vacuum allowed Buddhism to take hold and thrive.
Daoism offered the strongest alternative for both the elite scholars and the common devotional communities. They centered on the ideals of a return to nature and the natural, the freedom of the community and individual from abuse of authority, and the absolute as mystical One. Buddhism increasingly offered an alternative also in line with these ideals. Some early Daoist tales sound much like later Buddhist koan stories. Liu Ling, a Daoist master, was often drunk and sometimes lay around completely naked, and when several men entered his house and saw him in this state, he replied, “Heaven and earth are my dwelling, and my house is my pants...What are you all doing in my pants?”. As uplifting as these stories were, the Daoists offered little structure for reordering society, some retreating into nature, others ignoring local tyrants or turning to religious devotion and ecstasy.
Buddhism was at first regarded as a strange foreign form of Daoism. The two fought and supported each other alternatively for centuries afterward. In spite of their profound similarities, centrally skepticism of human understandings and transcendence of attachment in the unification of all, Indian and Chinese language and culture had profound differences as well. Chinese language uses short terms, while Indian language strings incredibly long and complicated terms together. Similarly, Chinese philosophy values brevity and expresses itself in simple, concrete metaphors, while Indian philosophy values comprehensiveness and expresses itself in complex and abstract analysis. A comparison of Daoist and Buddhist texts shows this immediately. Compare the metaphor of the well frog in the Zhuang Zi with the middle length discourses of the Buddha on the categories of existence and how each is inherently empty. Consider that Buddhists would refer to ‘perfection’, while Daoists would refer to a thing being ‘round’, Buddhists would refer to ‘one’s true nature’, while Daoists would refer to ‘one’s original face’, and Buddhists would refer to ‘essence’, while Daoists would refer to ‘the pupil of the eye’. This was the same situation when Buddhism arrived in Japan around 550 CE, Daoism and Confucianism having arrived long before. The Japanese understood Buddhism in a Daoist natural world context.
Socially Chinese and Indian cultures were also at odds. Chinese society was familial, seeking value in the worldly prosperity of the family. Indian Buddhism valued the otherworldly, and advocated leaving the home in pursuit of enlightenment in the monastery. While Daoism did have its wandering and wilderness dwelling sages, this would be a sticking point for Buddhism for many centuries. Many competing Confucians and Daoists would routinely call for an expelling of the foreign culture that asked the young to abandon their families for the monastery. To overcome this, Buddhists, like Daoists, offered local communities support in education, medicine, and relief in times of crisis. Gradually, Daoism and Buddhism were interrelated, with the Buddhist Dharma (teaching) equated with the Dao (way), and Buddhist nirvana (liberation) equated with the Daoist wu-wei (non-action). These were crude equations, which were enriched over centuries of translation and scholarship.
Buddhist sutras continued to arrive from India, carried by both Indian and Chinese Buddhist monks on pilgrimages to spread the dharma. In architecture, the Indian stupa became the Chinese pagoda, one of the most common and recognizable forms of Chinese architecture. Chinese artists began portraying the Buddha and boddhisattvas in Chinese form. The Mahayana Completion of Wisdom sutras (Prajnaparamita sutras) were introduced, becoming the central texts of the most popular forms of Buddhism today, Chinese and Japanese Pure Land Buddhism, which focus on devotional chanting to bodhsattvas for good fortune and protection.
While Pure Land traditions were popular among common people and traditional noble families, the Chan (Chinese) or Zen (Japanese) tradition became popular among scholars and nobles who pursued philosophy, literature and the arts. The Pure Land tradition feeds off the faith practices of the Tiantai school, and the Chan/Zen feeds off the wisdom tradition of the Huayan school. Both teach the oneness of all things, but the Tiantai would say there are demons in the heavens and buddhas in the hells, while the Huayan say that One is All and All is One. Next week, we will exclusively study the Chan/Zen literature and the koan stories, some of my favorite philosophy texts. The history of Buddhism in Korea and Japan is also dominated by the duality of the Pure Land devotional traditions and the Chan/Zen meditation and koan practice.
In Japan, Amida (from the Indian Amitabha) worship reached a radical and popular form that bears interesting resemblances to Protestant Christianity. Shinran (1173-1262) founded one of the most popular forms of Japanese Buddhism, Jodoshinshu, which taught that other than the most dedicated sages human beings are too sinful to gain enlightenment, so the best way for all people to gain entrance to higher existence, in accord with the Mahayana tradition, was to rely entirely on the grace and power of Amida who could bring both the good and the bad to heavenly realms or pure lands. It is only in turning away from self accomplishment and entirely towards the salvation of all by grace that the most people could be saved from hell worlds. Shinran decided that no vow of celibacy would make much difference, and so he married and taught his priests to marry, for which he was persecuted for the rest of his life.
As texts arrived and were translated, the Chinese noticed that the Theravada and Mahayana had two different ideas of how one achieves enlightenment already mentioned. The Theravada teach that progress is gradual, much like the Confucians do, and that it is only study within the institution that brings slow and steady progress. The Mahayana teach that buddha-nature is already within, and that sudden breakthroughs and transcendent states are achievable by anyone, much like the Daoists do, and that this can occur either inside or outside of the institution. This dual understanding became complimentary but also developed into a conflict, the central conflict of the two schools of Chan/Zen and later a conflict within Neo-Daoism and Neo-Confucianism which had both subsumed much of Buddhism in later centuries.
All of this resulted in a vast expansion of Buddhism, among common devotional worshipers who sought refuge in new divinities, practices and communities, among scholars who found new philosophical concepts and texts to study and re-read, and among the wealthy who gave immense amounts for new temples, monasteries and monuments with new designs and appeal to secure their own fortune not only with the deities but with the populace. Daoist priests and Buddhist priests alike served communities and noble families, providing relief for the suffering of both the poor through charity and the rich through consolation. Buddhist organizations funded hospitals, low cost hostels for travelers, bridges, and trees planted beside popular roads.
Unfortunately, this allowed many Buddhist monasteries to become extraordinarily wealthy, which attracted unwanted attention from competing systems and rulers who were wary of rivals. It was not lost on the ruling powers that Buddhism, like Daoism, served as a popular center of power that could, and sometimes did, result in rebellion. Mahayana Buddhism in particular had teachings that could be interpreted as supporting rebellion, especially by those in the suffering countryside. In the last age, when the buddha Maitreya was expected foretold by signs, no government was legitimate and the world was soon to be reformed and reborn. Many rebellions used the color white, the color associated with Maitreya, as a symbol for their movements.
In some periods, Buddhism or Daoism was persecuted depending on patronage, while in other periods each received vast contributions and thrived. This is entirely similar to Catholic monasteries in Europe, who not only fought amongst themselves (Franciscans, Dominicans, and Jesuits) after becoming wealthy civic centers of education, medicine and technology, but had to survive persecution of rulers who wanted their wealth as well. In later dynasties, after Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism were the three established schools of Chinese thought and were interwoven in official rituals and popular culture, rulers worked hard to work with Buddhist leadership, who had considerable sway over much of the population, while also making sure that they did not acquire too much unchecked power.
Around 1100 CE, Neo-Confucianism attempted to revive Confucianism to return it to its central place in society. While Zhu Xi, the greatest teacher of Neo-Confucianism, called Buddhism the enemy, he could not help but reincorporate Buddhist teachings such as the metaphors of the sun behind the clouds and the pearl at the bottom of the muddy pond, each implying that through study, as well as meditation, the inner truth and nature can be realized. While originally the term ‘li’ meant human order and tradition, in Neo-Confucianism Li became cosmic order, more like the Dharma of Buddhism and Dao of Daoism after being intertwined with Buddhism over centuries. While Confucius taught that one should benefit one’s own family as well as human kind, Neo-Confucians taught that one should benefit all conscious beings like Mahayana boddhisattvas. Wang Yang Ming (1472-1529 CE), one of the greatest Neo-Confucians who we will study, was called a Buddhist in disguise by his opponents for teaching Buddhist metaphors that were part of popular culture and sudden achievement of new understanding. Neo-Confucianism supported state funded hospitals, orphanages, homes for the elderly, and public cemeteries.
In the last two centuries, as China encountered Europeans, there were new favorable and unfavorable interpretations of Buddhism used to understand China’s relationship with the new foreigners. Some attempted to show that there was nothing new in European thought that could not be found in Buddhism, such as rationalism, humanism, democracy, dialectic, evolution, and later communism and existentialism. Others argued that Indian Buddhism and its transcendent visions had held China back such that it had not modernized as fast as Europe. Later, Chinese communists such as Mao would both condemn Buddhism as superstition of a past age as well as celebrate it as a common bond with Asia that transcended nationalism and demonstrated that Asia and the world could one day share a common culture.
