Intro Philosophy Lecture 4: Jainism & Buddhism
Jainism, or “Jain Dharma” is still practiced today by four million Jains (not Jainists as some mistakenly say). There are currently 4 Million in India today, with many others in communities around the world including New York and Toronto. Jainism rose just before Buddhism, as Mahavira (650 BCE), the main teacher and founder of Jainism, lived just before the Buddha (550 BCE), though all of these dates are still in debate.
Jainism advocates two principles that are shared with Indian thought but credited to Jain innovation: anekantavada, the multiplicity and relativity of reality or “non-one-endedness” and syadvada, the hypothetical and imperfect nature of perspective and judgment that is always the fiber of human truth. According to these two principles, all human beliefs and judgments are temporary and partial views of each particular thing, including the self, and the cosmos, the greater whole. Jains, like Buddhists, believe that things may or may not be as they seem and may or may not be expressible as they are. Jains believe that there are seven points of view of each and every thing. Each thing, including the cosmos and the self:
somehow is in a way that is describable
somehow is not in a way that is describable
somehow simultaneously is and is not in a way that is describable
somehow is indescribable
somehow is in a way that is indescribable
somehow is not in a way that is indescribable
somehow is and is not in a way that is indescribable
While other schools, including Nyaya logician/debaters, claimed that Jains and Buddhists are at fault for contradicting themselves and seeing contradicting views in things, the Jains and Buddhists argue that one only falls into problematic contradiction if one makes one-sided claims. This is a classic duel between all/none logic and some/some-not logic, between the absolutist and the relativist. The absolutist says the relativist does not have certain truth and contradicts themselves because they are on all sides of the issue, and the relativist replies that the absolutist does not have the full truth and contradicts themselves because they are NOT on all sides of the issue.
Jain texts use the example of hot and cold. An absolutist would argue that a thing cannot be both hot and cold at the same time, but a relativist would argue that a thing is always somewhat relatively hot and somewhat relatively cold. To say a thing is simply hot ignores how cold it is, and to say it is simply cold is to ignore how hot it is. We could supply the example of a refrigerator, which cools on the inside by heating up in back and drawing the heat out of the inside. A refrigerator is simultaneously hot and cold, and it could not be cold in one part unless it is hot in another.
Jains also, much like the wheel of Lao Zi in chapter 11 of the founding Daoist text, the Dao De Jing, use the example of a pot being solid and empty, there and not there. In one part, it is, and in another part, it is not. They use another example of a multicolored cloth, which is and is not many colors all over. Notice that each thing one can say about anything is true in some ways, but false in others, a very critical way that things are and are not as they are described yet are never fully describable. Jains argue that one sees and argues for the side of things that one wants to see, that one wants to be true. This is yet another example of attachment and desire carving the One into many, shining light on some and plunging others into darkness and ignorance.
Jains note that, because human views and descriptions are always one-sided, it is perfectly alright to understand the whole yet lead people in one direction as opposed to another, just as ignorant arguers do, if one sees all of what one is doing. Jains and Buddhists would see Jain and Buddhist teachers and saints in this light, as always telling what cannot be fully told, as leading us towards what is in all directions to begin with. It is only a low and ignorant mind that thinks such leading is impossible because it is contradictory.
Jains use the image of a tree, with the absolute view (naya) as the trunk, what one joins after being fully liberated, and the particular view as the branches and twigs. Notice that the trunk is and is not the twigs, just as the absolute and all-encompassing view is each particular view as a sum of them all but is not each particular view in that it is everything opposed to each particular view as well.
Similarly, Jains argue (like Hegel, who considers seeing being, non-being and becoming simultaneously in things as the first leap of philosophy and associates it with the ancient Greek skeptic Heraclitus) that things simultaneously are and are not because they are being birthed/generated, stable/still, and decaying/transforming at the same time at all times that they are. Each of these views are false if they are considered independently true as opposed to their opposite, but in conjunction with their opposites they are the whole truth of each particular thing and of truth as a whole. Notice that the union of stability with transformation as a single whole view is entirely similar to the orthodox Hindu union of Vishnu, the preserver/savior, and Shiva, the destroyer/transformer, in Brahma, the personification of all.
Jains were also early proponents of the idea that the cosmos works in cycles: like the physical rising and setting of the sun, consciousness rises, then sets. People start to become awakened teachers and develop religion in the rising era, and people lose religion in the setting era. This is endless, like the cosmos. The cosmos becomes enlightened to its own self through us, and then loses consciousness of itself through us. The Hindus and Buddhists share a similar picture of the cosmos, and the Indian golden age of philosophy, which includes the birth and teaching period of Mahavira and the Buddha, is seen as the apex, the high noon, of this current cycle. Unfortunately, we currently live in an era of dimming religion and consciousness according to most Jain and Hindu teachers (the Hindus following the Jains in this picture).
Jain teachers and saints are known as Tirthankaras, “one who makes a ford” (cutting through water as order over chaos, as land becoming firmament in the chaotic waters). Mahavira (also Mahavir), the founder of Jainism, is understood by Jains to be the 24th Tirthankara. Like others of his time, Mahavira was a practitioner of austerities that are aimed at detachment from desire and multiplicity of the world: fasting, standing in jungles, going without food or luxuries for extended periods of time. Statues of Mahavira and other Tirthankaras show vines growing up their legs and bodies, as vines grow several feet in the jungle a day and so would grow up your body if you practice standing austerities for days at a time. Jains believe that these practices purify the self/soul/mind.
Here, we come to THE critical difference between Jainism and the other schools of Indian thought. In Hinduism and Buddhism, karma can be positive (merit and blessing) or negative (demerit and sin). Thus, karma can either help you up or drag you down. For Jains, karma is always bondage, always weight that keeps you down, always division or blockage between you and the ALL. Thus, one tries best to avoid accumulating karma and to destroy the karma one has already accumulated.
While there are kinds of karma and attachment that make ourselves and others happy which the Jains call good, they are hindrances to be overcome if final liberation is to be obtained. If you really, really like waffles, this is fine but to become one with all you must be as indifferent to waffles, neither loving nor hating waffles, as the cosmos. Jains believe that “good” karma, such as that which causes pleasure when helping others out of compassion, matures and falls off naturally along with the body. It is easier to get rid of “good” karma which only affects the body, but it is still to be left behind.
Jains are famous for their doctrine of the negativity of attachment and the radical nonviolence that follows from this principle. Jains wear masks to prevent insects from flying in their mouths, sweep the ground to avoid killing insects (even though the killing would be unintentional, it would still be an accumulation of karma), influenced other Indian thought in promoting vegetarianism, and even don’t eat root vegetables as it kills (up-roots) the whole plant rather than that plucked from the plant. Like Buddhists, Jains believe that one should be disciplined and practice austerities and meditation not just for one’s own salvation, but for compassion and salvation for all living beings.
The best way to understand the dual practice of avoiding karma AND shredding karma is the Metaphor of the Leaky Boat: You ride in a boat across water to a distant shore (Nirvana). Notice that water represents chaos and desire, and the land represents the firm and the enlightened. The boat is leaky, and water is pouring in. You have to BOTH plug the leaks (preventative principles like vegetarianism that prevent bad karma from getting IN you) and bail out the water that has already inside the boat (shedding karma, practicing austerities like fasting or standing in postures to get the karma you already have in this life OUT of you). Jains believe that it is only by this two-pronged strategy that the individual can be fully liberated and join back together with the cosmos and thus gain eternal life rather than round after round of rebirth.
From the Tattvarthadhigama Sutra, a central Jain text:
“There is a stoppage of inflow of karmic matter into the soul. It is produced by preservation, carefulness, observances, meditation, conquest of sufferings, and good conduct. By austerities is caused the shedding of karmic matter…Liberation is the freedom from all karmic matter, owing to the non-existence of the cause of bondage and to the shedding of the karmas. After the soul is released, there remain perfect right-belief, perfect right-knowledge, perfect perception, and the state of having accomplished all.”
Buddhism
According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha, the “awakened one”, practiced austerities like Mahavira, but found that this way was not enough. Buddhism is famous for long periods of meditation, and this is quite like Jain austerities of standing in postures, but Buddhism suggests that it is through balance and not extremes that one will be liberated. The Buddha found Jain asceticism to be one sided and promoting of self hatred which is still attachment and duality.
According to the tradition and legend, Buddha’s father was the king of a kingdom in Northern India. When the Buddha was born, the king’s wise men told him that his son would be EITHER a great king OR a great holy man. The king did not want his son to be a holy man, but rather the next king, so to control his son he hid his son away in his palace and gave him all the luxuries in the world, hiding death and pain from him, surrounding him with dancing girls and servants and only healthy, happy, obedient people. At 29, the Buddha had become bored of this, and snuck out to see the city, taking along his trusted servant. In succession, the Buddha the Four Sights (an old man, a sick man, a dead man, and a holy man). When he saw the first three, his servant each time told him that this was unfortunately inevitable for everyone, but when he got to the fourth, the holy man (likely a Jain or proto-Jain), his servant told him that the monk was working on the first three (age, sickness, and death).
The Buddha was immediately envious of something more wonderful than he had ever possessed in the palace, and so he escaped into the jungle where he found sages practicing austerities. The Buddha did these Jain (or proto-Jain, depending on the scholar) austere practices in the jungle for six years, but he found that this brought no great enlightenment and in fact brought him self-hatred and self-denial (notice here that this is where Buddhism breaks away from Jainism as a direct criticism of Jain practice, taking much of Jainism with it in the process but seeking a middle way between denial and indulgence, attached to neither). The Buddha left the jungle disappointed. He decided to sit beneath a large tree, the Bodhi Tree (which one can go see in India today, a tree supposed to have been grown from the original in the original spot), and he vowed not to rise until he found complete and total truth or he would give up his life. After 49 days, at the age of 35, he realized complete enlightenment, the goal of moksha and nirvana that the Hindus and Jains also revere. This is defined in the tradition as the total extinction of greed (raga), hate (dosa), and delusion (moha), obtainable in this life by any being by overcoming duality and desire.
Philosophical Ideas of Buddhism
The Doctrine of the Middle Way: In all things, as the mind splits things into opposites and prefers one while rejecting the other, one should always practice moderation between the extremes. As a criticism of Jainism, this means that one should balance pain and pleasure, being attached to neither, rather than chase pain and difficulty to liberate the self. The Buddha found Jain practice to be immoderate: too much de-emphasis of self is attachment to self hate, not detachment from particular things (as self-hate is particular and bound up with particular things just as much as self-love or pride is). One must love and hate the self, bringing the two together, to find detachment from many and complete identity in the One, the All.
Doctrine of Impermanence: The Buddha taught that all things are impermanent. Thus, everything is constantly evolving, never the same twice. Only the great All is eternal, the One to which we all belong, but as soon as you say this it becomes a conception, a particular being separated from other particular beings, and then is simply a temporary being in your mind.
Codependent Arising (Pratityasamutpada): Another major teaching of Buddhism is codependent arising of all phenomena. All things are themselves in so far as they are connected to every other thing. Opposites, such as heat and cold or self and other, do not anchor things in themselves or give things their true meaning, but rather all things exist dependent on all other things. Just like Jains, Buddhists believe that because of suffering there is attachment and bondage to particular things, to “this versus that”, such that we come to have one-sided views of ourselves, of particular things, and of the cosmos as a whole. Growing in wisdom and enlightenment is growing into identity with the whole, with all the sides that human minds can cling to out of despair, anger and fear. The Buddhists, like the Jains, believe that one does not have a permanent self, and this constant transformation is a central cause of the fear and clinging of the mind to something opposed to an opposite in order to seek stability. However, because the things and views are not themselves permanent, the mind must jump from one thing to another, seeking ideal stability in each thing and then leaping to the next with the same hope, endlessly without rest unless wisdom is developed and liberation achieved. The Buddhists use the metaphor of the monkey mind, of a monkey leaping from branch to branch in a frenzy.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Asian Philosophy: The Orthodox & Unorthodox Schools of Indian Thought
Vedanta: The End of the Vedas
As mentioned last class, Vedanta means ‘end of the Vedas’ and is the systematizing of the Upanishad wisdom. While the Vedic hymns to the gods and rituals were kept, the Upanishads suggest again and again that self-discipline and philosophical insight are the inner meaning of the outer rituals just as the mind is the inner meaning and essence of the outer body. This is the true knowledge (vidya) of the ritual, and it is knowledge rather than ritual that dispels ignorance (avidya). Just as ritual was thought to please and nourish the gods, the Vedanta schools taught that knowledge and wisdom are the life’s blood of the cosmos, the nourishing of the cosmos through the nourishing of the self. As the self grows in wisdom, the self expands the cosmos and the cosmos expands the self.