One final modern figure to mention is Nishida Kitaro (1870-1966), a Japanese philosopher and Zen practitioner who founded an entire school of philosophy in Japan by comparing Zen and the Buddhist tradition to German philosophy, particularly the existentialism of Nietzsche and Heidegger. In his book The Self Overcoming of Nihilism, he argues that German and French existentialists have a preoccupation with the emptiness of existence as a negative, meaningless and frightening thing, and that Buddhism and Zen have gone beyond this to affirm the positive abundance and richness of the emptiness and void.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Logic: Greek Skepticism
HERACLITUS
According to one source, Heraclitus was a king who abandoned the title to become a philosopher. This has been identified as a close resemblance to the story of the Buddha in India, and some scholars have argued that Heraclitus was in fact the Buddha from India while others have argued that the Buddha was in fact Heraclitus from Greece. Both thinkers were mythologized as a king who left powerful king position and became a sage, putting the mental and spiritual above the corporeal and material. Both believe in the enlightening sun rising above the watery chaos of human perception and desire, but it is far more likely that the two were not the same individual and simply share the cosmology common to the cultures of the ancient world. Plato, who we will study next, shares this as well.
We do not know much at all about Heraclitus’ life, but he likely lived about 540 BCE. It is said in some sources that he was a king who gave up his throne to his brother to be a sage, but this is impossible to confirm and as mentioned quite allegorical which is always suspicious. He is said by other sources to have been a doctor, and many of his fragments do speak about the workings of physiology within the larger frame of physics as a thinker who is immersed in ancient cosmology would. A fragment reads:
Moisture makes the soul succumb to joy. Dry, the soul grows wise and good.
Heraclitus believed that the soul, mind and self becomes soggy and intoxicated when one indulges in desire and pleasure (drinking and sex are moist by nature), and likewise when one studies with the fire of the mind and abstains from pleasure the soul dries out. While this could come from a physician, some fragments seem critical of physicians and the practice of medicine just as others are critical of philosophers, spiritual groups and politics. A fragment reads:
The cosmos works by harmony of tensions, like the lyre and bow. Therefore, good and ill are one. Good and ill to the physician must be one, since he derives his fee from torturing the sick.
Heraclitus did write a book which he entrusted to the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, though we only have the very beginning today. There was a popular book of Heraclitus’ philosophy in ancient Greece, but this may or may not have been the original text. While we do not have any of his writings today, he is mentioned often by other writers, philosophers and historians who quote him and his work, and these pieces are put together as the fragments of Heraclitus which we read as a single text.
Heraclitus is a very skeptical thinker. He is sometimes portrayed as sad or depressed, called the ‘weeping philosopher’ by some and looking very down in Raphael’s painting, The School of Athens. He may, however, have been quite happy and misconstrued as sad by others, particularly Platonists who are opposed to his idea of formless fire and were supported in the Christian tradition. Raphael, who painted in the period of the Neoplatonic Renaissance, would have seen Heraclitus in this light. Heraclitus is angry at the politics of his city state Miletus. Like the Athenians killed Socrates for questioning too much and so “inciting the youth to riot”, Miletus exiled Hermadoros (whose name means ‘lover of Hermes’, Hermes being a god of wisdom and knowledge who was identified with Thoth, the Egyptian god of knowledge) because was ‘worthier than average’, presumably doing philosophy and cosmology. Heraclitus responded:
As for the Ephesians, I would have them, youths, elders, and all those between, go hang themselves, leaving the city in the abler hands of children.
Just like the ancient Sumerian lamenter, Confucius, and many other great thinkers, Heraclitus did not like the politics of his day and was critical of traditions of thought in general. Heraclitus was not, however, sad or angry as much as he was a skeptic. Many of his fragments appear playful jokes. Despising the beliefs, traditions and politics of the day does not make one a sad or angry person relative to others. Rather, it turns criticism of the other into criticism of the self and one’s own civilization. Heraclitus was convinced that wisdom and inquiring within show us that all is one big cosmic fire, and things that unify the community and the individual bring wholeness and true happiness. However, he believed that humans are often foolish and let their minds divide themselves from the whole and from each other such that their understandings are disjointed and ignorant.
This is very typical thinking of skeptics the world over. A dogmatist would say that there are specific truths that are certain and must be separated from the uncertain, specific goods that must be separated from the evil. A skeptic would say, like Heraclitus and the Daoists from China, that the truth and the good is the whole and the great One, and the tendency of the mind to divide the good and the true from the rest is the opposite of true understanding and wisdom.
Heraclitus was not a fan of experts and specialists, and he ridiculed the cultural leaders of his time. He says that the common people are completely asleep, but far more dangerous are the experts who have a small piece of the puzzle and say that they know the entire truth. He calls the poets (Hesiod and Homer) and the Pythagoreans frauds, and says that there are no permanent truths or laws other than the constant formation of watery chaos by the sun and cosmic fire. Notice that this does not question the set up of the cosmos as we have studied it everywhere (and what the Persians gave to the Eastern Greek city states). Many often ask, “Why, then, should I listen to Heraclitus, since he is simply an expert?”. Heraclitus replies as most skeptics do: don’t take my word for it, but look into the world and within yourself and you will find that it is true. The beginning of his book, which we still have, reads:
The word proves those first hearing it as numb to understanding as the ones who have not heard, yet all things follow from the word. Some, blundering with what I set before you, try in vain with empty talk to separate the essences of things and say how each thing truly is, and all the rest make no attempt. They no more see how they behave broad waking than remember clearly what they did asleep.
For wisdom, listen not to me but to the word and know that all is one. Those unmindful when they hear, for all they make of their intelligence, may be regarded as the walking dead. People dull their wits with gibberish, and cannot use their ears and eyes. Many fail to grasp what they have seen, and cannot judge what they have learned, although they tell themselves they know. Yet they lack the skill to listen or to speak. Whoever cannot seek the unforeseen sees nothing, for the known way is an impasse. Things keep their secrets.
Now that we can travel anywhere, we need no longer take the poets and myth-makers for sure witnesses over disputed facts…If learning were a path of wisdom, those most learned about myth would not believe, with Hesiod, that Pallas in her wisdom gloats over the noise of battle. Pythagoras may well have been the deepest in his learning of all men, and still he claimed to recollect details of former lives, being in one a cucumber and one time a sardine.
Of all the words yet spoken, none comes quite as far as wisdom, which is the action of the mind beyond all things that may be said. Wisdom is the oneness of mind that guides and permeates all things.
Many who have learned from Hesiod the countless names of gods and monsters never understand that night and day are one.
Time is a game played beautifully by children. Applicants for wisdom do what I have done: inquire within.
Since mindfulness, of all things, is the ground of being, to speak one’s true mind and to keep things known in common, serves all being, just as laws made clear uphold the city, yet with greater strength. Of all pronouncements of the law the one source is the word whereby we choose what helps true mindfulness prevail. Although we need the word to keep things known in common, people still treat specialists as if their nonsense were a form of wisdom. Fools seek counsel from the ones they doubt. People need not act and speak as if they were asleep. The waking have one world in common. Sleepers meanwhile turn aside, each into a darkness of his own.
Homer I deem worthy, in a trial by combat, of a good cudgeling…They raise their voices at stone idols as a man might argue with his doorpost. They have understood so little of the gods.
This is a psychological skepticism that is criticizing the human ability to know particular things as permanent that are able to be separated from the One and All (the cosmic fire). Only the All is permanent. All the other things are wandering temporal forms. The many beings arise from the energy of Being, and then they fall back into the fire and disappear. Heraclitus believes that the divisions made by the mind are mortal, not eternal, like the human body. Our knowledge and laws are impermanent like mounds of dirt. Heraclitus says many things to humble us, including pointing out our similarity to apes to put our achievements in perspective:
The language of a grown man, to the cosmic powers, sounds like baby-talk to men. To a god the wisdom of the wisest man sounds apish. Beauty in a human face looks apish too. In everything we have attained the excellence of apes. The ape apes find most beautiful looks apish to non-apes.
Heraclitus’ most famous idea is a memorable image: you can never step in the same river twice. Just as a river is always flowing and changing, so is reality always flowing and changing, such that nothing stays exactly the same for any two moments. You step in a river, then step out, then step back in the same river, but it is no longer ‘the same river’. Paradoxically, changing constantly in the way that things do is the stability and being of things. Rivers flow, fire burns, life thrives, always in motion to be stable in what it is. He says, “Goat cheese congeals in wine if not well stirred”. It is an example of a motion keeping a mixture what it is. When the motion stops, the elements disintegrate. In the same way that stability is motion, opposites work together:
From the strain of binding opposites comes harmony. The harmony past knowing sounds more deeply than the known…The sea is both pure and tainted, healthy and good haven to the fish, to humans undrinkable and deadly. Poultry bathe in dust and ashes, swine in filth…Two made one are never one. Arguing the same we disagree. Singing together we compete…Without injustices, the name of justice would mean what?..The way up is the way back. The beginning is the end.
PYRRHO AND SEXTUS EMPIRICUS
Sextus is a mystery. He is supposed to have lived towards 200 CE, 700 years after Heraclitus.
He is thought by scholars to have been from Alexandria Egypt. He might be Libyan, thus African, but it has been assumed that he was Greek living in Egypt or Rome. It is thought that he is a doctor because he mentions medical cases to show how sometimes things are good but then surprisingly bad in other cases or vice versa, but there is nothing that proves this.