This implies that the original position of the self is one of ignorance and darkness that is to be overcome through wisdom and enlightenment. Just as the Jains and Buddhists share much of an Upanishadic outlook, they share the idea that the cosmos and self, as it first appears in a disjointed and articulated state, is ‘maya’ or illusion. Sometimes maya was personified as a benevolent god (Maya, lord of illusion), sometimes as a demon as with some early Indian Buddhist schools. In some stories, Maya is a playful trickster, while in some accounts of the enlightenment of the Buddha Maya is king of the demons and sends all he can at the Buddha to prevent him from achieving enlightenment.
There were several Vedanta schools with their own teachers and teachings. The two most famous are the monistic school of Shamkara and the theistic school of Ramanuja. Shamkara pushed beyond the personified gods towards the monism of the One and All, while Ramanuja criticized Shamkara by name as well as other ‘liberal worshipers’ like those admonished in the Vedic hymn we read, for abandoning the gods and Bhakti devotional worship as inessential to participation in the unity of the cosmos. For Ramanuja, the gods and darshana are an important and essential part of rising into the unity of All.
The Vaisheshika School of Atoms & Elements
Kanada, like the country up North, but with a K, is the founder of the Vaisheshika school. While there are subtle criticisms of the Vedas in the Vaisheshika Sutra, it is considered one of the orthodox Hindu schools of thought. Kanada’s dates are debated. Chinese scholars sometimes put his texts at 1000 BCE, while our scholars often put them at 200 BCE or even 100 CE. This is quite political, because the Chinese tradition comes very much from India and the European tradition comes very much from Greece. The publisher of this texts says it is safe to say that Kanada lived and taught by 600 BCE at the latest.
Kanada’s name means, ‘One who eats grain’, but it could also mean, ‘One who gathers particulars’. He is also known as ‘The Owl’, or Uluka. Legend has it that he was so ugly in appearance that he frightened young women, so he only ventured out at night, sneaking into granaries to eat corn and rice grains/particles. Another story is Shiva taught him in the form of an owl. Notice that there are many traditions and versions, some mixed with the stories of the Vedic gods.
Kanada began what is known as the Vaisheshika school, and thus his text is the Vaisheshika sutra. Vaisheshika means particular, but also particle, atom, particular, special, specific, and distinction. Kanada may have been the first logician and first atomist in recorded human history. Gotama’s Nyaya (Logic/Debate) school borrowed much from Kanada in forming rules and manuals of debate. It is believed that Jainism and Buddhism took both of these systems and developed them in a skeptical and relativistic direction. Thus, Kanada and Gotama are positivistic logicians who are seeking atomic truths (universal, necessary and certain), and the Jains and Buddhists are skeptical logicians who criticize positivistic thinking with relativity and skepticism.
The two schools of Kanada (Vaisheshika) and Gotama (Nyaya) focus on inherence (how the particular individual is a member of the general group) and inference (conclusions that can be drawn about the particular individual when one knows the general group). Two types of inherence which allow us to make valid inferences include speciation (groups that have typical qualities) and causation (events in time that lead from one to another). Kanada set out his Vaisheshika system and its seven objects of knowledge to understand the world (cosmology or physics, but in the ancient world this extended to biology and psychology). Gotama, who we will study next, was concerned with debate and logical argument.
First, we will go over Kanada’s seven objects of knowledge, and then interesting points in the following chapters Kanada makes that are important for logic and physics.
1) Substance (dravya): nine in number (air, water, fire, earth, ether, time, space, self and mind). These are composed of particles or atoms that are eternal and uncreated (thus they can’t be created or destroyed). Newton, like medieval alchemists before him but unlike modern physics and chemistry, believed in ether, the glue element that sticks the others together in combinations.
2) Attribute (guna): quality (color, texture, odor, taste) and quantity (number, measure, distinction, conjunction, disjunction). Kanada argues in the text that attributes are not substances, but reside in substances and can cause substances, other attributes and actions.
3) Action (karma): note that karma is the physical energy and motion that makes kicking someone cause pain and also gets the kicker reborn as a cockroach (most only know of the second as a religious concept, but like Chinese Chi it is equivalent to physical energy and is often identified with the element fire in ancient systems). Kanada argues that substances and attributes can cause actions but actions themselves cannot produce other actions. He also argues action belongs to one substance, not many (note that the Buddhist “sound of one hand clapping” is a counter argument to this point, and that Gotama differs from Kanada on this also).
4) General (samanya): the universal or group, such as the general group (speciation) of all cows or the general event (causation) of a rainstorm (in which clouds cause rain).
5) Particular (vishesha): the individual or specific, such as the individual cow or the individual event of a cloud causing rain.
6) Inherence (samavaya): the particular being included and conforming to the general. We can make inferences based on inherences. If we know that the general group of cows have horns, then we know that this particular cow must have horns. Likewise, if we know that generally rainclouds cause rain, then we can infer that this particular rain must have been caused by clouds.
7) Non-existence or Emptiness (abhava): non-being, nothingness and void.
Kanada discusses fire as energy. It is interesting that fire was the most common form of energy seen and used in the ancient world, whereas electricity is the most common form seen and used in the modern world. Thus, the Egyptians, Greeks, Indians and Chinese thought of energy as fire whereas we think of energy as electricity.
Kanada argues that sound is caused and therefore it is impermanent. Some have argued this seems to be a subtle critique of the earlier Vedic tradition (like arguing “paper is perishable” as a safe and subtle way of suggesting that the Bible must be temporary, not eternal).
Kanada argues that things move downward naturally, so things must have additional causes/forces to move sideways or upward (thus, smoke shows additional force or energy, namely that it has fire in it and fire moves upward. He also argues thus that water moves upward by sun/fire in it, then comes downward in cycles. Then, when the water collects in clouds, it causes the fire to be released as lightning. He argues that the arrow flies first from cause and then from inherent tendency to remain in motion, similar if not identical to the modern concept of ‘inertia’.
The Nyaya School of Debate & Logic
Medhatithi Gautama, who lived sometime about 550 BCE, is considered the founder of the Nyaya school and the author of the Nyaya Sutra, a textbook and manual on logical debate. The Nyaya Sutra was not the first Indian text concerned with logical argument and analysis, but it became one of the most popular and thus foundational for the Nyaya school. It is believed that the Jains and Buddhists, who are more skeptical thinkers about logic but very involved in debate, later took much from the Nyaya Sutra and school. Nyaya means “right”, “just”, “justified” or “justifiable”, the same way we use ‘logical’ to mean ‘right debate or speech’. The school reached its height in 150 CE, but it traces itself back to Gautama and his teachings.
Gautama is also called ‘Akshapada’, ‘Eyes in the Feet’, from a legend that he was so deeply absorbed in thought one day on a walk that he fell into a well, and God (Brahma) gave him eyes in his feet to prevent this from happening again. Notice that, like the Vaisheshika ‘particular’ school, Nyaya is concerned with putting particular things into categories and relationships. Objects and substances can be called the ‘feet’ of things, and their families or causes (generalities) the head or mind of things.
The Buddha, who also lived sometime around 550 BCE is also called Gautama or Gotama. Some scholars used to argue that Gautama may have been the Buddha himself, but in fact they were two different founders of two different schools who were both from the Gautama region in Northern India which is how they share the name. Gautama, Buddha and Mahavira (the founder of Jainism), were also of the warrior caste, the second class in the Indian caste system beneath the first class Brahmins, the Vedic priests and scholars. This shows that the period produced new thinkers with new ideas that were questioning the established Vedic tradition, and the schools of this period are known to have become very popular because they were open to people of all castes including the lowest. A story from the period says that a scholar who gave up on the Vedas and turned entirely to logic turned into a Jackal. This story was obviously told by Vedic scholars and priests who found the new systems a threat to the old established traditions. Like science in Europe, however, the new ways were gradually added to the old ways, until the new system was an old standard alongside the Vedic traditions.
The Nyaya Sutra is one of many debate manuals that was written for Indian philosophical or cosmological debates. Questions asked included: “Is the self/soul/mind eternal or temporary?”, “Is the world and its laws eternal or temporary?”, “Is it better to renounce or indulge in luxuries?”, “Are there particular things which are sacred or is everything equally sacred?”, and, a question seen last week in Kanada’s text, “Is sound (and thus the oral tradition of the Vedas) eternal or temporary?”. This last question is central to the Nyaya text and Gautama’s form of proof that we will study.
It is noticeable that many of these debates are concerned with distinguishing the eternal from the temporary. In ancient world cosmology, the eternal was the sacred and the object of true knowledge. If one could determine which things and laws are eternal, one would grasp the ways of the cosmos.
Notice that these debates (vadas) are also all of the form: Is object X in group Y or group not Y? We will call this the Form of Nyaya Debate or Nyaya Vada. If one could justifiably claim that all Xs are Ys, one could then argue for further truths based on the established truths. Jains and Buddhists also took this form as fundamental. For instance, the Vedic priests argued that the self/soul/mind was eternal, while the Jains and Buddhists argued that it is temporary. In Greek thought, particularly with Plato and Aristotle, this arguing back and forth between opposite positions is called “Dialectic”. Later, in Buddhist debates about 200 BCE, just after Nyaya hits its height, three areas of debate for a proposition were conducted in order: “Is X always Y?”, “Is X everywhere Y?” and “Is X Y in everything?”.
In ancient India, a king, authority or rich patron would organize a debate and banquet, invite participants from various schools of thought to debate (often the teachers of competing rival schools, like a competition in a Kung Fu movie). Women were not unheard of as debate participants, but not nearly as common as male debaters (one can unfortunately say this of American and British philosophical departments today).
Debate manuals like the Nyaya Sutra were designed to introduce students and scholars to typical forms of argument as well as methods of attack and defense. They also listed fallacies, types of false arguments that sound solid but have flaws. The Nyaya Sutra tells us that the best debater will not take cheap moves, ‘quibbles’ or ‘clinchers’, but one is free to make them at one’s own risk. The text is surprisingly honest and insightful on this point. By using deceptive reasoning, you could win the debate but you could also could lose if your opponent points out your errors or shortcuts. This is still true of argument today even in the most casual setting, and a good reason that looking into old Logic texts like the Nyaya Sutra is still useful today. Aristotle’s Organon, his ‘Tool’, are six books that cover different areas of debate and knowledge, similarly dealing with construction of argument and fallacies. Aristotle also must straddle the sometimes contrary goals of arguing truth and winning the debate.
The Nyaya Sutra and System
The Four Sources of Knowledge are Perception, Inference, Comparison, and Testimony. All of these can potentially give valid knowledge, but there are problems with each. Perception is seeing or experiencing something for oneself.
Perception can only be valid if it tells you something determinate that doesn’t vary or change. Three examples of false perception given in the text are confusing smoke and dust, confusing a rope with a snake, and thinking that the hot earth is wet when in fact this is a mirage.
Inference is knowledge of an object produced by perception. This shows Induction of perception passing into Deduction of inference which is still held in Philosophy and Psychology today. There are two kinds of inference that one can have based on perception of associations (like rain always falling from clouds).
Some authors have claimed that Aristotle’s syllogisms are deductively valid but the Nyaya proof is not and based on induction. Actually, Aristotle has many syllogisms he admits are not deductively valid on their own and he also believes that one can only argue based on what one perceives and one can be mistaken exactly like the Nyaya School and Gautama. We can see induction and deduction working together in both Aristotle’s syllogisms and Gautama’s form of proof. As can see in the text, there are five steps but as the Buddhists correctly perceived the first and second are identical to the fifth and the fourth. To make it easier, I have boiled it down to two steps. The first is a general rule backed by an example. The second step is a reason which leads to a conclusion. The text gives us examples:
Wherever there is smoke there is fire, as in a kitchen.
Because there is smoke on the hill, there is fire on the hill.
Whatever is produced is mortal, as a pot.
Because it is produced, sound is mortal.
Fallacies are false arguments. Examples include changing the thesis, contradicting the thesis, meaningless utterance, incoherent speech (‘colorless sleep furiously green’ is a famous example by Noam Chomsky), repetition, silence, ignorance (failing to understand typically), evasion (‘I am called by nature’, ‘I have another appointment’), sharing the fault (problem with both sides), overlooking fallacies, pointing out false fallacies. Quibbling is objecting to an argument as a fallacy when it is not actually a fallacy. If a fallacy is an error, quibbling is making an error about something being an error. Quibbling can lose a debate just as surely as giving a fallacious argument. The text gives three types: Term (ex: Someone claims to have a new (“nava”) blanket, but this is confused with the claim of nine (also “nava”) blankets), Genus (ex: Someone claims Brahmins are educated but the opponent objects that some Brahmins are two years old), Metaphor (ex: Someone claims poetically, “The scaffolds cry out”, and the opponent objects, “Impossible, they are inanimate objects”).
The Charvaka School of Skepticism & Materialism
The Charvaka skeptics believed in perception, like the Vaisheshika and the Nyaya, but they did not believe in inference or theory of any kind. Not only did they believe in no gods or spirits or eternal soul, but they did not believe that the human mind can know things through inference but rather imagines simplified relations. This imaginary connection is an illusion. One can use inference as a tool, but it is always an imaginary illusion. Thus, they are agnostic about theory as well as theism. Only what is right in front of your eyes is real. This is very similar to Wittgenstein’s famous opening line of the Tractatus, the book that began modern truth table logic: “The world consists of facts, not of things”. The world may be real, but to us it is many imagined things and constructed facts, not a thing perceived directly.
Other schools criticized the Charvakas for failing to explain the origin of consciousness. The Charvaka reply was that consciousness was like the fermentation of alcohol. When one mixes several ingredients in the right proportions and gives it time, alcohol is produced. As such, consciousness is a temporary combination of elements that dissipates back into the material world from which it arose.
Jainism: Austerity & Perspective
Jainism, or “Jain Dharma” is still practiced today by four million Jains (not Jainists as some mistakenly say). There are currently 4 Million in India today, with many others in communities around the world including New York and Toronto. Jainism rose just before Buddhism, as Mahavira (650 BCE), the main teacher and founder of Jainism, lived just before the Buddha (550 BCE), though all of these dates are still in debate.
Jainism advocates two principles that are shared with Indian thought but credited to Jain innovation: anekantavada, the multiplicity and relativity of reality or “non-one-endedness” and syadvada, the hypothetical and imperfect nature of perspective and judgment that is always the fiber of human truth. According to these two principles, all human beliefs and judgments are temporary and partial views of each particular thing, including the self, and the cosmos, the greater whole. Jains, like Buddhists, believe that things may or may not be as they seem and may or may not be expressible as they are. Jains, much like the Buddhist Logician Nagarjuna we will read soon, believe that there are seven points of view of each and every thing. Each thing, including the cosmos and the self:
somehow is in a way that is describable
somehow is not in a way that is describable
somehow simultaneously is and is not in a way that is describable
somehow is indescribable
somehow is in a way that is indescribable
somehow is not in a way that is indescribable
somehow is and is not in a way that is indescribable
The Buddhist Nagarjuna’s four categories are how a thing is, is not, both is and is not, and neither is nor is not. Notice his addition of the ‘neither’, and one could say one dimension of how things are and are not is how they are and yet are not describable. However, the fourth Jain mode of simply ‘indescribable’ says neither ‘is’ nor ‘is not’. While other schools, including Nyaya logician/debaters, claimed that Jains and Buddhists are at fault for contradicting themselves and seeing contradicting views in things, the Jains and Buddhists argue that one only falls into problematic contradiction if one makes one-sided claims. This is a classic duel between all/none logic and some/some-not logic, between the absolutist and the relativist. The absolutist says the relativist does not have certain truth and contradicts themselves because they are on all sides of the issue, and the relativist replies that the absolutist does not have the full truth and contradicts themselves because they are NOT on all sides of the issue.
Jain texts use the example of hot and cold. An absolutist would argue that a thing cannot be both hot and cold at the same time, but a relativist would argue that a thing is always somewhat relatively hot and somewhat relatively cold. To say a thing is simply hot ignores how cold it is, and to say it is simply cold is to ignore how hot it is. We could supply the example of a refrigerator, which cools on the inside by heating up in back and drawing the heat out of the inside. A refrigerator is simultaneously hot and cold, and it could not be cold in one part unless it is hot in another.
Jains also, much like the wheel of Lao Zi in chapter 11 of the founding Daoist text, the Dao De Jing, use the example of a pot being solid and empty, there and not there. In one part, it is, and in another part, it is not. They use another example of a multicolored cloth, which is and is not many colors all over. Notice that each thing one can say about anything is true in some ways, but false in others, a very critical way that things are and are not as they are described yet are never fully describable. Jains argue that one sees and argues for the side of things that one wants to see, that one wants to be true. This is yet another example of attachment and desire carving the One into many, shining light on some and plunging others into darkness and ignorance.
Jains note that, because human views and descriptions are always one-sided, it is perfectly alright to understand the whole yet lead people in one direction as opposed to another, just as ignorant arguers do, if one sees all of what one is doing. Jains and Buddhists would see Jain and Buddhist teachers and saints in this light, as always telling what cannot be fully told, as leading us towards what is in all directions to begin with. It is only a low and ignorant mind that thinks such leading is impossible because it is contradictory.
Jains use the image of a tree, with the absolute view (naya) as the trunk, what one joins after being fully liberated, and the particular view as the branches and twigs. Notice that the trunk is and is not the twigs, just as the absolute and all-encompassing view is each particular view as a sum of them all but is not each particular view in that it is everything opposed to each particular view as well.
Similarly, Jains argue (like Hegel, who considers seeing being, non-being and becoming simultaneously in things as the first leap of philosophy and associates it with the ancient Greek skeptic Heraclitus) that things simultaneously are and are not because they are being birthed/generated, stable/still, and decaying/transforming at the same time at all times that they are. Each of these views are false if they are considered independently true as opposed to their opposite, but in conjunction with their opposites they are the whole truth of each particular thing and of truth as a whole. Notice that the union of stability with transformation as a single whole view is entirely similar to the orthodox Hindu union of Vishnu, the preserver/savior, and Shiva, the destroyer/transformer, in Brahma, the personification of all.
Jains were also early proponents of the idea that the cosmos works in cycles: like the physical rising and setting of the sun, consciousness rises, then sets. People start to become awakened teachers and develop religion in the rising era, and people lose religion in the setting era. This is endless, like the cosmos. The cosmos becomes enlightened to its own self through us, and then loses consciousness of itself through us. The Hindus and Buddhists share a similar picture of the cosmos, and the Indian golden age of philosophy, which includes the birth and teaching period of Mahavira and the Buddha, is seen as the apex, the high noon, of this current cycle. Unfortunately, we currently live in an era of dimming religion and consciousness according to most Jain and Hindu teachers (the Hindus following the Jains in this picture).
Jain teachers and saints are known as Tirthankaras, “one who makes a ford” (cutting through water as order over chaos, as land becoming firmament in the chaotic waters). Mahavira (also Mahavir), the founder of Jainism, is understood by Jains to be the 24th Tirthankara. Like others of his time, Mahavira was a practitioner of austerities that are aimed at detachment from desire and multiplicity of the world: fasting, standing in jungles, going without food or luxuries for extended periods of time. Statues of Mahavira and other Tirthankaras show vines growing up their legs and bodies, as vines grow several feet in the jungle a day and so would grow up your body if you practice standing austerities for days at a time. Jains believe that these practices purify the self/soul/mind.
Here, we come to THE critical difference between Jainism and the other schools of Indian thought. In Hinduism and Buddhism, karma can be positive (merit and blessing) or negative (demerit and sin). Thus, karma can either help you up or drag you down. For Jains, karma is always bondage, always weight that keeps you down, always division or blockage between you and the ALL. Thus, one tries best to avoid accumulating karma and to destroy the karma one has already accumulated.
While there are kinds of karma and attachment that make ourselves and others happy which the Jains call good, they are hindrances to be overcome if final liberation is to be obtained. If you really, really like waffles, this is fine but to become one with all you must be as indifferent to waffles, neither loving nor hating waffles, as the cosmos. Jains believe that “good” karma, such as that which causes pleasure when helping others out of compassion, matures and falls off naturally along with the body. It is easier to get rid of “good” karma which only affects the body, but it is still to be left behind.
Jains are famous for their doctrine of the negativity of attachment and the radical nonviolence that follows from this principle. Jains wear masks to prevent insects from flying in their mouths, sweep the ground to avoid killing insects (even though the killing would be unintentional, it would still be an accumulation of karma), influenced other Indian thought in promoting vegetarianism, and even don’t eat root vegetables as it kills (up-roots) the whole plant rather than that plucked from the plant. Like Buddhists, Jains believe that one should be disciplined and practice austerities and meditation not just for one’s own salvation, but for compassion and salvation for all living beings.
The best way to understand the dual practice of avoiding karma AND shredding karma is the Metaphor of the Leaky Boat: You ride in a boat across water to a distant shore (Nirvana). Notice that water represents chaos and desire, and the land represents the firm and the enlightened. The boat is leaky, and water is pouring in. You have to BOTH plug the leaks (preventative principles like vegetarianism that prevent bad karma from getting IN you) and bail out the water that has already inside the boat (shedding karma, practicing austerities like fasting or standing in postures to get the karma you already have in this life OUT of you). Jains believe that it is only by this two-pronged strategy that the individual can be fully liberated and join back together with the cosmos and thus gain eternal life rather than round after round of rebirth.
From the Tattvarthadhigama Sutra, a central Jain text:
“There is a stoppage of inflow of karmic matter into the soul. It is produced by preservation, carefulness, observances, meditation, conquest of sufferings, and good conduct. By austerities is caused the shedding of karmic matter…Liberation is the freedom from all karmic matter, owing to the non-existence of the cause of bondage and to the shedding of the karmas. After the soul is released, there remain perfect right-belief, perfect right-knowledge, perfect perception, and the state of having accomplished all.”
Jains argued as logicians (debaters, in the ancient world) with the other competing schools of Indian thought such as Vedanta, Nyaya, Buddhists, and Charvakas. As mentioned, Jains argued against Hindu orthodox schools such as the Vedanta and Nyaya that there is no immortal soul/self after total release and liberation, against the Buddhists about karma, heavenly realms and other dogmatic differences, and against the Charvakas that there is no liberation of consciousness. They also argued passionately for the principle of anekantavada against the doctrine of many other schools that there is one essential nature outside of any perspective (‘naya’), a position the Jains call ‘ekantavada’ as opposed to their own ‘an-ekantavada’.
As mentioned last class, Vedanta means ‘end of the Vedas’ and is the systematizing of the Upanishad wisdom. While the Vedic hymns to the gods and rituals were kept, the Upanishads suggest again and again that self-discipline and philosophical insight are the inner meaning of the outer rituals just as the mind is the inner meaning and essence of the outer body. This is the true knowledge (vidya) of the ritual, and it is knowledge rather than ritual that dispels ignorance (avidya). Just as ritual was thought to please and nourish the gods, the Vedanta schools taught that knowledge and wisdom are the life’s blood of the cosmos, the nourishing of the cosmos through the nourishing of the self. As the self grows in wisdom, the self expands the cosmos and the cosmos expands the self.
This implies that the original position of the self is one of ignorance and darkness that is to be overcome through wisdom and enlightenment. Just as the Jains and Buddhists share much of an Upanishadic outlook, they share the idea that the cosmos and self, as it first appears in a disjointed and articulated state, is ‘maya’ or illusion. Sometimes maya was personified as a benevolent god (Maya, lord of illusion), sometimes as a demon as with some early Indian Buddhist schools. In some stories, Maya is a playful trickster, while in some accounts of the enlightenment of the Buddha Maya is king of the demons and sends all he can at the Buddha to prevent him from achieving enlightenment.
There were several Vedanta schools with their own teachers and teachings. The two most famous are the monistic school of Shamkara and the theistic school of Ramanuja. Shamkara pushed beyond the personified gods towards the monism of the One and All, while Ramanuja criticized Shamkara by name as well as other ‘liberal worshipers’ like those admonished in the Vedic hymn we read, for abandoning the gods and Bhakti devotional worship as inessential to participation in the unity of the cosmos. For Ramanuja, the gods and darshana are an important and essential part of rising into the unity of All.
The Vaisheshika School of Atoms & Elements
Kanada, like the country up North, but with a K, is the founder of the Vaisheshika school. While there are subtle criticisms of the Vedas in the Vaisheshika Sutra, it is considered one of the orthodox Hindu schools of thought. Kanada’s dates are debated. Chinese scholars sometimes put his texts at 1000 BCE, while our scholars often put them at 200 BCE or even 100 CE. This is quite political, because the Chinese tradition comes very much from India and the European tradition comes very much from Greece. The publisher of this texts says it is safe to say that Kanada lived and taught by 600 BCE at the latest.
Kanada’s name means, ‘One who eats grain’, but it could also mean, ‘One who gathers particulars’. He is also known as ‘The Owl’, or Uluka. Legend has it that he was so ugly in appearance that he frightened young women, so he only ventured out at night, sneaking into granaries to eat corn and rice grains/particles. Another story is Shiva taught him in the form of an owl. Notice that there are many traditions and versions, some mixed with the stories of the Vedic gods.