Sextus is the first Pyrrhoian Skeptic, quite similar to the Jains and Buddhists of India. Agnosticism of all judgment and plurality of perspective and truth are staples for both. When Alexander fought his way to the border of India, to try to conquer the rich and fertile area, he brought the philosopher Pyrrho with him around 300 BCE. Pyrrho met with some ‘gymnosophists’ in the historian’s texts, and scholars argue whether these were Buddhists, Jains or if either existed yet at the time. Pyrrho witnessed the yoga and extreme penances of the sages, had discussions, then came home and refused to write anything or live in society. People would come to visit him on the edges of town, where he would argue that everything is true and not true, that every perspective is true but also false. His thinking sprouted a school in Alexandria Egypt, a great center of Greek, early Christian and later Muslim thought. We know of this exclusively through the writings of Sextus.
For example, Sextus calls upon the ‘where there is smoke, there is fire’ example used by Gautama and Aristotle, and then brings up many cases where one would be mistaken to draw the inference. The point is not that it can’t be drawn, but it can never be certain in a particular situation.
The Issue: IS has a temporary and eternal meaning, back and forth, like IS has a whole-part back and forth meaning. (Clinton, Rumsfeld vs. dealing with the real issue)
According to one source, Heraclitus was a king who abandoned the title to become a philosopher. This has been identified as a close resemblance to the story of the Buddha in India, and some scholars have argued that Heraclitus was in fact the Buddha from India while others have argued that the Buddha was in fact Heraclitus from Greece. Both thinkers were mythologized as a king who left powerful king position and became a sage, putting the mental and spiritual above the corporeal and material. Both believe in the enlightening sun rising above the watery chaos of human perception and desire, but it is far more likely that the two were not the same individual and simply share the cosmology common to the cultures of the ancient world. Plato, who we will study next, shares this as well.
We do not know much at all about Heraclitus’ life, but he likely lived about 540 BCE. It is said in some sources that he was a king who gave up his throne to his brother to be a sage, but this is impossible to confirm and as mentioned quite allegorical which is always suspicious. He is said by other sources to have been a doctor, and many of his fragments do speak about the workings of physiology within the larger frame of physics as a thinker who is immersed in ancient cosmology would. A fragment reads:
Moisture makes the soul succumb to joy. Dry, the soul grows wise and good.
Heraclitus believed that the soul, mind and self becomes soggy and intoxicated when one indulges in desire and pleasure (drinking and sex are moist by nature), and likewise when one studies with the fire of the mind and abstains from pleasure the soul dries out. While this could come from a physician, some fragments seem critical of physicians and the practice of medicine just as others are critical of philosophers, spiritual groups and politics. A fragment reads:
The cosmos works by harmony of tensions, like the lyre and bow. Therefore, good and ill are one. Good and ill to the physician must be one, since he derives his fee from torturing the sick.
Heraclitus did write a book which he entrusted to the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, though we only have the very beginning today. There was a popular book of Heraclitus’ philosophy in ancient Greece, but this may or may not have been the original text. While we do not have any of his writings today, he is mentioned often by other writers, philosophers and historians who quote him and his work, and these pieces are put together as the fragments of Heraclitus which we read as a single text.
Heraclitus is a very skeptical thinker. He is sometimes portrayed as sad or depressed, called the ‘weeping philosopher’ by some and looking very down in Raphael’s painting, The School of Athens. He may, however, have been quite happy and misconstrued as sad by others, particularly Platonists who are opposed to his idea of formless fire and were supported in the Christian tradition. Raphael, who painted in the period of the Neoplatonic Renaissance, would have seen Heraclitus in this light. Heraclitus is angry at the politics of his city state Miletus. Like the Athenians killed Socrates for questioning too much and so “inciting the youth to riot”, Miletus exiled Hermadoros (whose name means ‘lover of Hermes’, Hermes being a god of wisdom and knowledge who was identified with Thoth, the Egyptian god of knowledge) because was ‘worthier than average’, presumably doing philosophy and cosmology. Heraclitus responded:
As for the Ephesians, I would have them, youths, elders, and all those between, go hang themselves, leaving the city in the abler hands of children.
Just like the ancient Sumerian lamenter, Confucius, and many other great thinkers, Heraclitus did not like the politics of his day and was critical of traditions of thought in general. Heraclitus was not, however, sad or angry as much as he was a skeptic. Many of his fragments appear playful jokes. Despising the beliefs, traditions and politics of the day does not make one a sad or angry person relative to others. Rather, it turns criticism of the other into criticism of the self and one’s own civilization. Heraclitus was convinced that wisdom and inquiring within show us that all is one big cosmic fire, and things that unify the community and the individual bring wholeness and true happiness. However, he believed that humans are often foolish and let their minds divide themselves from the whole and from each other such that their understandings are disjointed and ignorant.
This is very typical thinking of skeptics the world over. A dogmatist would say that there are specific truths that are certain and must be separated from the uncertain, specific goods that must be separated from the evil. A skeptic would say, like Heraclitus and the Daoists from China, that the truth and the good is the whole and the great One, and the tendency of the mind to divide the good and the true from the rest is the opposite of true understanding and wisdom.
Heraclitus was not a fan of experts and specialists, and he ridiculed the cultural leaders of his time. He says that the common people are completely asleep, but far more dangerous are the experts who have a small piece of the puzzle and say that they know the entire truth. He calls the poets (Hesiod and Homer) and the Pythagoreans frauds, and says that there are no permanent truths or laws other than the constant formation of watery chaos by the sun and cosmic fire. Notice that this does not question the set up of the cosmos as we have studied it everywhere (and what the Persians gave to the Eastern Greek city states). Many often ask, “Why, then, should I listen to Heraclitus, since he is simply an expert?”. Heraclitus replies as most skeptics do: don’t take my word for it, but look into the world and within yourself and you will find that it is true. The beginning of his book, which we still have, reads:
The word proves those first hearing it as numb to understanding as the ones who have not heard, yet all things follow from the word. Some, blundering with what I set before you, try in vain with empty talk to separate the essences of things and say how each thing truly is, and all the rest make no attempt. They no more see how they behave broad waking than remember clearly what they did asleep.
For wisdom, listen not to me but to the word and know that all is one. Those unmindful when they hear, for all they make of their intelligence, may be regarded as the walking dead. People dull their wits with gibberish, and cannot use their ears and eyes. Many fail to grasp what they have seen, and cannot judge what they have learned, although they tell themselves they know. Yet they lack the skill to listen or to speak. Whoever cannot seek the unforeseen sees nothing, for the known way is an impasse. Things keep their secrets.
Now that we can travel anywhere, we need no longer take the poets and myth-makers for sure witnesses over disputed facts…If learning were a path of wisdom, those most learned about myth would not believe, with Hesiod, that Pallas in her wisdom gloats over the noise of battle. Pythagoras may well have been the deepest in his learning of all men, and still he claimed to recollect details of former lives, being in one a cucumber and one time a sardine.
Of all the words yet spoken, none comes quite as far as wisdom, which is the action of the mind beyond all things that may be said. Wisdom is the oneness of mind that guides and permeates all things.
Many who have learned from Hesiod the countless names of gods and monsters never understand that night and day are one.
Time is a game played beautifully by children. Applicants for wisdom do what I have done: inquire within.
Since mindfulness, of all things, is the ground of being, to speak one’s true mind and to keep things known in common, serves all being, just as laws made clear uphold the city, yet with greater strength. Of all pronouncements of the law the one source is the word whereby we choose what helps true mindfulness prevail. Although we need the word to keep things known in common, people still treat specialists as if their nonsense were a form of wisdom. Fools seek counsel from the ones they doubt. People need not act and speak as if they were asleep. The waking have one world in common. Sleepers meanwhile turn aside, each into a darkness of his own.
Homer I deem worthy, in a trial by combat, of a good cudgeling…They raise their voices at stone idols as a man might argue with his doorpost. They have understood so little of the gods.
This is a psychological skepticism that is criticizing the human ability to know particular things as permanent that are able to be separated from the One and All (the cosmic fire). Only the All is permanent. All the other things are wandering temporal forms. The many beings arise from the energy of Being, and then they fall back into the fire and disappear. Heraclitus believes that the divisions made by the mind are mortal, not eternal, like the human body. Our knowledge and laws are impermanent like mounds of dirt. Heraclitus says many things to humble us, including pointing out our similarity to apes to put our achievements in perspective:
The language of a grown man, to the cosmic powers, sounds like baby-talk to men. To a god the wisdom of the wisest man sounds apish. Beauty in a human face looks apish too. In everything we have attained the excellence of apes. The ape apes find most beautiful looks apish to non-apes.
Heraclitus’ most famous idea is a memorable image: you can never step in the same river twice. Just as a river is always flowing and changing, so is reality always flowing and changing, such that nothing stays exactly the same for any two moments. You step in a river, then step out, then step back in the same river, but it is no longer ‘the same river’. Paradoxically, changing constantly in the way that things do is the stability and being of things. Rivers flow, fire burns, life thrives, always in motion to be stable in what it is. He says, “Goat cheese congeals in wine if not well stirred”. It is an example of a motion keeping a mixture what it is. When the motion stops, the elements disintegrate. In the same way that stability is motion, opposites work together:
From the strain of binding opposites comes harmony. The harmony past knowing sounds more deeply than the known…The sea is both pure and tainted, healthy and good haven to the fish, to humans undrinkable and deadly. Poultry bathe in dust and ashes, swine in filth…Two made one are never one. Arguing the same we disagree. Singing together we compete…Without injustices, the name of justice would mean what?..The way up is the way back. The beginning is the end.