Kanada began what is known as the Vaisheshika school, and thus his text is the Vaisheshika sutra. Vaisheshika means particular, but also particle, atom, particular, special, specific, and distinction. Kanada may have been the first logician and first atomist in recorded human history. Gotama’s Nyaya (Logic/Debate) school borrowed much from Kanada in forming rules and manuals of debate. It is believed that Jainism and Buddhism took both of these systems and developed them in a skeptical and relativistic direction. Thus, Kanada and Gotama are positivistic logicians who are seeking atomic truths (universal, necessary and certain), and the Jains and Buddhists are skeptical logicians who criticize positivistic thinking with relativity and skepticism.
The two schools of Kanada (Vaisheshika) and Gotama (Nyaya) focus on inherence (how the particular individual is a member of the general group) and inference (conclusions that can be drawn about the particular individual when one knows the general group). Two types of inherence which allow us to make valid inferences include speciation (groups that have typical qualities) and causation (events in time that lead from one to another). Kanada set out his Vaisheshika system and its seven objects of knowledge to understand the world (cosmology or physics, but in the ancient world this extended to biology and psychology). Gotama, who we will study next, was concerned with debate and logical argument.
First, we will go over Kanada’s seven objects of knowledge, and then interesting points in the following chapters Kanada makes that are important for logic and physics.
1) Substance (dravya): nine in number (air, water, fire, earth, ether, time, space, self and mind). These are composed of particles or atoms that are eternal and uncreated (thus they can’t be created or destroyed). Newton, like medieval alchemists before him but unlike modern physics and chemistry, believed in ether, the glue element that sticks the others together in combinations.
2) Attribute (guna): quality (color, texture, odor, taste) and quantity (number, measure, distinction, conjunction, disjunction). Kanada argues in the text that attributes are not substances, but reside in substances and can cause substances, other attributes and actions.
3) Action (karma): note that karma is the physical energy and motion that makes kicking someone cause pain and also gets the kicker reborn as a cockroach (most only know of the second as a religious concept, but like Chinese Chi it is equivalent to physical energy and is often identified with the element fire in ancient systems). Kanada argues that substances and attributes can cause actions but actions themselves cannot produce other actions. He also argues action belongs to one substance, not many (note that the Buddhist “sound of one hand clapping” is a counter argument to this point, and that Gotama differs from Kanada on this also).
4) General (samanya): the universal or group, such as the general group (speciation) of all cows or the general event (causation) of a rainstorm (in which clouds cause rain).
5) Particular (vishesha): the individual or specific, such as the individual cow or the individual event of a cloud causing rain.
6) Inherence (samavaya): the particular being included and conforming to the general. We can make inferences based on inherences. If we know that the general group of cows have horns, then we know that this particular cow must have horns. Likewise, if we know that generally rainclouds cause rain, then we can infer that this particular rain must have been caused by clouds.
7) Non-existence or Emptiness (abhava): non-being, nothingness and void.
Kanada discusses fire as energy. It is interesting that fire was the most common form of energy seen and used in the ancient world, whereas electricity is the most common form seen and used in the modern world. Thus, the Egyptians, Greeks, Indians and Chinese thought of energy as fire whereas we think of energy as electricity.
Kanada argues that sound is caused and therefore it is impermanent. Some have argued this seems to be a subtle critique of the earlier Vedic tradition (like arguing “paper is perishable” as a safe and subtle way of suggesting that the Bible must be temporary, not eternal).
Kanada argues that things move downward naturally, so things must have additional causes/forces to move sideways or upward (thus, smoke shows additional force or energy, namely that it has fire in it and fire moves upward. He also argues thus that water moves upward by sun/fire in it, then comes downward in cycles. Then, when the water collects in clouds, it causes the fire to be released as lightning. He argues that the arrow flies first from cause and then from inherent tendency to remain in motion, similar if not identical to the modern concept of ‘inertia’.
The Nyaya School of Debate & Logic
Medhatithi Gautama, who lived sometime about 550 BCE, is considered the founder of the Nyaya school and the author of the Nyaya Sutra, a textbook and manual on logical debate. The Nyaya Sutra was not the first Indian text concerned with logical argument and analysis, but it became one of the most popular and thus foundational for the Nyaya school. It is believed that the Jains and Buddhists, who are more skeptical thinkers about logic but very involved in debate, later took much from the Nyaya Sutra and school. Nyaya means “right”, “just”, “justified” or “justifiable”, the same way we use ‘logical’ to mean ‘right debate or speech’. The school reached its height in 150 CE, but it traces itself back to Gautama and his teachings.
Gautama is also called ‘Akshapada’, ‘Eyes in the Feet’, from a legend that he was so deeply absorbed in thought one day on a walk that he fell into a well, and God (Brahma) gave him eyes in his feet to prevent this from happening again. Notice that, like the Vaisheshika ‘particular’ school, Nyaya is concerned with putting particular things into categories and relationships. Objects and substances can be called the ‘feet’ of things, and their families or causes (generalities) the head or mind of things.
The Buddha, who also lived sometime around 550 BCE is also called Gautama or Gotama. Some scholars used to argue that Gautama may have been the Buddha himself, but in fact they were two different founders of two different schools who were both from the Gautama region in Northern India which is how they share the name. Gautama, Buddha and Mahavira (the founder of Jainism), were also of the warrior caste, the second class in the Indian caste system beneath the first class Brahmins, the Vedic priests and scholars. This shows that the period produced new thinkers with new ideas that were questioning the established Vedic tradition, and the schools of this period are known to have become very popular because they were open to people of all castes including the lowest. A story from the period says that a scholar who gave up on the Vedas and turned entirely to logic turned into a Jackal. This story was obviously told by Vedic scholars and priests who found the new systems a threat to the old established traditions. Like science in Europe, however, the new ways were gradually added to the old ways, until the new system was an old standard alongside the Vedic traditions.
The Nyaya Sutra is one of many debate manuals that was written for Indian philosophical or cosmological debates. Questions asked included: “Is the self/soul/mind eternal or temporary?”, “Is the world and its laws eternal or temporary?”, “Is it better to renounce or indulge in luxuries?”, “Are there particular things which are sacred or is everything equally sacred?”, and, a question seen last week in Kanada’s text, “Is sound (and thus the oral tradition of the Vedas) eternal or temporary?”. This last question is central to the Nyaya text and Gautama’s form of proof that we will study.
It is noticeable that many of these debates are concerned with distinguishing the eternal from the temporary. In ancient world cosmology, the eternal was the sacred and the object of true knowledge. If one could determine which things and laws are eternal, one would grasp the ways of the cosmos.
Notice that these debates (vadas) are also all of the form: Is object X in group Y or group not Y? We will call this the Form of Nyaya Debate or Nyaya Vada. If one could justifiably claim that all Xs are Ys, one could then argue for further truths based on the established truths. Jains and Buddhists also took this form as fundamental. For instance, the Vedic priests argued that the self/soul/mind was eternal, while the Jains and Buddhists argued that it is temporary. In Greek thought, particularly with Plato and Aristotle, this arguing back and forth between opposite positions is called “Dialectic”. Later, in Buddhist debates about 200 BCE, just after Nyaya hits its height, three areas of debate for a proposition were conducted in order: “Is X always Y?”, “Is X everywhere Y?” and “Is X Y in everything?”.
In ancient India, a king, authority or rich patron would organize a debate and banquet, invite participants from various schools of thought to debate (often the teachers of competing rival schools, like a competition in a Kung Fu movie). Women were not unheard of as debate participants, but not nearly as common as male debaters (one can unfortunately say this of American and British philosophical departments today).
Debate manuals like the Nyaya Sutra were designed to introduce students and scholars to typical forms of argument as well as methods of attack and defense. They also listed fallacies, types of false arguments that sound solid but have flaws. The Nyaya Sutra tells us that the best debater will not take cheap moves, ‘quibbles’ or ‘clinchers’, but one is free to make them at one’s own risk. The text is surprisingly honest and insightful on this point. By using deceptive reasoning, you could win the debate but you could also could lose if your opponent points out your errors or shortcuts. This is still true of argument today even in the most casual setting, and a good reason that looking into old Logic texts like the Nyaya Sutra is still useful today. Aristotle’s Organon, his ‘Tool’, are six books that cover different areas of debate and knowledge, similarly dealing with construction of argument and fallacies. Aristotle also must straddle the sometimes contrary goals of arguing truth and winning the debate.
The Nyaya Sutra and System
The Four Sources of Knowledge are Perception, Inference, Comparison, and Testimony. All of these can potentially give valid knowledge, but there are problems with each. Perception is seeing or experiencing something for oneself.
Perception can only be valid if it tells you something determinate that doesn’t vary or change. Three examples of false perception given in the text are confusing smoke and dust, confusing a rope with a snake, and thinking that the hot earth is wet when in fact this is a mirage.
Inference is knowledge of an object produced by perception. This shows Induction of perception passing into Deduction of inference which is still held in Philosophy and Psychology today. There are two kinds of inference that one can have based on perception of associations (like rain always falling from clouds).
Some authors have claimed that Aristotle’s syllogisms are deductively valid but the Nyaya proof is not and based on induction. Actually, Aristotle has many syllogisms he admits are not deductively valid on their own and he also believes that one can only argue based on what one perceives and one can be mistaken exactly like the Nyaya School and Gautama. We can see induction and deduction working together in both Aristotle’s syllogisms and Gautama’s form of proof. As can see in the text, there are five steps but as the Buddhists correctly perceived the first and second are identical to the fifth and the fourth. To make it easier, I have boiled it down to two steps. The first is a general rule backed by an example. The second step is a reason which leads to a conclusion. The text gives us examples:
Wherever there is smoke there is fire, as in a kitchen.
Because there is smoke on the hill, there is fire on the hill.
Whatever is produced is mortal, as a pot.
Because it is produced, sound is mortal.
Fallacies are false arguments. Examples include changing the thesis, contradicting the thesis, meaningless utterance, incoherent speech (‘colorless sleep furiously green’ is a famous example by Noam Chomsky), repetition, silence, ignorance (failing to understand typically), evasion (‘I am called by nature’, ‘I have another appointment’), sharing the fault (problem with both sides), overlooking fallacies, pointing out false fallacies. Quibbling is objecting to an argument as a fallacy when it is not actually a fallacy. If a fallacy is an error, quibbling is making an error about something being an error. Quibbling can lose a debate just as surely as giving a fallacious argument. The text gives three types: Term (ex: Someone claims to have a new (“nava”) blanket, but this is confused with the claim of nine (also “nava”) blankets), Genus (ex: Someone claims Brahmins are educated but the opponent objects that some Brahmins are two years old), Metaphor (ex: Someone claims poetically, “The scaffolds cry out”, and the opponent objects, “Impossible, they are inanimate objects”).
The Charvaka School of Skepticism & Materialism
The Charvaka skeptics believed in perception, like the Vaisheshika and the Nyaya, but they did not believe in inference or theory of any kind. Not only did they believe in no gods or spirits or eternal soul, but they did not believe that the human mind can know things through inference but rather imagines simplified relations. This imaginary connection is an illusion. One can use inference as a tool, but it is always an imaginary illusion. Thus, they are agnostic about theory as well as theism. Only what is right in front of your eyes is real. This is very similar to Wittgenstein’s famous opening line of the Tractatus, the book that began modern truth table logic: “The world consists of facts, not of things”. The world may be real, but to us it is many imagined things and constructed facts, not a thing perceived directly.
Other schools criticized the Charvakas for failing to explain the origin of consciousness. The Charvaka reply was that consciousness was like the fermentation of alcohol. When one mixes several ingredients in the right proportions and gives it time, alcohol is produced. As such, consciousness is a temporary combination of elements that dissipates back into the material world from which it arose.
Jainism: Austerity & Perspective
Jainism, or “Jain Dharma” is still practiced today by four million Jains (not Jainists as some mistakenly say). There are currently 4 Million in India today, with many others in communities around the world including New York and Toronto. Jainism rose just before Buddhism, as Mahavira (650 BCE), the main teacher and founder of Jainism, lived just before the Buddha (550 BCE), though all of these dates are still in debate.