PYRRHO AND SEXTUS EMPIRICUS
Sextus is a mystery. He is supposed to have lived towards 200 CE, 700 years after Heraclitus.
He is thought by scholars to have been from Alexandria Egypt. He might be Libyan, thus African, but it has been assumed that he was Greek living in Egypt or Rome. It is thought that he is a doctor because he mentions medical cases to show how sometimes things are good but then surprisingly bad in other cases or vice versa, but there is nothing that proves this.
Sextus is the first Pyrrhoian Skeptic, quite similar to the Jains and Buddhists of India. Agnosticism of all judgment and plurality of perspective and truth are staples for both. When Alexander fought his way to the border of India, to try to conquer the rich and fertile area, he brought the philosopher Pyrrho with him around 300 BCE. Pyrrho met with some ‘gymnosophists’ in the historian’s texts, and scholars argue whether these were Buddhists, Jains or if either existed yet at the time. Pyrrho witnessed the yoga and extreme penances of the sages, had discussions, then came home and refused to write anything or live in society. People would come to visit him on the edges of town, where he would argue that everything is true and not true, that every perspective is true but also false. His thinking sprouted a school in Alexandria Egypt, a great center of Greek, early Christian and later Muslim thought. We know of this exclusively through the writings of Sextus.
For example, Sextus calls upon the ‘where there is smoke, there is fire’ example used by Gautama and Aristotle, and then brings up many cases where one would be mistaken to draw the inference. The point is not that it can’t be drawn, but it can never be certain in a particular situation.
The Issue: IS has a temporary and eternal meaning, back and forth, like IS has a whole-part back and forth meaning. (Clinton, Rumsfeld vs. dealing with the real issue)
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Intro Philosophy: Socrates & Plato
Socrates (470-400 BCE) is a very famous yet controversial and obscure figure. Like many great thinkers of the ancient world, he did not write his own thoughts down but taught others and it was Plato (430-350 BCE) and another philosopher and historian named Xenophon who wrote about Socrates and his teachings after his death. The third source of ancient Athenian literature that speaks about Socrates is Aristophanes who wrote plays mocking Socrates and portraying him as an idealistic fool. It was believed and still is by many that Plato and Xenophon were Socrates’ students, but new scholarship has shown that this may well not have been the case. Plato was a playwright who wrote several unpopular plays before writing the dialogues between Socrates and his students that became celebrated as some of the first and central works of ancient Greek philosophy. While Plato never appears in his plays himself, he does put his own family members in roles. He has characters mention him as a young devoted follower of Socrates, but in one place it is said that Plato was sick which explains why he could not be with Socrates before his court ordered death by drinking hemlock.
As already mentioned last week before covering Heraclitus, it is often said that Plato’s dialogues such as the Republic are some of the first works of philosophy and ‘Western’ European thought, but really Plato and his student Aristotle were revered by Muslims and Christians alike and their texts survive because they were important to the Abrahamic religions, not because they started a new way of European thinking. Modern European philosophy is quite diverse in its opinions, and Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the three celebrated Athenian thinkers, did not identify with Northern Europeans and did not believe that they were the first to be concerned with wisdom and the world. Before the rediscovery of the “presocratics” (like Thales and Heraclitus) they were even considered to be the birth of philosophy in ancient Greece by many, even though this proved also to be untrue.
It is generally accepted by scholars today that Plato’s early dialogues are one of the best sources for understanding Socrates and his ideas, but in Plato’s later dialogues Socrates is a mouthpiece for Plato’s own ideas. We will consider Socrates and his thought first, then turn to two of Plato’s most important later dialogues, the Republic and the Timaeus, to study Plato’s thought. Socrates and Plato were both influenced by Heraclitus (our subject last week), and while Socrates seemed to have been quite similar to Heraclitus, Plato’s thought changed and he began putting quite different views into Socrates’ mouth.
Consider two polar opposite views one can have of reality and the world. In the first view, everything changes constantly and all permanence is an illusion. In the second opposite view, everything remains the same and change is the illusion. Both of these views, in fact, can be found in Indian thought, particularly in Buddhism. As we saw last week, Heraclitus was a famous champion of the first view. He argued that only Being, the One and All, the cosmic fire or energy, is eternal and all other beings are temporary in spite of what our judgments tell us. Another presocratic thinker named Parmenides (who lived sometime before 500 BCE) argued for the second and opposite view. He argued that there is one unchanging reality that is eternal and all change and temporary beings are the illusion in spite of what our judgments tell us. This would mean, similar to some scientific theories today, that there is only one moment of time and it is our position and perspective within that moment that changes.
Socrates and Plato were both influenced by Heraclitus, but in his later dialogues Plato has Socrates argue for views that sound much more like Parmenides. Originally, Socrates questioned everyone to show that we know very little and it is the job of the philosopher to show this to people. He would argue with others, including famous thinkers and sages, who believed that they possessed certain truth and point out the contradictions in their reasoning. This is much like Heraclitus telling us to beware of experts and being seduced into thinking that one school of thought or perspective is simply correct but instead continue to investigate the self and world as both have no limit to their depth or the things we can learn. It is also very similar to Pyrrho and his skeptical school of thought, as well as Buddhist logic and debate, particularly Nagarjuna, one of the most famous Buddhist teachers and the central Buddhist logician.
While according to Plato, Xenophon and Aristophanes Socrates did not put forward views of his own but rather attacked others to show that human beliefs are imperfect and incomplete, in Plato’s later dialogues Socrates argues that there is one unchanging reality above the temporary perceivable world and it is the job of the philosopher to seek and understand this eternal reality. Plato uses Socrates to teach his own increasingly Parmenidean view that there are unchanging and eternal forms of things in the heavens and only the educated and the persistent come to see and understand these forms.
Socrates and his Method of Questioning
We know very little about Socrates’ early life other than the details supplied in Plato’s works. He mentions several influences, including two women. He says that the witch/shaman Diotima taught him about love and how it is central to life and the cosmos. Like Buddha we studied last week and Confucius we will study next week, Socrates identified love with wisdom and objectivity. There is an interesting dynamic in human thought about whether learning and acquiring knowledge make one passionate or dispassionate, whether science for example fills our hearts with awe or stills them. The word ‘philosophy’ is often translated ‘love of wisdom’, but in fact ‘wisdom love’ could refer either to the loving of wisdom or wisdom that is also love.
Socrates also gives credit to Aspasia, the mistress of the general Pericles, who he says taught him rhetoric. If true, this shows that Socrates was not a common person but just like almost everyone in Plato’s dialogues an aristocrat who knew politicians and the wealthy. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle lived at a time when the glory days of Athens were in decline. Eventually, Alexander (Aristotle’s student) would conquer the city and the surrounding city-states. Socrates was a critic of Athenian society, called “the horsefly” because he believed in stinging Athens into action, and he was eventually condemned to commit suicide for corrupting the youth of the city after there was a riot.
Socrates’ career as a philosopher began when his friend Chaerephon went to the oracle of Delphi to ask if anyone was wiser than his friend Socrates. Socrates, with characteristic modesty, protests that this was a very crass question to ask of the great oracle. Notice that Socrates does believe in the oracle and in the gods. His last wish, the last thing he said before he died, was that a rooster should be sacrificed to Asclepius, the ancient Greek god of healing and mystical insight who is associated with Thoth the Egyptian god of knowledge and insight. Socrates loved irony, and it seems that he viewed his death as being cured of life and its limitations.
Religious people, including Christians and Muslims for centuries, often view Socrates, Plato and Aristotle as making way for solar monotheism already popular in Egypt and Persia in their time and seeing the gods as many human shaped anthropomorphisms of what is rather one and without and above human form. Non-religious people often view the three Athenians as moving away from religion and toward atheism and questioning traditional understandings. Interestingly, traditional polytheists in Athens in their time said the same thing and called them atheists as well, along with other increasingly monotheistic thinkers such as Heraclitus who are likely being influenced by the latest developments of Egyptian and Persian thought. It seems that if you want thinking to evolve towards your own thought, you could view it either way.
The oracle replied to Chaerephon that no one was wiser than Socrates. Upon hearing this, Socrates says, with either genuine or false modesty, he was very troubled by this because he did not believe that he was very wise at all and this would mean that humanity is quite ignorant overall. He decided that he needed to determine if what the oracle said was in fact true, and so he began to wander and debate others, seeking someone wiser than himself.
Socrates felt that he knew nothing, but as he questioned the experts of Athens he came upon a horrible discovery and paradox. The experts believed themselves to be wise and possess great knowledge, but when questioned it turned out they knew very little. Socrates knew that he himself knew nothing. Therefore, Socrates says he discovered that he was wiser than the experts because he knew that he knew nothing, while the experts knew nothing but thought that they knew a great deal. Humble and modest Socrates was aware that mortal humans know nothing, but the politicians, artists and warriors were unaware of this great equality they shared with Socrates. The ignorance of Socrates was thus the greatest wisdom in all of Athens. It is certainly true that the more one knows, the more one knows there is an endless amount to know and that we are all quite equal in knowing very little even when we know a great deal. There is another paradox here: the more one surpasses others in wisdom, becoming different, one identifies with them more, seeing the similarity.
Notice the similarity between Socrates and Heraclitus, who argued that the experts believe themselves to know a great deal but do not understand that their knowledge and perspectives are mortal and we are all mere apes to the gods. Socrates argued, like Heraclitus, that the greatest wisdom is found in questioning oneself and others. Remember that great city-states and empires had risen and fallen along with increasingly specialized experts. Philosophy questions experts and the basis of our knowledge, which humans find useful particularly in times of crisis when hard questions must be asked.
Socrates argued that one should accept one’s own ignorance and the guidance of the world through intuition. He believed that he had a spirit, a ‘daemon’ in the Greek, a word which became “demon” as Christianity replaced the polytheism and spirits with monotheism and angels. This spirit was much like what we would call a conscience, a word which means “co-seeing” or seeing along with, an intuition that one should or should not do a particular thing, something Christians identified with angels sitting on shoulders just as ancient Greeks did with spirits.
Socrates says that his daemon told him to stay out of politics. Good advice, seeing as how his death was quite political. Not only did politics get Socrates killed in spite of this, but Plato has Socrates get increasingly political in his later dialogues, particularly in the Republic where Socrates debates the best form of the city. This is another piece of eminence that Plato may not have known Socrates and is using him as a mouthpiece for his own ideas. Socrates also praised the divinity of poetry, mysticism, love and getting drunk with friends as he does at the Symposium, a dialogue about a drinking party that turns into a philosophical discussion about the nature of love.
Plato & his Dialogues
Plato was long assumed to be a student of Socrates simply because Plato writes as much in many of his dialogues and he is the best source on him, though if he turns him into a mere mouthpiece for very different ideas in the later dialogues he may also be the worst. As Socrates is about to die, Plato has Socrates ask where the young Plato is, to which another student replies that Plato was sick and thus could not be there at the time. Scholars now are critical of this, and think that Plato had a habit of writing himself and his family into Socrates’ circle in his dialogues. Because they are our best sources on Socrates, it is difficult to tell whether or not Plato’s older cousin Critias or Plato himself were actual students of Socrates or whether they were simply influenced by this figure who became quite famous following his trial and death.
Plato’s actual name was Aristocles, but according to the story his wrestling instructor named him Platon or ‘Broad’ because he had a wide figure and wrestling stance. This may be merely a story, because Plato was known to have a wide and thus ‘broad’ breadth of knowledge covering all subjects of ancient thought and might have acquired the nick name in this way. Plato’s father died when he was young, and his step-father became the Athenian ambassador to the Persian royal court. Remember that Persia was a great source of ancient world cosmology at the time, and Zoroastrianism, Persia’s solar monotheism, would be a major influence on the Abrahamic religions just as Plato himself would.
Long after his attempts to become an established playwright, after his dialogues about Socrates had gathered some fame, Plato founded his Academy in 385 BCE, an open area near a sacred tree grove where he, his students and other lecturers would teach and debate matters of philosophy and cosmology. Academy in fact means ‘porch’ or ‘step’, an open area in front of a building, a fact it took scholars long to understand for they believed that the Academy must have been a building itself. Scholars made a similar error looking for the famed Library of Alexandria (an Egyptian center of ancient world cosmology, Platonism and Christianity), when in fact the library was a shelf that ran along a hall that connected two buildings, just as one would say a collection of books is a personal library. Plato writes in the Timaeus, his book on the cosmology of the world, that ancient Egypt was the birthplace of philosophy and science, which again he would have understood to be the same thing acquired through knowledge of the self and the cosmos.
To examine Plato’s thought in its later and mature form we will look at his two most influential dialogues which both come from his later period and are certainly to be read together. It is sad that the dialogue of the Timaeus is supposed to happen on the day after the dialogue of the Republic, and the Republic covers the proper order of the self and city while the Timaeus covers the cosmos and how it also works in the same way that the self and city should if ordered properly and justly, but it is difficult to find the Timaeus in print while every Intro Philosophy course covers the Republic. I made sure to give you both texts in your reader. It is much easier to believe that Plato and Aristotle invented secular scientific reasoning when you do not read the cosmology of the Timaeus. For Muslims and Christians, the Timaeus was understandably Plato’s most important work and Aristotle would be making modifications to this picture, that the world is a living being and vegetation is the body hair of the world. On campuses today, however, students read sections of the Republic that speak of the self and city and are often told that this is the birth of speaking abstractly about subject matters this way. Plato and Aristotle had much greater reverence for Egypt and Persia to believe such a thing.
In these two late dialogues, believed to have been written about 360 BCE, Socrates was no longer sharing much of the conversation with other debaters, but dominates the texts with monologues that are now Plato’s own Parmenides-like views of the unchanging form that is the hidden source of the temporary. Plato believed that Heraclitus was right about the world below, but Parmenides was right about the eternal world above, the unchanging model, form, order and cause of the ever-changing world below. Plato has Socrates argue that those who think they know the world below have mere opinions, but the one who knows the world above, the true eternal pattern of reality, has true knowledge. In this way, wisdom for Plato was not simply knowing that one knows little to nothing, but rather is acquired through the gathering of knowledge of the world and its patterns. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates debates with others on justice and the Good. Socrates debunks several common views, then constructs an ideal model of the city. The well ordered city is compared to the well ordered soul, three faculties that must be kept in their places. Thus, the Good is the proper order of the elements perfectly in accord with ancient cosmology. Just as the individual is a microcosm to the city, the city is a microcosm to the cosmos, and again the elements must be separated and put in their places with the highest element on top and the lowest beneath. The cosmos is ordered in its unfolding, producing the ideal order of the soul and the city.
The Republic
Socrates talks to several “interlocutors” and argues against their concepts of justice. This is Socrates acting like the original Socrates. Polemarchus argues that justice is paying debts, helping friends and harming enemies. Socrates argues that in some situations, helping friends and harming enemies are wrong. Thrasymachus argues that justice is ‘the good of the stronger’. Glaucon similarly argues that without threat of punishment, no one would do good. Socrates argues that the strong will corrupt themselves if they only act for their own interests and not for the good of the whole. Remember the politics of the time, and that many tyrants and forms of rule came and fell, had some success but also great failure. This is the substance of Book 1.
Starting with Book 2, Socrates now turns into Plato. He says to those who remain and do not leave upset that he did not feel he had convincingly refuted these other views, and that perhaps they should continue to debate to figure out what justice actually is. This is the turn from Socratic questioning to Platonic forms and separate structures that should have ideal forms. Unfortunately, everyone who is critical of Socrates has left the party, and the two who stay are mindless yes men who agree enthusiastically to everything Socrates says and praises it as the most certain and good wisdom they have ever heard.
Plato, as Socrates, argues for an eternal form of the Good over the world of many temporary beings and desires. Socrates is challenged to give a positive account of justice, not just defeat opponents as Thrasymachus accuses him of doing before leaving similar to Hindu debaters accusing Jains and Buddhists of tearing down other positions rather than arguing for a consistent truth. Socrates argues that first they must construct the ideal or just city, and this will show how the ideal or just individual should be. Essentially, the just city is a threefold caste system, identical in many ways to the Hindu caste system of India. There are many similarities between metaphors and teachings of the Republic and Indian thought. While originally I believed that this was due to an Indian influence on ancient Greece, it is likelier that the cosmology and thought of Egypt and Persia, the interconnectedness of ancient cultures and the similarity of ancient cosmology are responsible.
This threefold division corresponds to the physical human being and the cosmic being. The head is fire as an element, reason, thought and consciousness in the individual, and the ruling philosopher kings in the city. The heart or chest is air as an element, spirit, breath and courage in the individual, and the police or guardians in the city. The hands and stomach is earth as an element, desire, craving and thirst in the individual, and workers, farmers and craftspeople in the city. The individual, city and cosmos form a continuum, a set of Russian dolls. Notice that authority and the good come from above, evil and chaos to be ordered from below.
Plato and Aristotle were not fans of democracy. Not only were they aristocrats and connected to royal courts like the educated often were in ancient Athens, Socrates was condemned to death by the Athenian assembly thinking and questioning too much. Unlike how it is often taught today with sections of the Republic, Plato and Aristotle thought much higher of the royal dynasties of Egypt and Persia than they did of the brief period of Athenian democracy. Like other educated Athenians, they revered King Darius of Persia, particularly because he gave Athenian nobles much freedom and rights.
All is sacrificed for the common good. There is to be no private property or partners or children, for any of the three classes. Socrates argues that the ruler who grabs for themselves will not be happy, filled with “horrid pains and pangs”, and will physically and mentally fall apart. This tyrant will never “taste true freedom or friendship”. Because this is not the order of the cosmos, it will not stick and will fall apart just like many tyrants have recently in ancient Athens. Similarly, if everyone shares everything in common, there will be greater justice and less selfishness.
The Soviet Union and America funded scholarship during the cold war that argued each was more like Athens than the other. The Soviet Union pointed out that they were much more like the Republic than America, a democracy fueled by individual consumption and private property. America pointed out that Aristotle was critical of Plato and argued there should be a balance of public and private property and Plato’s ideal city was impossible in the real world, while using the language of ‘West’ and ‘East’ to separate Russia from the ‘true’ Western tradition. I myself would like more of a balance today between the public and private, but to many this is very socialist and thus un-Western, like Soviet Russia.