Jainism advocates two principles that are shared with Indian thought but credited to Jain innovation: anekantavada, the multiplicity and relativity of reality or “non-one-endedness” and syadvada, the hypothetical and imperfect nature of perspective and judgment that is always the fiber of human truth. According to these two principles, all human beliefs and judgments are temporary and partial views of each particular thing, including the self, and the cosmos, the greater whole. Jains, like Buddhists, believe that things may or may not be as they seem and may or may not be expressible as they are. Jains, much like the Buddhist Logician Nagarjuna we will read soon, believe that there are seven points of view of each and every thing. Each thing, including the cosmos and the self:
somehow is in a way that is describable
somehow is not in a way that is describable
somehow simultaneously is and is not in a way that is describable
somehow is indescribable
somehow is in a way that is indescribable
somehow is not in a way that is indescribable
somehow is and is not in a way that is indescribable
The Buddhist Nagarjuna’s four categories are how a thing is, is not, both is and is not, and neither is nor is not. Notice his addition of the ‘neither’, and one could say one dimension of how things are and are not is how they are and yet are not describable. However, the fourth Jain mode of simply ‘indescribable’ says neither ‘is’ nor ‘is not’. While other schools, including Nyaya logician/debaters, claimed that Jains and Buddhists are at fault for contradicting themselves and seeing contradicting views in things, the Jains and Buddhists argue that one only falls into problematic contradiction if one makes one-sided claims. This is a classic duel between all/none logic and some/some-not logic, between the absolutist and the relativist. The absolutist says the relativist does not have certain truth and contradicts themselves because they are on all sides of the issue, and the relativist replies that the absolutist does not have the full truth and contradicts themselves because they are NOT on all sides of the issue.
Jain texts use the example of hot and cold. An absolutist would argue that a thing cannot be both hot and cold at the same time, but a relativist would argue that a thing is always somewhat relatively hot and somewhat relatively cold. To say a thing is simply hot ignores how cold it is, and to say it is simply cold is to ignore how hot it is. We could supply the example of a refrigerator, which cools on the inside by heating up in back and drawing the heat out of the inside. A refrigerator is simultaneously hot and cold, and it could not be cold in one part unless it is hot in another.
Jains also, much like the wheel of Lao Zi in chapter 11 of the founding Daoist text, the Dao De Jing, use the example of a pot being solid and empty, there and not there. In one part, it is, and in another part, it is not. They use another example of a multicolored cloth, which is and is not many colors all over. Notice that each thing one can say about anything is true in some ways, but false in others, a very critical way that things are and are not as they are described yet are never fully describable. Jains argue that one sees and argues for the side of things that one wants to see, that one wants to be true. This is yet another example of attachment and desire carving the One into many, shining light on some and plunging others into darkness and ignorance.
Jains note that, because human views and descriptions are always one-sided, it is perfectly alright to understand the whole yet lead people in one direction as opposed to another, just as ignorant arguers do, if one sees all of what one is doing. Jains and Buddhists would see Jain and Buddhist teachers and saints in this light, as always telling what cannot be fully told, as leading us towards what is in all directions to begin with. It is only a low and ignorant mind that thinks such leading is impossible because it is contradictory.
Jains use the image of a tree, with the absolute view (naya) as the trunk, what one joins after being fully liberated, and the particular view as the branches and twigs. Notice that the trunk is and is not the twigs, just as the absolute and all-encompassing view is each particular view as a sum of them all but is not each particular view in that it is everything opposed to each particular view as well.
Similarly, Jains argue (like Hegel, who considers seeing being, non-being and becoming simultaneously in things as the first leap of philosophy and associates it with the ancient Greek skeptic Heraclitus) that things simultaneously are and are not because they are being birthed/generated, stable/still, and decaying/transforming at the same time at all times that they are. Each of these views are false if they are considered independently true as opposed to their opposite, but in conjunction with their opposites they are the whole truth of each particular thing and of truth as a whole. Notice that the union of stability with transformation as a single whole view is entirely similar to the orthodox Hindu union of Vishnu, the preserver/savior, and Shiva, the destroyer/transformer, in Brahma, the personification of all.
Jains were also early proponents of the idea that the cosmos works in cycles: like the physical rising and setting of the sun, consciousness rises, then sets. People start to become awakened teachers and develop religion in the rising era, and people lose religion in the setting era. This is endless, like the cosmos. The cosmos becomes enlightened to its own self through us, and then loses consciousness of itself through us. The Hindus and Buddhists share a similar picture of the cosmos, and the Indian golden age of philosophy, which includes the birth and teaching period of Mahavira and the Buddha, is seen as the apex, the high noon, of this current cycle. Unfortunately, we currently live in an era of dimming religion and consciousness according to most Jain and Hindu teachers (the Hindus following the Jains in this picture).
Jain teachers and saints are known as Tirthankaras, “one who makes a ford” (cutting through water as order over chaos, as land becoming firmament in the chaotic waters). Mahavira (also Mahavir), the founder of Jainism, is understood by Jains to be the 24th Tirthankara. Like others of his time, Mahavira was a practitioner of austerities that are aimed at detachment from desire and multiplicity of the world: fasting, standing in jungles, going without food or luxuries for extended periods of time. Statues of Mahavira and other Tirthankaras show vines growing up their legs and bodies, as vines grow several feet in the jungle a day and so would grow up your body if you practice standing austerities for days at a time. Jains believe that these practices purify the self/soul/mind.
Here, we come to THE critical difference between Jainism and the other schools of Indian thought. In Hinduism and Buddhism, karma can be positive (merit and blessing) or negative (demerit and sin). Thus, karma can either help you up or drag you down. For Jains, karma is always bondage, always weight that keeps you down, always division or blockage between you and the ALL. Thus, one tries best to avoid accumulating karma and to destroy the karma one has already accumulated.
While there are kinds of karma and attachment that make ourselves and others happy which the Jains call good, they are hindrances to be overcome if final liberation is to be obtained. If you really, really like waffles, this is fine but to become one with all you must be as indifferent to waffles, neither loving nor hating waffles, as the cosmos. Jains believe that “good” karma, such as that which causes pleasure when helping others out of compassion, matures and falls off naturally along with the body. It is easier to get rid of “good” karma which only affects the body, but it is still to be left behind.
Jains are famous for their doctrine of the negativity of attachment and the radical nonviolence that follows from this principle. Jains wear masks to prevent insects from flying in their mouths, sweep the ground to avoid killing insects (even though the killing would be unintentional, it would still be an accumulation of karma), influenced other Indian thought in promoting vegetarianism, and even don’t eat root vegetables as it kills (up-roots) the whole plant rather than that plucked from the plant. Like Buddhists, Jains believe that one should be disciplined and practice austerities and meditation not just for one’s own salvation, but for compassion and salvation for all living beings.
The best way to understand the dual practice of avoiding karma AND shredding karma is the Metaphor of the Leaky Boat: You ride in a boat across water to a distant shore (Nirvana). Notice that water represents chaos and desire, and the land represents the firm and the enlightened. The boat is leaky, and water is pouring in. You have to BOTH plug the leaks (preventative principles like vegetarianism that prevent bad karma from getting IN you) and bail out the water that has already inside the boat (shedding karma, practicing austerities like fasting or standing in postures to get the karma you already have in this life OUT of you). Jains believe that it is only by this two-pronged strategy that the individual can be fully liberated and join back together with the cosmos and thus gain eternal life rather than round after round of rebirth.
From the Tattvarthadhigama Sutra, a central Jain text:
“There is a stoppage of inflow of karmic matter into the soul. It is produced by preservation, carefulness, observances, meditation, conquest of sufferings, and good conduct. By austerities is caused the shedding of karmic matter…Liberation is the freedom from all karmic matter, owing to the non-existence of the cause of bondage and to the shedding of the karmas. After the soul is released, there remain perfect right-belief, perfect right-knowledge, perfect perception, and the state of having accomplished all.”
Jains argued as logicians (debaters, in the ancient world) with the other competing schools of Indian thought such as Vedanta, Nyaya, Buddhists, and Charvakas. As mentioned, Jains argued against Hindu orthodox schools such as the Vedanta and Nyaya that there is no immortal soul/self after total release and liberation, against the Buddhists about karma, heavenly realms and other dogmatic differences, and against the Charvakas that there is no liberation of consciousness. They also argued passionately for the principle of anekantavada against the doctrine of many other schools that there is one essential nature outside of any perspective (‘naya’), a position the Jains call ‘ekantavada’ as opposed to their own ‘an-ekantavada’.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Intro Philosophy: Hinduism & The Upanishads
‘Hindu’ is the Persian name for India (Persia and India are next door to each other and have traded for thousands of years). Our society borrows the term from the British, who get the term from the Persians. As we read in the Vedas, Hinduism brought together many traditions from many regions with many gods, but there are three levels that are equally interchangeable and separable. First, each can have a particular god that is the emphasis of one’s particular branch of the tradition. Second, the many gods are each one aspect of a single god, often the great father and creator, named by most traditions Brahma. Third, there is a philosophical monism that goes beyond god or not god, living or dead, conscious or unconscious, that is the One, called Brahman, different from the personified Brahma.
There are three paths of worship in Hinduism. First, there is devotional worship, known as Bhakti Yoga (‘Yoga’ means ‘discipline’, or practice). In Bhakti devotional worship, the devotee prays, sings hymns, lights incense, and performs rituals to gain favor with the gods and heavens. It is impossible not to notice that most of what we call ‘religion’ the world over is in fact forms of Bhakti practice, devotion to particular gods and ancestral spirits. The two most populous forms of Bhakti Hinduism are Shaivism, the worship of Shiva (the transformer and destroyer) and his incarnations such as Ganesh (the elephant headed god), and Vaishnavism, the worship of Vishnu (the savior or preserver) and his incarnations such as Krishna. Worship is often called ‘darshana’, or seeing/experiencing, and Hindus will say, I am going to the seeing, meaning I am going to see and be seen by the god. Another common form of Bhakti devotion is worship of a particular goddess such as Kali. Notice that, like a scientist, Bhakti practitioners also believe in learning by experience and seeing, but their subject matter is quite different.
Raja yoga, the second path, is worship by meditation and asceticism (living in isolation, standing in place for days, fasting chanting the names of gods for hours, sitting on spikes, and other means of hard activity) meant to gain a meditative state of insight. Raja means ‘force’ or ‘effort’, and India is famous for its forest sages practicing these techniques.
Jnana yoga (“zshna-na”), the third path and my personal favorite, is worship by acquiring knowledge, wisdom and understanding the order of things through study and philosophizing. This class itself could be seen as a form of Jnana yoga, designed to bring you closer to the core by studying the ways of the world. All three paths, or any mixture of the three, are understood to work towards the same goal: liberation from the bonds of attachment and desire, rising into enlightenment and release from the constraints of identity to join together with the whole.
There is an ultimate goal to this process. Initially, there is hope for a better next life. Many are familiar already with the Hindu idea of reincarnation. This is not a form of afterlife particular to India, but in fact there is evidence that many tribal cultures and early Egypt believed that one’s present life will be reincarnated in another life on earth based on one’s actions and intentions. This interconnection is called ‘Karma’, which simply means ‘action’ in Sanskrit. Interestingly, physical causation is ‘karma’, just as metaphysical causation (next life physics) is ‘karma’, same word and understanding of cause and effect applied to a different sphere of existence. If you punch someone in the head, it is karma that makes their head reel backward, and karma that also weighs down your chance for a favorable life after death in the Hindu tradition.
Beyond better lives, there is hope for release, for freedom from rounds of rebirth on earth. This can be thought of as dwelling in a heaven with one’s personal or family god, but also as a dwelling with the order of things without residing in any particular place. Bhakti yoga tends to favor the dwelling with a lord, while Raja and Jnana tends to favor the dwelling with the universe as a whole, however it is important to remember that some Hindus believe that both amount to the same exact thing (while others will insist that their school’s truth is ‘more true’, the same variation one finds in any religion and in our own culture). This release is also called Moksha and Samadhi, but in America we know this first and foremost by the same name as the famous grunge band, Nirvana.
While moksha is the ultimate goal, via the more immediate goal of positioning oneself favorably for moksha either in this life (dwelling in the forest or a monastery) or in a next life, there are three other goals that Indian philosophy points to as desirable making four in total. In addition to moksha/nirvana, there is law or morality, ‘dharma’ (the term Jains and Buddhists use to describe their traditions and rules), pleasure, ‘kama’ (as from the Kama Sutra), and material wellbeing, ‘artha’. Clearly, the overall idea is that pleasure and comfort (kama and artha) are not in themselves evil, but one should pursue liberation through discipline (moksha through dharma).
Ancient India saw a great deal of development in science and technology. They observed the natural world and put phenomena into families and categories as did the ancient Greeks and as we still do today. The Romans would trade Germanic and Celtic slaves to India in exchange for Indian wootz, the metal most prized for weapons in the ancient world. In mathematics the Indians were unsurpassed by ancient civilizations, developing the base ten system and the Indian-Arabic numerals we use today. They laid down the basics of symbolic equations, the concept and symbolization of zero, and invented the variable (originally a thick dot). All of this got picked up by the Muslims, who turned it into algebra, which then got picked up by the Europeans, who turned it into Calculus. Typically, we learn about Euclid and the Greeks doing geometry as the source of the Western mathematical tradition. Muslims were influenced by the Greeks and Euclid, but Euclid argued about lines drawn in sand and did not use equations. It was the Indians who invented the sorts of mathematical symbolism that the Muslims turned into step by step symbolic mathematics as we know it today and teach it up through high school.