Socrates argues that each person is best suited to one thing, and should be assigned this one job. If people do more than one job, they will not be able to do this one job as best as they can. He argues that we will lie to the people, tell them the ‘noble lie’ of a Phoenician story, that people were born from the earth and there are three races of people because the metals of gold, silver and bronze flow in their veins. While people will raise all children in common, they will be tested from early ages to see whether they can be athletic and educated. Those who cannot be athletic will be workers. Those who can be athletic but can’t study will be police. Those who are both athletic and educated are the philosophers, educators and rulers.
Why tell the lie, if we are striving for ideal good and justice? Because the common will not understand and grab for themselves, very much Plato’s opinion of the brief period of Athenian democracy when the rich each grabbed for themselves in the absence of a powerful and just king. Plato’s cave, which we will discuss, reinforces this point. If you tell the truth to everyone, they will not believe you and try to destroy you as they did Socrates.
Socrates argues and the interlocutors naively agree without much of a fight that if they separate out the police and train them as best as can be, and then take the philosophers out of the police and educate them as best as can be, no injustice will be possible. There is the simple belief that the order itself will generate justice throughout the whole. The police and philosophers will thus never be greedy or unjust to the people below. Plato elsewhere argues that this is how the Egyptians in Thebes did it, by elevating priests as a class. He also says to imitate Sparta as well separating out the warriors.
In the same way, if you put your desires and appetites in check with your feelings, and your feelings in check with your reason, you will be a well ordered soul or individual. The appetites crave, the spirit is passionate, and the mind is reasonable. These are their jobs, the single thing they do the best, their purpose. Socrates argues that sometimes we are very thirsty, but if we know the drink is poisoned our reason puts our desire in check. Other times we may want honor but realize that it is not the smart thing to do, putting our spirit and emotions in check by our reason. This is interesting, for in the Apology Socrates argues not only that he should not be condemned to death but given free food and drink for life because he is helping Athens out, but then when this angers the assembly (as one could have reasoned), Socrates argues with his students that he must drink the poison and not escape by bribing the guards because it is the right thing to follow the law even when the law is unjust.
Plato also suggests banning all art (music, poetry and theatre) that is counterproductive, which pretty much means everything that isn’t impressing the highest good and order. The youth are to be taught that they must improve themselves for the good of the state, and that the gods never to injustice or desire. Remember that Heraclitus also thought it foolish to believe that the gods had the same problems and flaws as humans.
The Allegory of the Cave
After being questioned about lying for the purpose of the good and justice, Socrates says that this is best explained with an analogy. He describes the masses and the assent of the philosopher beyond opinion of the earthly realm to knowledge of the heavenly and eternal realm, showing why the philosopher alone should have authority. It also illustrates Plato’s placing of Parmenides above Heraclitus, the eternal and heavenly above the mortal and earthly.
Imagine that everyone is chained in a dark cave, watching shadows of puppets carried before a fire at the mouth of the cave. The people think that the shadows are reality, the real things. The one who escapes, breaking the bondage of appetites and earthly things much like Jainism and Buddhism teach, first sees that the shadows are shadows of puppets, and sees the fire that casts the shadows. This draws the seeker to the mouth of the cave. Coming out of the cave and past the small fire, the seeker is at first blinded by the sunlight, but then sees real things outside of the cave and realizes that the puppets were just poor copies of the real things casting shadows that were shaped like real things. The seeker now has knowledge and wisdom, not mere earthly opinion and belief.
The Timaeus
The Timaeus, the work of Plato which he as well as Christians and Muslims believed to the most important, is not in spell check when typed today. Aristotle refers to it more than any other text of Plato’s, and it was the most important book for philosophers and scientists of the Italian Renaissance, one of the only works of Plato that Christian Europeans kept until they got other works of Plato and Aristotle from Muslims. It is, again, sad that we have largely forgotten it while remembering to praise the ancient Greeks and Renaissance Italians for being the great sources of European culture and study. It is very clear after reading the text why both religious and non-religious people ignore the text, because both have forgotten what used to be central religious and scientific beliefs in the European tradition.
Socrates the day after the party where the ideal Republic is discussed says that he would like to talk more about the ideal state and how it corresponds to the cosmos. Then, Critas tells the story of Solon going to Egypt and that the Egyptians told him of the story of Atlantis. This is, indeed, where the story of Atlantis comes from and it is not found earlier in Egypt as Critas says. The Egyptian Priest tells Solon that the Athenians do not remember because they have just become educated and civilized, but the Egyptians know from their history records that thousands of years ago the Athenians stopped the people of Atlantis, who were threatening to take over the world. We now know that Egypt was not as many thousands of years old as Plato believed, but this does show Plato believed that they were civilized long before Athens. The story, which is now believed to have been an invention by Plato or a story told to him that he believed, is very similar to the Battle of Marathon, and the Athenians and Spartans repelling the Persians.
Timaeus now speaks of the creation of the cosmos out of the One, showing the order already described of the elements and how the individual human was created as a microcosm of the macrocosm. This implies that you put your faculties of desire, spirit and reason in their proper order to be good and healthy, which is the order of the cosmos. The One sprouts the eternal order or model of things, which includes all eternal models or archetypes of things, and the demiurge, the sky father being that is the small fire at the mouth of the cave, then produces copies of the models in the ever changing world of earth below. The whole is a living creature, with the heavens as soul and the all as reason. Timaeus, as Plato, says that human beings are a plant with their roots in the heavens. The demiurge fashions reason in soul, and soul in body in individuals. The demiurge then moves everything in a circle, bringing about the life and death in circles of earth beings from planetary orbits and starlight.
This is all done by sameness and difference. Sameness has the higher and encompassing role, difference being proportional downward. The four elements have certain shapes, which are then glued together by the fifth element, quintessence or ether. This is the cosmology of Christianity and Europe well through the middle ages, up to Newton and Leibniz, who read Islamic scholar’s commentaries on the Timaeus. The Medieval Christians had to retranslate Plato, with central interest in the cosmology of the Timaeus, from Arabic into Latin.
As already mentioned last week before covering Heraclitus, it is often said that Plato’s dialogues such as the Republic are some of the first works of philosophy and ‘Western’ European thought, but really Plato and his student Aristotle were revered by Muslims and Christians alike and their texts survive because they were important to the Abrahamic religions, not because they started a new way of European thinking. Modern European philosophy is quite diverse in its opinions, and Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the three celebrated Athenian thinkers, did not identify with Northern Europeans and did not believe that they were the first to be concerned with wisdom and the world. Before the rediscovery of the “presocratics” (like Thales and Heraclitus) they were even considered to be the birth of philosophy in ancient Greece by many, even though this proved also to be untrue.
It is generally accepted by scholars today that Plato’s early dialogues are one of the best sources for understanding Socrates and his ideas, but in Plato’s later dialogues Socrates is a mouthpiece for Plato’s own ideas. We will consider Socrates and his thought first, then turn to two of Plato’s most important later dialogues, the Republic and the Timaeus, to study Plato’s thought. Socrates and Plato were both influenced by Heraclitus (our subject last week), and while Socrates seemed to have been quite similar to Heraclitus, Plato’s thought changed and he began putting quite different views into Socrates’ mouth.
Consider two polar opposite views one can have of reality and the world. In the first view, everything changes constantly and all permanence is an illusion. In the second opposite view, everything remains the same and change is the illusion. Both of these views, in fact, can be found in Indian thought, particularly in Buddhism. As we saw last week, Heraclitus was a famous champion of the first view. He argued that only Being, the One and All, the cosmic fire or energy, is eternal and all other beings are temporary in spite of what our judgments tell us. Another presocratic thinker named Parmenides (who lived sometime before 500 BCE) argued for the second and opposite view. He argued that there is one unchanging reality that is eternal and all change and temporary beings are the illusion in spite of what our judgments tell us. This would mean, similar to some scientific theories today, that there is only one moment of time and it is our position and perspective within that moment that changes.
Socrates and Plato were both influenced by Heraclitus, but in his later dialogues Plato has Socrates argue for views that sound much more like Parmenides. Originally, Socrates questioned everyone to show that we know very little and it is the job of the philosopher to show this to people. He would argue with others, including famous thinkers and sages, who believed that they possessed certain truth and point out the contradictions in their reasoning. This is much like Heraclitus telling us to beware of experts and being seduced into thinking that one school of thought or perspective is simply correct but instead continue to investigate the self and world as both have no limit to their depth or the things we can learn. It is also very similar to Pyrrho and his skeptical school of thought, as well as Buddhist logic and debate, particularly Nagarjuna, one of the most famous Buddhist teachers and the central Buddhist logician.
While according to Plato, Xenophon and Aristophanes Socrates did not put forward views of his own but rather attacked others to show that human beliefs are imperfect and incomplete, in Plato’s later dialogues Socrates argues that there is one unchanging reality above the temporary perceivable world and it is the job of the philosopher to seek and understand this eternal reality. Plato uses Socrates to teach his own increasingly Parmenidean view that there are unchanging and eternal forms of things in the heavens and only the educated and the persistent come to see and understand these forms.
Socrates and his Method of Questioning
We know very little about Socrates’ early life other than the details supplied in Plato’s works. He mentions several influences, including two women. He says that the witch/shaman Diotima taught him about love and how it is central to life and the cosmos. Like Buddha we studied last week and Confucius we will study next week, Socrates identified love with wisdom and objectivity. There is an interesting dynamic in human thought about whether learning and acquiring knowledge make one passionate or dispassionate, whether science for example fills our hearts with awe or stills them. The word ‘philosophy’ is often translated ‘love of wisdom’, but in fact ‘wisdom love’ could refer either to the loving of wisdom or wisdom that is also love.
Socrates also gives credit to Aspasia, the mistress of the general Pericles, who he says taught him rhetoric. If true, this shows that Socrates was not a common person but just like almost everyone in Plato’s dialogues an aristocrat who knew politicians and the wealthy. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle lived at a time when the glory days of Athens were in decline. Eventually, Alexander (Aristotle’s student) would conquer the city and the surrounding city-states. Socrates was a critic of Athenian society, called “the horsefly” because he believed in stinging Athens into action, and he was eventually condemned to commit suicide for corrupting the youth of the city after there was a riot.
Socrates’ career as a philosopher began when his friend Chaerephon went to the oracle of Delphi to ask if anyone was wiser than his friend Socrates. Socrates, with characteristic modesty, protests that this was a very crass question to ask of the great oracle. Notice that Socrates does believe in the oracle and in the gods. His last wish, the last thing he said before he died, was that a rooster should be sacrificed to Asclepius, the ancient Greek god of healing and mystical insight who is associated with Thoth the Egyptian god of knowledge and insight. Socrates loved irony, and it seems that he viewed his death as being cured of life and its limitations.
Religious people, including Christians and Muslims for centuries, often view Socrates, Plato and Aristotle as making way for solar monotheism already popular in Egypt and Persia in their time and seeing the gods as many human shaped anthropomorphisms of what is rather one and without and above human form. Non-religious people often view the three Athenians as moving away from religion and toward atheism and questioning traditional understandings. Interestingly, traditional polytheists in Athens in their time said the same thing and called them atheists as well, along with other increasingly monotheistic thinkers such as Heraclitus who are likely being influenced by the latest developments of Egyptian and Persian thought. It seems that if you want thinking to evolve towards your own thought, you could view it either way.
The oracle replied to Chaerephon that no one was wiser than Socrates. Upon hearing this, Socrates says, with either genuine or false modesty, he was very troubled by this because he did not believe that he was very wise at all and this would mean that humanity is quite ignorant overall. He decided that he needed to determine if what the oracle said was in fact true, and so he began to wander and debate others, seeking someone wiser than himself.
Socrates felt that he knew nothing, but as he questioned the experts of Athens he came upon a horrible discovery and paradox. The experts believed themselves to be wise and possess great knowledge, but when questioned it turned out they knew very little. Socrates knew that he himself knew nothing. Therefore, Socrates says he discovered that he was wiser than the experts because he knew that he knew nothing, while the experts knew nothing but thought that they knew a great deal. Humble and modest Socrates was aware that mortal humans know nothing, but the politicians, artists and warriors were unaware of this great equality they shared with Socrates. The ignorance of Socrates was thus the greatest wisdom in all of Athens. It is certainly true that the more one knows, the more one knows there is an endless amount to know and that we are all quite equal in knowing very little even when we know a great deal. There is another paradox here: the more one surpasses others in wisdom, becoming different, one identifies with them more, seeing the similarity.
Notice the similarity between Socrates and Heraclitus, who argued that the experts believe themselves to know a great deal but do not understand that their knowledge and perspectives are mortal and we are all mere apes to the gods. Socrates argued, like Heraclitus, that the greatest wisdom is found in questioning oneself and others. Remember that great city-states and empires had risen and fallen along with increasingly specialized experts. Philosophy questions experts and the basis of our knowledge, which humans find useful particularly in times of crisis when hard questions must be asked.
Socrates argued that one should accept one’s own ignorance and the guidance of the world through intuition. He believed that he had a spirit, a ‘daemon’ in the Greek, a word which became “demon” as Christianity replaced the polytheism and spirits with monotheism and angels. This spirit was much like what we would call a conscience, a word which means “co-seeing” or seeing along with, an intuition that one should or should not do a particular thing, something Christians identified with angels sitting on shoulders just as ancient Greeks did with spirits.
Socrates says that his daemon told him to stay out of politics. Good advice, seeing as how his death was quite political. Not only did politics get Socrates killed in spite of this, but Plato has Socrates get increasingly political in his later dialogues, particularly in the Republic where Socrates debates the best form of the city. This is another piece of eminence that Plato may not have known Socrates and is using him as a mouthpiece for his own ideas. Socrates also praised the divinity of poetry, mysticism, love and getting drunk with friends as he does at the Symposium, a dialogue about a drinking party that turns into a philosophical discussion about the nature of love.
Plato & his Dialogues
Plato was long assumed to be a student of Socrates simply because Plato writes as much in many of his dialogues and he is the best source on him, though if he turns him into a mere mouthpiece for very different ideas in the later dialogues he may also be the worst. As Socrates is about to die, Plato has Socrates ask where the young Plato is, to which another student replies that Plato was sick and thus could not be there at the time. Scholars now are critical of this, and think that Plato had a habit of writing himself and his family into Socrates’ circle in his dialogues. Because they are our best sources on Socrates, it is difficult to tell whether or not Plato’s older cousin Critias or Plato himself were actual students of Socrates or whether they were simply influenced by this figure who became quite famous following his trial and death.
Plato’s actual name was Aristocles, but according to the story his wrestling instructor named him Platon or ‘Broad’ because he had a wide figure and wrestling stance. This may be merely a story, because Plato was known to have a wide and thus ‘broad’ breadth of knowledge covering all subjects of ancient thought and might have acquired the nick name in this way. Plato’s father died when he was young, and his step-father became the Athenian ambassador to the Persian royal court. Remember that Persia was a great source of ancient world cosmology at the time, and Zoroastrianism, Persia’s solar monotheism, would be a major influence on the Abrahamic religions just as Plato himself would.
Long after his attempts to become an established playwright, after his dialogues about Socrates had gathered some fame, Plato founded his Academy in 385 BCE, an open area near a sacred tree grove where he, his students and other lecturers would teach and debate matters of philosophy and cosmology. Academy in fact means ‘porch’ or ‘step’, an open area in front of a building, a fact it took scholars long to understand for they believed that the Academy must have been a building itself. Scholars made a similar error looking for the famed Library of Alexandria (an Egyptian center of ancient world cosmology, Platonism and Christianity), when in fact the library was a shelf that ran along a hall that connected two buildings, just as one would say a collection of books is a personal library. Plato writes in the Timaeus, his book on the cosmology of the world, that ancient Egypt was the birthplace of philosophy and science, which again he would have understood to be the same thing acquired through knowledge of the self and the cosmos.
To examine Plato’s thought in its later and mature form we will look at his two most influential dialogues which both come from his later period and are certainly to be read together. It is sad that the dialogue of the Timaeus is supposed to happen on the day after the dialogue of the Republic, and the Republic covers the proper order of the self and city while the Timaeus covers the cosmos and how it also works in the same way that the self and city should if ordered properly and justly, but it is difficult to find the Timaeus in print while every Intro Philosophy course covers the Republic. I made sure to give you both texts in your reader. It is much easier to believe that Plato and Aristotle invented secular scientific reasoning when you do not read the cosmology of the Timaeus. For Muslims and Christians, the Timaeus was understandably Plato’s most important work and Aristotle would be making modifications to this picture, that the world is a living being and vegetation is the body hair of the world. On campuses today, however, students read sections of the Republic that speak of the self and city and are often told that this is the birth of speaking abstractly about subject matters this way. Plato and Aristotle had much greater reverence for Egypt and Persia to believe such a thing.
In these two late dialogues, believed to have been written about 360 BCE, Socrates was no longer sharing much of the conversation with other debaters, but dominates the texts with monologues that are now Plato’s own Parmenides-like views of the unchanging form that is the hidden source of the temporary. Plato believed that Heraclitus was right about the world below, but Parmenides was right about the eternal world above, the unchanging model, form, order and cause of the ever-changing world below. Plato has Socrates argue that those who think they know the world below have mere opinions, but the one who knows the world above, the true eternal pattern of reality, has true knowledge. In this way, wisdom for Plato was not simply knowing that one knows little to nothing, but rather is acquired through the gathering of knowledge of the world and its patterns. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates debates with others on justice and the Good. Socrates debunks several common views, then constructs an ideal model of the city. The well ordered city is compared to the well ordered soul, three faculties that must be kept in their places. Thus, the Good is the proper order of the elements perfectly in accord with ancient cosmology. Just as the individual is a microcosm to the city, the city is a microcosm to the cosmos, and again the elements must be separated and put in their places with the highest element on top and the lowest beneath. The cosmos is ordered in its unfolding, producing the ideal order of the soul and the city.
The Republic
Socrates talks to several “interlocutors” and argues against their concepts of justice. This is Socrates acting like the original Socrates. Polemarchus argues that justice is paying debts, helping friends and harming enemies. Socrates argues that in some situations, helping friends and harming enemies are wrong. Thrasymachus argues that justice is ‘the good of the stronger’. Glaucon similarly argues that without threat of punishment, no one would do good. Socrates argues that the strong will corrupt themselves if they only act for their own interests and not for the good of the whole. Remember the politics of the time, and that many tyrants and forms of rule came and fell, had some success but also great failure. This is the substance of Book 1.