The Upanishads (beginning in 800 BCE, most having been written by 600 BCE) were philosophical teachings about the soul/self (atman) and how to release the soul from desire and identity to merge with the great One and All (the goal of moksha or nirvana, discussed last time). The Upanishads frequently interpret the stories of the Vedas as metaphoric teachings, instructions for the truly wise on how to develop the mind/soul/self. The self (atman) was to be united with the supreme reality, oneness, and spirit of all, Brahman. ‘Upanishad’ means “sitting down near/beside”, (upa, ‘near’, ni, ‘down’, sad, ‘sit’) as these are the close teachings of the priest, philosopher or master who has taught the Vedas for a long time and knows their secret and hidden ‘inner’ meaning. The students who were talented and advanced would sit down beside the teacher after the normal lecture to get the advanced, inner teaching that the normal students were not ready to hear. Unfortunately, there are no authors to which the texts are ascribed, having been lost to history. Perhaps some of these teachings are as old as the Vedas, and were only written down after 800 BCE. There are over 200 Upanishad texts, though there are 10 central Upanishads.
One of the most famous sayings from the Upanishads is Tat Tvam Asi, “That is you”. No matter what “that” you are looking at, it is in fact your own self because all is one and there are no complete or permanent separations between any two things. This means there is no complete distinction between any ‘this’ or ‘that’, and thus no complete distinction between atman and Brahman, or between any of the gods and Brahman. This is similar to another passage of Zhuang Zi the Daoist, one of my favorite skeptical passages of philosophy, which says, “A sage too has a this and a that, but his that has a this, and his this has a that”. Notice the monism that unites all connecting not only the various Hindu gods together but all individuals in the singular One of reality.
Just like the unorthodox systems of Jainism and Buddhism would do later, the Upanishads point beyond particular duties to ritual, sacrifice, caste or class to the supreme goal of self-liberation. This had a great appeal to those who were not Brahmins, the priests who formed the top level of the caste system. While the Upanishads did not say to abandon the caste system, the teachings were applicable to all. As we will see, Mahavira who founded Jainism and the Buddha both had great appeal as they openly said that one did not need to be reborn as a priest to have a shot at nirvana. Rather, one could have it in this very life and not need to reposition oneself for a better life through karma. Both Mahavira and Buddha were warrior’s sons and so were second class themselves. We can see that, as the Upanishads caught on and became one of if not the most influential source in the further developments of Indian thought, people increasingly questioned the Vedas and the caste system even as they continued to retain them as many still do today.
In the Katha Upanishad, a dialog between the sage Naciketas and Yama, god of death, the good is praised above the pleasant. As the sourcebook points out, this is very similar to what Socrates argues in dialogues written by Plato. The highest mind is to be pursued, rather than the simple passing pleasures. Naciketas says to Death, after being taught: “Ephemeral things! That which is a mortal’s, O End-maker, even the vigor of all the powers, they wear away. Even a whole life is slight indeed. Yours are the vehicles! Yours is the dance and the song!”. This passage uses ‘vehicles’ as vessels or individual things that convey pleasure or anything else. The vehicle is a popular metaphor for teaching or school in Indian thought, and as we will see the various schools of Buddhism are known as vehicles.
Yama replies that those who teach that reality is some part rather than the whole are blind men led by a blind man. This is, in fact, the origin of the phrase, “blind leading the blind”. Yama says, “Him who is the bodiless among bodies, stable among the unstable, the great, all-pervading self, on recognizing him, the wise man sorrows not”. Yama uses a metaphor used by Plato through the mouth of Socrates, the self as charioteer, the body as a chariot, and the senses and passions as the horses. Yama tells of a complex stack of higher and truer selves: “Higher than the senses are the objects of sense. Higher than the objects of sense is the mind, and higher than the mind is the intellect (buddhi, also ‘consciousness’ or ‘awareness’, just as the Buddha is the ‘awakened one’). Higher than the intellect is the great self. Higher than the great is the un-manifest. Higher than the un-manifest is the great person. Higher than the person is nothing at all. That is the goal. That is the highest course.”
In a hilarious passage of the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, a student questions that master about how many gods there are repeatedly, and the master keeps changing his answer. At first, he says that the Vedic hymn to all the gods says there are 303 and 3003, which would be 3306 all together. Then he says there are 33, then 6, then 3 (likely Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma), then 2, then one and a half, and finally one, which is breath and Brahman.
In the Maitri Upanishad, we read, “In this cycle of existence I am like a frog in a waterless well…In thinking ‘This is I’, and ‘That is mine’, one binds oneself with oneself, as does a bird with a snare…Therefore, by knowledge (vidya), by austerity (tapas), and by meditation (cinta), Brahman is apprehended…For thus has it been said: He who is in the fire, and he who is here in the heart, and he who is yonder in the sun – he is one”. This is again very similar to things we will read in the Daoist Zhuang Zi.
Next class, we will study Jainism and Buddhism, two of the non-Hindu unorthodox schools of Indian thought.
There are three paths of worship in Hinduism. First, there is devotional worship, known as Bhakti Yoga (‘Yoga’ means ‘discipline’, or practice). In Bhakti devotional worship, the devotee prays, sings hymns, lights incense, and performs rituals to gain favor with the gods and heavens. It is impossible not to notice that most of what we call ‘religion’ the world over is in fact forms of Bhakti practice, devotion to particular gods and ancestral spirits. The two most populous forms of Bhakti Hinduism are Shaivism, the worship of Shiva (the transformer and destroyer) and his incarnations such as Ganesh (the elephant headed god), and Vaishnavism, the worship of Vishnu (the savior or preserver) and his incarnations such as Krishna. Worship is often called ‘darshana’, or seeing/experiencing, and Hindus will say, I am going to the seeing, meaning I am going to see and be seen by the god. Another common form of Bhakti devotion is worship of a particular goddess such as Kali. Notice that, like a scientist, Bhakti practitioners also believe in learning by experience and seeing, but their subject matter is quite different.
Raja yoga, the second path, is worship by meditation and asceticism (living in isolation, standing in place for days, fasting chanting the names of gods for hours, sitting on spikes, and other means of hard activity) meant to gain a meditative state of insight. Raja means ‘force’ or ‘effort’, and India is famous for its forest sages practicing these techniques.
Jnana yoga (“zshna-na”), the third path and my personal favorite, is worship by acquiring knowledge, wisdom and understanding the order of things through study and philosophizing. This class itself could be seen as a form of Jnana yoga, designed to bring you closer to the core by studying the ways of the world. All three paths, or any mixture of the three, are understood to work towards the same goal: liberation from the bonds of attachment and desire, rising into enlightenment and release from the constraints of identity to join together with the whole.
There is an ultimate goal to this process. Initially, there is hope for a better next life. Many are familiar already with the Hindu idea of reincarnation. This is not a form of afterlife particular to India, but in fact there is evidence that many tribal cultures and early Egypt believed that one’s present life will be reincarnated in another life on earth based on one’s actions and intentions. This interconnection is called ‘Karma’, which simply means ‘action’ in Sanskrit. Interestingly, physical causation is ‘karma’, just as metaphysical causation (next life physics) is ‘karma’, same word and understanding of cause and effect applied to a different sphere of existence. If you punch someone in the head, it is karma that makes their head reel backward, and karma that also weighs down your chance for a favorable life after death in the Hindu tradition.
Beyond better lives, there is hope for release, for freedom from rounds of rebirth on earth. This can be thought of as dwelling in a heaven with one’s personal or family god, but also as a dwelling with the order of things without residing in any particular place. Bhakti yoga tends to favor the dwelling with a lord, while Raja and Jnana tends to favor the dwelling with the universe as a whole, however it is important to remember that some Hindus believe that both amount to the same exact thing (while others will insist that their school’s truth is ‘more true’, the same variation one finds in any religion and in our own culture). This release is also called Moksha and Samadhi, but in America we know this first and foremost by the same name as the famous grunge band, Nirvana.
While moksha is the ultimate goal, via the more immediate goal of positioning oneself favorably for moksha either in this life (dwelling in the forest or a monastery) or in a next life, there are three other goals that Indian philosophy points to as desirable making four in total. In addition to moksha/nirvana, there is law or morality, ‘dharma’ (the term Jains and Buddhists use to describe their traditions and rules), pleasure, ‘kama’ (as from the Kama Sutra), and material wellbeing, ‘artha’. Clearly, the overall idea is that pleasure and comfort (kama and artha) are not in themselves evil, but one should pursue liberation through discipline (moksha through dharma).
Ancient India saw a great deal of development in science and technology. They observed the natural world and put phenomena into families and categories as did the ancient Greeks and as we still do today. The Romans would trade Germanic and Celtic slaves to India in exchange for Indian wootz, the metal most prized for weapons in the ancient world. In mathematics the Indians were unsurpassed by ancient civilizations, developing the base ten system and the Indian-Arabic numerals we use today. They laid down the basics of symbolic equations, the concept and symbolization of zero, and invented the variable (originally a thick dot). All of this got picked up by the Muslims, who turned it into algebra, which then got picked up by the Europeans, who turned it into Calculus. Typically, we learn about Euclid and the Greeks doing geometry as the source of the Western mathematical tradition. Muslims were influenced by the Greeks and Euclid, but Euclid argued about lines drawn in sand and did not use equations. It was the Indians who invented the sorts of mathematical symbolism that the Muslims turned into step by step symbolic mathematics as we know it today and teach it up through high school.
The Upanishads (beginning in 800 BCE, most having been written by 600 BCE) were philosophical teachings about the soul/self (atman) and how to release the soul from desire and identity to merge with the great One and All (the goal of moksha or nirvana, discussed last time). The Upanishads frequently interpret the stories of the Vedas as metaphoric teachings, instructions for the truly wise on how to develop the mind/soul/self. The self (atman) was to be united with the supreme reality, oneness, and spirit of all, Brahman. ‘Upanishad’ means “sitting down near/beside”, (upa, ‘near’, ni, ‘down’, sad, ‘sit’) as these are the close teachings of the priest, philosopher or master who has taught the Vedas for a long time and knows their secret and hidden ‘inner’ meaning. The students who were talented and advanced would sit down beside the teacher after the normal lecture to get the advanced, inner teaching that the normal students were not ready to hear. Unfortunately, there are no authors to which the texts are ascribed, having been lost to history. Perhaps some of these teachings are as old as the Vedas, and were only written down after 800 BCE. There are over 200 Upanishad texts, though there are 10 central Upanishads.
One of the most famous sayings from the Upanishads is Tat Tvam Asi, “That is you”. No matter what “that” you are looking at, it is in fact your own self because all is one and there are no complete or permanent separations between any two things. This means there is no complete distinction between any ‘this’ or ‘that’, and thus no complete distinction between atman and Brahman, or between any of the gods and Brahman. This is similar to another passage of Zhuang Zi the Daoist, one of my favorite skeptical passages of philosophy, which says, “A sage too has a this and a that, but his that has a this, and his this has a that”. Notice the monism that unites all connecting not only the various Hindu gods together but all individuals in the singular One of reality.
Just like the unorthodox systems of Jainism and Buddhism would do later, the Upanishads point beyond particular duties to ritual, sacrifice, caste or class to the supreme goal of self-liberation. This had a great appeal to those who were not Brahmins, the priests who formed the top level of the caste system. While the Upanishads did not say to abandon the caste system, the teachings were applicable to all. As we will see, Mahavira who founded Jainism and the Buddha both had great appeal as they openly said that one did not need to be reborn as a priest to have a shot at nirvana. Rather, one could have it in this very life and not need to reposition oneself for a better life through karma. Both Mahavira and Buddha were warrior’s sons and so were second class themselves. We can see that, as the Upanishads caught on and became one of if not the most influential source in the further developments of Indian thought, people increasingly questioned the Vedas and the caste system even as they continued to retain them as many still do today.
In the Katha Upanishad, a dialog between the sage Naciketas and Yama, god of death, the good is praised above the pleasant. As the sourcebook points out, this is very similar to what Socrates argues in dialogues written by Plato. The highest mind is to be pursued, rather than the simple passing pleasures. Naciketas says to Death, after being taught: “Ephemeral things! That which is a mortal’s, O End-maker, even the vigor of all the powers, they wear away. Even a whole life is slight indeed. Yours are the vehicles! Yours is the dance and the song!”. This passage uses ‘vehicles’ as vessels or individual things that convey pleasure or anything else. The vehicle is a popular metaphor for teaching or school in Indian thought, and as we will see the various schools of Buddhism are known as vehicles.
Yama replies that those who teach that reality is some part rather than the whole are blind men led by a blind man. This is, in fact, the origin of the phrase, “blind leading the blind”. Yama says, “Him who is the bodiless among bodies, stable among the unstable, the great, all-pervading self, on recognizing him, the wise man sorrows not”. Yama uses a metaphor used by Plato through the mouth of Socrates, the self as charioteer, the body as a chariot, and the senses and passions as the horses. Yama tells of a complex stack of higher and truer selves: “Higher than the senses are the objects of sense. Higher than the objects of sense is the mind, and higher than the mind is the intellect (buddhi, also ‘consciousness’ or ‘awareness’, just as the Buddha is the ‘awakened one’). Higher than the intellect is the great self. Higher than the great is the un-manifest. Higher than the un-manifest is the great person. Higher than the person is nothing at all. That is the goal. That is the highest course.”
In a hilarious passage of the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, a student questions that master about how many gods there are repeatedly, and the master keeps changing his answer. At first, he says that the Vedic hymn to all the gods says there are 303 and 3003, which would be 3306 all together. Then he says there are 33, then 6, then 3 (likely Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma), then 2, then one and a half, and finally one, which is breath and Brahman.
In the Maitri Upanishad, we read, “In this cycle of existence I am like a frog in a waterless well…In thinking ‘This is I’, and ‘That is mine’, one binds oneself with oneself, as does a bird with a snare…Therefore, by knowledge (vidya), by austerity (tapas), and by meditation (cinta), Brahman is apprehended…For thus has it been said: He who is in the fire, and he who is here in the heart, and he who is yonder in the sun – he is one”. This is again very similar to things we will read in the Daoist Zhuang Zi.
Next class, we will study Jainism and Buddhism, two of the non-Hindu unorthodox schools of Indian thought.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Logic: Indian Logic: Kanada & the Nyaya
Kanada and the Beginnings of Indian Logic
You may notice that Kanada’s text, the Vaisheshika Sutra, is very hard to read. The introduction says that this is the first translation of this important text into English, and this was done and published in New Delhi, Northern India, in 2003. There is no British or American publication of this text. As you read Aristotle in the next weeks, consider how well Aristotle speaks in English when there is support and funding for the publication. If you compare this to the translator’s edition of Aristotle, you find that Aristotle speaks in fragmented words and the translators polish it and interpret it to get Aristotle to sound that good. This is unfortunate, for Kanada may have been the first atomist and one of the first logicians.
The Vedas are India’s earliest texts and traditions, consisting of many stories of gods and cosmic origins. Much philosophy and cosmology are contained in these texts. It is believed today that they were formed from earlier oral traditions into the standard written texts around 1200 BCE. Four hundred years later, around 800 BCE, the Upanishad texts taught the ‘inner meanings’ of the Vedas, drawing philosophical lessons from the tales of the gods. ‘Philosophy’ is darshana, ‘seeing’. The Upanishads preach liberation by knowledge. The most famous quote is “Tat tvam asi”, or “That is you”. Whatever is other to you is in fact your own self.
200 years later, around 600 BCE (Kanada’s time), India was experiencing a third wave of philosophy including the logicians, atomists, Jains and Buddhists. This is the time when Kanada, Gotama (next week), and the Buddha were supposed to have lived and taught, and schools of their followers flowered in the next several hundred years (the same time as philosophy and logic were flourishing in ancient Greece).
At this time, India was producing superior steel (wootz) that the Chinese, Romans and Egyptians highly prized. The Chinese tried for centuries to reproduce it at home but without success (until they invented cast iron which is the material of the medieval European blacksmith). The Romans sold German tribes people (like me) as slaves in India in trade for this steel, dies, spices and other goods. Alexander tried to conquer India, and failed, because of these goods. This means that Kanada, Gotama and Buddha were living in the inter-connected and international ancient world.
Kanada’s Life and Legend
Kanada’s dates are debated. Chinese scholars sometimes put his texts at 1000 BCE, while our scholars often put them at 200 BCE or even 100 CE. This is quite political, because the Chinese tradition comes very much from India and the European tradition comes very much from Greece. The publisher of this texts says it is safe to say that Kanada lived and taught by 600 BCE at the latest.
Kanada’s name means, ‘One who eats grain’, but it could also mean, ‘One who gathers particulars. We will see how this is central to logic and Kanada’s teachings. He is also known as ‘The Owl’, or Uluka. Legend has it that he was so ugly in appearance that he frightened young women, so he only ventured out at night, sneaking into granaries to eat corn and rice grains/particles. Another story is Shiva taught him in the form of an owl. Notice that there are many traditions and versions, some mixed with the stories of the Vedic gods.
Kanada began what is known as the Vaisheshika school, and thus his text is the Vaisheshika sutra. Vaisheshika means particular, but also particle, atom, particular, special, specific, and distinction. Kanada may have been the first logician and atomist in recorded history, but as we have seen this is still a debate that can be quite political. Gotama’s Nyaya (Logic/Debate) school borrowed much from Kanada in forming rules and manuals of debate. It is believed that Jainism and Buddhism took both of these systems and developed them in a skeptical and relativist direction. Thus, Kanada and Gotama are positivistic logicians who are seeking atomic truths (universal, necessary and certain), and the Jains and Buddhists are skeptical logicians who criticize positivistic thinking with relativity and skepticism.
The two schools of Kanada (Vaisheshika) and Gotama (Nyaya) focus on inherence (how the particular individual is a member of the general group) and inference (conclusions that can be drawn about the particular individual when one knows the general group). Two types of inherence which allow us to make valid inferences include speciation (groups that have typical qualities) and causation (events in time that lead from one to another).
Kanada set out his Vaisheshika system and its seven objects of knowledge to understand the world (cosmology or physics, but in the ancient world this extended to biology and psychology). Gotama, who we will study next, was concerned with debate and logical argument.
The Vaisheshika System
First, we will go over Kanada’s seven objects of knowledge, and then interesting points in the following chapters Kanada makes that are important for logic and physics.
1) Substance (dravya): nine in number (air, water, fire, earth, ether, time, space, self and mind). These are composed of particles or atoms that are eternal and uncreated (thus they can’t be created or destroyed). Newton, like medieval alchemists before him but unlike modern physics and chemistry, believed in ether, the glue element that sticks the others together in combinations.
2) Attribute (guna): quality (color, texture, odor, taste) and quantity (number, measure, distinction, conjunction, disjunction). Kanada argues in the text that attributes are not substances, but reside in substances and can cause substances, other attributes and actions.
3) Action (karma): note that karma is the physical energy and motion that makes kicking someone cause pain and also gets the kicker reborn as a cockroach (most only know of the second as a religious concept, but like Chinese Chi it is equivalent to physical energy and is often identified with the element fire in ancient systems). Kanada argues that substances and attributes can cause actions but actions themselves cannot produce other actions. He also argues action belongs to one substance, not many (note that the Buddhist “sound of one hand clapping” is a counter argument to this point, and that Gotama differs from Kanada on this also).
4) General (samanya): the universal or group, such as the general group (speciation) of all cows or the general event (causation) of a rainstorm (in which clouds cause rain).
5) Particular (vishesha): the individual or specific, such as the individual cow or the individual event of a cloud causing rain.
6) Inherence (samavaya): the particular being included and conforming to the general. We can make inferences based on inherences. If we know that the general group of cows have horns, then we know that this particular cow must have horns. Likewise, if we know that generally rainclouds cause rain, then we can infer that this particular rain must have been caused by clouds.
7) Non-existence or Emptiness (abhava): non-being, nothingness and void. Nuf said.
Kanada tries to give a systematic account of the many types of each object and the relationships between each object (ex: substances and qualities can produce actions, but actions cannot).
In the second chapter, Kanada gives us an early understanding of what would later be called Modus Tollens in European Logic following Aristotle. Kanada writes “in the absence of cause is the absence of effect but in the absence of effect there is no absence of cause”. This means that if you know “If P then Q”, then you also know and can infer “If not Q then not P” but you do not know and cannot infer “If not P then not Q”. This is very important to understand for basic logic, and many people make the mistake of thinking that one can infer “not P then not Q”.
Kanada discusses fire as energy. It is interesting that fire was the most common form of energy seen and used in the ancient world, whereas electricity is the most common form seen and used in the modern world. Thus, the Egyptians, Greeks, Indians and Chinese thought of energy as fire whereas we think of energy as electricity.
In the third Chapter, Kanada describes types of proofs and fallacies. Gotama and the Nyaya school try to give an entire encyclopedia, and disagree with Kanada on many points. Kanada like Aristotle argues that you can disprove arguments by finding contradictions and that you cannot infer the general from the particular (you cannot infer that all cows have spots from the individual cow that has spots).
Kanada argues that sound is caused and therefore it is impermanent. Some have argued this seems to be a subtle critique of the earlier Vedic tradition (like arguing “paper is perishable” as a safe and subtle way of suggesting that the Bible must be temporary, not eternal).
Kanada argues that things move downward naturally, so things must have additional causes/forces to move sideways or upward (thus, smoke shows additional force or energy, namely that it has fire in it and fire moves upward. He also argues thus that water moves upward by sun/fire in it, then comes downward in cycles. Then, when the water collects in clouds, it causes the fire to be released as lightning. He argues that the arrow flies first from cause and then from inherent tendency to remain in motion, similar if not identical to the modern concept of ‘inertia’.
Kanada says there are many organs in the body, but each has its own particularity as they have different causes/purposes. We believe this today, but consider the ancient world understanding that Aristotle shared called the teleological view: every individual thing has a particular purpose as if the whole is conscious. There is a Roman stoic writer who speaks of the horrible mystery of underground caverns that seem to exist in spite of no animals or humans being present. This is a horrifying mystery because without conscious use, the ancient mind would be baffled by its existence.
Gautama and the Nyaya School of Debate
Medhatithi Gautama, who lived sometime about 550 BCE, is considered the founder of the Nyaya school and the author of the Nyaya Sutra, a textbook and manual on logical debate. The Nyaya Sutra was not the first Indian text concerned with logical argument and analysis, but it became one of the most popular and thus foundational for the Nyaya school. It is believed that the Jains and Buddhists, who are more skeptical thinkers about logic but very involved in debate, later took much from the Nyaya Sutra and school. Nyaya means “right”, “just”, “justified” or “justifiable”, the same way we use ‘logical’ to mean ‘right debate or speech’. The school reached its height in 150 CE, but it traces itself back to Gautama and his teachings.
Gautama is also called ‘Akshapada’, ‘Eyes in the Feet’, from a legend that he was so deeply absorbed in thought one day on a walk that he fell into a well, and God (Brahma) gave him eyes in his feet to prevent this from happening again. Notice that, like the Vaisheshika ‘particular’ school, Nyaya is concerned with putting particular things into categories and relationships. Objects and substances can be called the ‘feet’ of things, and their families or causes (generalities) the head or mind of things.
The Buddha, who also lived sometime around 550 BCE is also called Gautama or Gotama. Some scholars used to argue that Gautama may have been the Buddha himself, but in fact they were two different founders of two different schools who were both from the Gautama region in Northern India which is how they share the name. Gautama, Buddha and Mahavira (the founder of Jainism), were also of the warrior caste, the second class in the Indian caste system beneath the first class Brahmins, the Vedic priests and scholars. This shows that the period produced new thinkers with new ideas that were questioning the established Vedic tradition, and the schools of this period are known to have become very popular because they were open to people of all castes including the lowest. A story from the period says that a scholar who gave up on the Vedas and turned entirely to logic turned into a Jackal. This story was obviously told by Vedic scholars and priests who found the new systems a threat to the old established traditions. Like science in Europe, however, the new ways were gradually added to the old ways, until the new system was an old standard alongside the Vedic traditions.
The Nyaya Sutra is one of many debate manuals that was written for Indian philosophical or cosmological debates. Questions asked included: “Is the self/soul/mind eternal or temporary?”, “Is the world and its laws eternal or temporary?”, “Is it better to renounce or indulge in luxuries?”, “Are there particular things which are sacred or is everything equally sacred?”, and, a question seen last week in Kanada’s text, “Is sound (and thus the oral tradition of the Vedas) eternal or temporary?”. This last question is central to the Nyaya text and Gautama’s form of proof that we will study.
It is noticeable that many of these debates are concerned with distinguishing the eternal from the temporary. In ancient world cosmology, the eternal was the sacred and the object of true knowledge. If one could determine which things and laws are eternal, one would grasp the ways of the cosmos.