Starting with Book 2, Socrates now turns into Plato. He says to those who remain and do not leave upset that he did not feel he had convincingly refuted these other views, and that perhaps they should continue to debate to figure out what justice actually is. This is the turn from Socratic questioning to Platonic forms and separate structures that should have ideal forms. Unfortunately, everyone who is critical of Socrates has left the party, and the two who stay are mindless yes men who agree enthusiastically to everything Socrates says and praises it as the most certain and good wisdom they have ever heard.
Plato, as Socrates, argues for an eternal form of the Good over the world of many temporary beings and desires. Socrates is challenged to give a positive account of justice, not just defeat opponents as Thrasymachus accuses him of doing before leaving similar to Hindu debaters accusing Jains and Buddhists of tearing down other positions rather than arguing for a consistent truth. Socrates argues that first they must construct the ideal or just city, and this will show how the ideal or just individual should be. Essentially, the just city is a threefold caste system, identical in many ways to the Hindu caste system of India. There are many similarities between metaphors and teachings of the Republic and Indian thought. While originally I believed that this was due to an Indian influence on ancient Greece, it is likelier that the cosmology and thought of Egypt and Persia, the interconnectedness of ancient cultures and the similarity of ancient cosmology are responsible.
This threefold division corresponds to the physical human being and the cosmic being. The head is fire as an element, reason, thought and consciousness in the individual, and the ruling philosopher kings in the city. The heart or chest is air as an element, spirit, breath and courage in the individual, and the police or guardians in the city. The hands and stomach is earth as an element, desire, craving and thirst in the individual, and workers, farmers and craftspeople in the city. The individual, city and cosmos form a continuum, a set of Russian dolls. Notice that authority and the good come from above, evil and chaos to be ordered from below.
Plato and Aristotle were not fans of democracy. Not only were they aristocrats and connected to royal courts like the educated often were in ancient Athens, Socrates was condemned to death by the Athenian assembly thinking and questioning too much. Unlike how it is often taught today with sections of the Republic, Plato and Aristotle thought much higher of the royal dynasties of Egypt and Persia than they did of the brief period of Athenian democracy. Like other educated Athenians, they revered King Darius of Persia, particularly because he gave Athenian nobles much freedom and rights.
All is sacrificed for the common good. There is to be no private property or partners or children, for any of the three classes. Socrates argues that the ruler who grabs for themselves will not be happy, filled with “horrid pains and pangs”, and will physically and mentally fall apart. This tyrant will never “taste true freedom or friendship”. Because this is not the order of the cosmos, it will not stick and will fall apart just like many tyrants have recently in ancient Athens. Similarly, if everyone shares everything in common, there will be greater justice and less selfishness.
The Soviet Union and America funded scholarship during the cold war that argued each was more like Athens than the other. The Soviet Union pointed out that they were much more like the Republic than America, a democracy fueled by individual consumption and private property. America pointed out that Aristotle was critical of Plato and argued there should be a balance of public and private property and Plato’s ideal city was impossible in the real world, while using the language of ‘West’ and ‘East’ to separate Russia from the ‘true’ Western tradition. I myself would like more of a balance today between the public and private, but to many this is very socialist and thus un-Western, like Soviet Russia.
Socrates argues that each person is best suited to one thing, and should be assigned this one job. If people do more than one job, they will not be able to do this one job as best as they can. He argues that we will lie to the people, tell them the ‘noble lie’ of a Phoenician story, that people were born from the earth and there are three races of people because the metals of gold, silver and bronze flow in their veins. While people will raise all children in common, they will be tested from early ages to see whether they can be athletic and educated. Those who cannot be athletic will be workers. Those who can be athletic but can’t study will be police. Those who are both athletic and educated are the philosophers, educators and rulers.
Why tell the lie, if we are striving for ideal good and justice? Because the common will not understand and grab for themselves, very much Plato’s opinion of the brief period of Athenian democracy when the rich each grabbed for themselves in the absence of a powerful and just king. Plato’s cave, which we will discuss, reinforces this point. If you tell the truth to everyone, they will not believe you and try to destroy you as they did Socrates.
Socrates argues and the interlocutors naively agree without much of a fight that if they separate out the police and train them as best as can be, and then take the philosophers out of the police and educate them as best as can be, no injustice will be possible. There is the simple belief that the order itself will generate justice throughout the whole. The police and philosophers will thus never be greedy or unjust to the people below. Plato elsewhere argues that this is how the Egyptians in Thebes did it, by elevating priests as a class. He also says to imitate Sparta as well separating out the warriors.
In the same way, if you put your desires and appetites in check with your feelings, and your feelings in check with your reason, you will be a well ordered soul or individual. The appetites crave, the spirit is passionate, and the mind is reasonable. These are their jobs, the single thing they do the best, their purpose. Socrates argues that sometimes we are very thirsty, but if we know the drink is poisoned our reason puts our desire in check. Other times we may want honor but realize that it is not the smart thing to do, putting our spirit and emotions in check by our reason. This is interesting, for in the Apology Socrates argues not only that he should not be condemned to death but given free food and drink for life because he is helping Athens out, but then when this angers the assembly (as one could have reasoned), Socrates argues with his students that he must drink the poison and not escape by bribing the guards because it is the right thing to follow the law even when the law is unjust.
Plato also suggests banning all art (music, poetry and theatre) that is counterproductive, which pretty much means everything that isn’t impressing the highest good and order. The youth are to be taught that they must improve themselves for the good of the state, and that the gods never to injustice or desire. Remember that Heraclitus also thought it foolish to believe that the gods had the same problems and flaws as humans.
The Allegory of the Cave
After being questioned about lying for the purpose of the good and justice, Socrates says that this is best explained with an analogy. He describes the masses and the assent of the philosopher beyond opinion of the earthly realm to knowledge of the heavenly and eternal realm, showing why the philosopher alone should have authority. It also illustrates Plato’s placing of Parmenides above Heraclitus, the eternal and heavenly above the mortal and earthly.
Imagine that everyone is chained in a dark cave, watching shadows of puppets carried before a fire at the mouth of the cave. The people think that the shadows are reality, the real things. The one who escapes, breaking the bondage of appetites and earthly things much like Jainism and Buddhism teach, first sees that the shadows are shadows of puppets, and sees the fire that casts the shadows. This draws the seeker to the mouth of the cave. Coming out of the cave and past the small fire, the seeker is at first blinded by the sunlight, but then sees real things outside of the cave and realizes that the puppets were just poor copies of the real things casting shadows that were shaped like real things. The seeker now has knowledge and wisdom, not mere earthly opinion and belief.
The Timaeus
The Timaeus, the work of Plato which he as well as Christians and Muslims believed to the most important, is not in spell check when typed today. Aristotle refers to it more than any other text of Plato’s, and it was the most important book for philosophers and scientists of the Italian Renaissance, one of the only works of Plato that Christian Europeans kept until they got other works of Plato and Aristotle from Muslims. It is, again, sad that we have largely forgotten it while remembering to praise the ancient Greeks and Renaissance Italians for being the great sources of European culture and study. It is very clear after reading the text why both religious and non-religious people ignore the text, because both have forgotten what used to be central religious and scientific beliefs in the European tradition.
Socrates the day after the party where the ideal Republic is discussed says that he would like to talk more about the ideal state and how it corresponds to the cosmos. Then, Critas tells the story of Solon going to Egypt and that the Egyptians told him of the story of Atlantis. This is, indeed, where the story of Atlantis comes from and it is not found earlier in Egypt as Critas says. The Egyptian Priest tells Solon that the Athenians do not remember because they have just become educated and civilized, but the Egyptians know from their history records that thousands of years ago the Athenians stopped the people of Atlantis, who were threatening to take over the world. We now know that Egypt was not as many thousands of years old as Plato believed, but this does show Plato believed that they were civilized long before Athens. The story, which is now believed to have been an invention by Plato or a story told to him that he believed, is very similar to the Battle of Marathon, and the Athenians and Spartans repelling the Persians.
Timaeus now speaks of the creation of the cosmos out of the One, showing the order already described of the elements and how the individual human was created as a microcosm of the macrocosm. This implies that you put your faculties of desire, spirit and reason in their proper order to be good and healthy, which is the order of the cosmos. The One sprouts the eternal order or model of things, which includes all eternal models or archetypes of things, and the demiurge, the sky father being that is the small fire at the mouth of the cave, then produces copies of the models in the ever changing world of earth below. The whole is a living creature, with the heavens as soul and the all as reason. Timaeus, as Plato, says that human beings are a plant with their roots in the heavens. The demiurge fashions reason in soul, and soul in body in individuals. The demiurge then moves everything in a circle, bringing about the life and death in circles of earth beings from planetary orbits and starlight.
This is all done by sameness and difference. Sameness has the higher and encompassing role, difference being proportional downward. The four elements have certain shapes, which are then glued together by the fifth element, quintessence or ether. This is the cosmology of Christianity and Europe well through the middle ages, up to Newton and Leibniz, who read Islamic scholar’s commentaries on the Timaeus. The Medieval Christians had to retranslate Plato, with central interest in the cosmology of the Timaeus, from Arabic into Latin.
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