Notice that these debates (vadas) are also all of the form: Is object X in group Y or group not Y? We will call this the Form of Nyaya Debate or Nyaya Vada. If one could justifiably claim that all Xs are Ys, one could then argue for further truths based on the established truths. Jains and Buddhists also took this form as fundamental. For instance, the Vedic priests argued that the self/soul/mind was eternal, while the Jains and Buddhists argued that it is temporary. In Greek thought, particularly with Plato and Aristotle, this arguing back and forth between opposite positions is called “Dialectic”.
Later, in Buddhist debates about 200 BCE, just after Nyaya hits its height, three areas of debate for a proposition were conducted in order: “Is X always Y?”, “Is X everywhere Y?” and “Is X Y in everything?”.
In ancient India, a king, authority or rich patron would organize a debate and banquet, invite participants from various schools of thought to debate (often the teachers of competing rival schools, like a competition in a Kung Fu movie). Women were not unheard of as debate participants, but not nearly as common as male debaters (one can unfortunately say this of American and British philosophical departments today).
Debate manuals like the Nyaya Sutra were designed to introduce students and scholars to typical forms of argument as well as methods of attack and defense. They also listed fallacies, types of false arguments that sound solid but have flaws. The Nyaya Sutra tells us that the best debater will not take cheap moves, ‘quibbles’ or ‘clinchers’, but one is free to make them at one’s own risk. The text is surprisingly honest and insightful on this point. By using deceptive reasoning, you could win the debate but you could also could lose if your opponent points out your errors or shortcuts. This is still true of argument today even in the most casual setting, and a good reason that looking into old Logic texts like the Nyaya Sutra is still useful today. Aristotle’s Organon, his ‘Tool’, are six books that cover different areas of debate and knowledge, similarly dealing with construction of argument and fallacies. Aristotle also must straddle the sometimes contrary goals of arguing truth and winning the debate.
The Nyaya Sutra and System
The Four Sources of Knowledge are Perception, Inference, Comparison, and Testimony. All of these can potentially give valid knowledge, but there are problems with each. Perception is seeing or experiencing something for oneself.
Perception can only be valid if it tells you something determinate that doesn’t vary or change. Two examples of false perception given in the text are confusing smoke and dust, and thinking that the hot earth is wet when in fact this is a mirage.
Inference is knowledge of an object produced by perception. This shows Induction of perception passing into Deduction of inference which is still held in Philosophy and Psychology today. There are two kinds of inference that one can have based on perception of associations (like rain always falling from clouds).
First, there is inference from perception of cause the knowledge of possible and potential effect. For example, if one sees dark rain clouds, one can infer that it may possibly rain. According to Kanada, Gautama and Modus Tollens (a basic form of Logic we saw first last week with Kanada), this is knowledge of a possibility, a potential, but not a certainty. If one sees clouds, it is wise to get ready for rain but it is not certain that it will rain.
Second, there is inference from perception of effect to knowledge of cause. For example, if one sees rain one knows there are clouds or if one sees a swollen river one knows that it must have rained. According to Kanada, Gautama and Modus Tollens this sort of knowledge is certain provided that one is not deceived. For example, if one sees smoke and it is not in fact dust then one knows that there is fire.
Comparison is knowledge of a thing by comparing it to something else that is similar or different. For example, if one knows that cows are mortal and temporary, one is quite justified in believing that horses, quite similar to cows in many ways, are mortal and temporary. Comparisons can often lead to valid beliefs, but there is the possibility of error. An example is believing wrongly that a horse has four stomachs because one knows this is true of a cow.
Testimony is instructive words from a reliable person or authority. There are two types, testimony of the perceived and testimony of the unperceived. The text gives the example of a physician saying butter makes you stronger as perceived and a priest saying you win over heaven with horse sacrifices as unperceived. Notice that, like Kanada’s text, this is a subtle attack on the older Vedic ways and suggests that they are uncertain compared to inferences drawn from perception. The Nyaya school is founded on the idea that valid deductive inferences must be based on regular and invariable perception, quite comparable to the modern scientific method.
The Form of Nyaya Proof
Some authors have claimed that Aristotle’s syllogisms are deductively valid but the Nyaya proof is not and based on induction. Actually, Aristotle has many syllogisms he admits are not deductively valid on their own and he also believes that one can only argue based on what one perceives and one can be mistaken exactly like the Nyaya School and Gautama. We can see induction and deduction working together in both Aristotle’s syllogisms and Gautama’s form of proof. As can see in the text, there are five steps but as the Buddhists correctly perceived the first and second are identical to the fifth and the fourth. To make it easier, I have boiled it down to two steps. The first is a general rule backed by an example. The second step is a reason which leads to a conclusion. The text gives us an example:
Wherever there is smoke there is fire (rule), as in a kitchen (example).
Because there is smoke on the hill (reason), there is fire on the hill (conclusion).
For each of these parts, there are particular sorts of questions or doubts one can raise. If one is in a debate against an opponent, it is critical to know the sorts of doubts that one can raise against the opponent’s argument as well as the doubts one’s opponent can raise against one’s own argument.
The text gives us examples that can be used against its own example of proof. One can argue that an iron ball is on fire, but there is no smoke as a counter example to the rule “Wherever there is smoke, there is fire”, or one can argue that dust can be confused with smoke, so “There is smoke on the hill” may be misperception.
There is also two types of proof, positive homogeneous (proof by sameness) and negative heterogeneous (proof by difference).
Example of Proof By Sameness:
Whatever is produced is not eternal, as a pot.
Because it is produced, sound is not eternal.
Notice we saw this in Kanada’s text, and scholars have suggested it attacks the older Vedic tradition. The example above concerning fire on the hill is also a proof by sameness. This is quite similar to the structure of Aristotle’s most famous and basic syllogism:
If B, then C (plus example D), (If smoke then fire)
If A then B, then (if hill has smoke)
A then C (hill has fire)
Example of Proof By Difference:
Whatever is eternal is not produced, as in the soul.
Because it is produced, sound is not eternal.
Doubts, Fallacies and Quibbling:
Doubt comes from five sources. There is doubt by sameness (ex: seeing in twilight, can’t tell bush or man), by difference (ex: seeing two men in twilight, and thinking still one is a tree), by conflicting testimony (ex: Hinduism says there is an eternal soul or self, while Buddhism says there is no eternal self or soul), by irregular perception (ex: one sees a horse with horns attached to its head and questions whether horses can have horns), and by irregular non-perception (ex: one sees a cow with its horns removed and questions whether cows can have no horns).
Fallacies are false arguments. Examples include changing the thesis, contradicting the thesis, meaningless utterance, incoherent speech (‘colorless sleep furiously green’ is a famous example by Noam Chomsky), repetition, silence, ignorance (failing to understand typically), evasion (‘I am called by nature’, ‘I have another appointment’), sharing the fault (problem with both sides), overlooking fallacies, pointing out false fallacies.
Quibbling is objecting to an argument as a fallacy when it is not actually a fallacy. Quibbling can lose a debate just as surely as giving a fallacious argument. The text gives three types: Term (ex: Someone claims to have a new (“nava”) blanket, but this is confused with the claim of nine (also “nava”) blankets), Genus (ex: Someone claims Brahmins are educated but the opponent objects that some Brahmins are two years old), Metaphor (ex: Someone claims poetically, “The scaffolds cry out”, and the opponent objects, “Impossible, they are inanimate objects”).
You may notice that Kanada’s text, the Vaisheshika Sutra, is very hard to read. The introduction says that this is the first translation of this important text into English, and this was done and published in New Delhi, Northern India, in 2003. There is no British or American publication of this text. As you read Aristotle in the next weeks, consider how well Aristotle speaks in English when there is support and funding for the publication. If you compare this to the translator’s edition of Aristotle, you find that Aristotle speaks in fragmented words and the translators polish it and interpret it to get Aristotle to sound that good. This is unfortunate, for Kanada may have been the first atomist and one of the first logicians.
The Vedas are India’s earliest texts and traditions, consisting of many stories of gods and cosmic origins. Much philosophy and cosmology are contained in these texts. It is believed today that they were formed from earlier oral traditions into the standard written texts around 1200 BCE. Four hundred years later, around 800 BCE, the Upanishad texts taught the ‘inner meanings’ of the Vedas, drawing philosophical lessons from the tales of the gods. ‘Philosophy’ is darshana, ‘seeing’. The Upanishads preach liberation by knowledge. The most famous quote is “Tat tvam asi”, or “That is you”. Whatever is other to you is in fact your own self.
200 years later, around 600 BCE (Kanada’s time), India was experiencing a third wave of philosophy including the logicians, atomists, Jains and Buddhists. This is the time when Kanada, Gotama (next week), and the Buddha were supposed to have lived and taught, and schools of their followers flowered in the next several hundred years (the same time as philosophy and logic were flourishing in ancient Greece).
At this time, India was producing superior steel (wootz) that the Chinese, Romans and Egyptians highly prized. The Chinese tried for centuries to reproduce it at home but without success (until they invented cast iron which is the material of the medieval European blacksmith). The Romans sold German tribes people (like me) as slaves in India in trade for this steel, dies, spices and other goods. Alexander tried to conquer India, and failed, because of these goods. This means that Kanada, Gotama and Buddha were living in the inter-connected and international ancient world.
Kanada’s Life and Legend
Kanada’s dates are debated. Chinese scholars sometimes put his texts at 1000 BCE, while our scholars often put them at 200 BCE or even 100 CE. This is quite political, because the Chinese tradition comes very much from India and the European tradition comes very much from Greece. The publisher of this texts says it is safe to say that Kanada lived and taught by 600 BCE at the latest.
Kanada’s name means, ‘One who eats grain’, but it could also mean, ‘One who gathers particulars. We will see how this is central to logic and Kanada’s teachings. He is also known as ‘The Owl’, or Uluka. Legend has it that he was so ugly in appearance that he frightened young women, so he only ventured out at night, sneaking into granaries to eat corn and rice grains/particles. Another story is Shiva taught him in the form of an owl. Notice that there are many traditions and versions, some mixed with the stories of the Vedic gods.
Kanada began what is known as the Vaisheshika school, and thus his text is the Vaisheshika sutra. Vaisheshika means particular, but also particle, atom, particular, special, specific, and distinction. Kanada may have been the first logician and atomist in recorded history, but as we have seen this is still a debate that can be quite political. Gotama’s Nyaya (Logic/Debate) school borrowed much from Kanada in forming rules and manuals of debate. It is believed that Jainism and Buddhism took both of these systems and developed them in a skeptical and relativist direction. Thus, Kanada and Gotama are positivistic logicians who are seeking atomic truths (universal, necessary and certain), and the Jains and Buddhists are skeptical logicians who criticize positivistic thinking with relativity and skepticism.
The two schools of Kanada (Vaisheshika) and Gotama (Nyaya) focus on inherence (how the particular individual is a member of the general group) and inference (conclusions that can be drawn about the particular individual when one knows the general group). Two types of inherence which allow us to make valid inferences include speciation (groups that have typical qualities) and causation (events in time that lead from one to another).
Kanada set out his Vaisheshika system and its seven objects of knowledge to understand the world (cosmology or physics, but in the ancient world this extended to biology and psychology). Gotama, who we will study next, was concerned with debate and logical argument.
The Vaisheshika System
First, we will go over Kanada’s seven objects of knowledge, and then interesting points in the following chapters Kanada makes that are important for logic and physics.
1) Substance (dravya): nine in number (air, water, fire, earth, ether, time, space, self and mind). These are composed of particles or atoms that are eternal and uncreated (thus they can’t be created or destroyed). Newton, like medieval alchemists before him but unlike modern physics and chemistry, believed in ether, the glue element that sticks the others together in combinations.
2) Attribute (guna): quality (color, texture, odor, taste) and quantity (number, measure, distinction, conjunction, disjunction). Kanada argues in the text that attributes are not substances, but reside in substances and can cause substances, other attributes and actions.
3) Action (karma): note that karma is the physical energy and motion that makes kicking someone cause pain and also gets the kicker reborn as a cockroach (most only know of the second as a religious concept, but like Chinese Chi it is equivalent to physical energy and is often identified with the element fire in ancient systems). Kanada argues that substances and attributes can cause actions but actions themselves cannot produce other actions. He also argues action belongs to one substance, not many (note that the Buddhist “sound of one hand clapping” is a counter argument to this point, and that Gotama differs from Kanada on this also).
4) General (samanya): the universal or group, such as the general group (speciation) of all cows or the general event (causation) of a rainstorm (in which clouds cause rain).
5) Particular (vishesha): the individual or specific, such as the individual cow or the individual event of a cloud causing rain.
6) Inherence (samavaya): the particular being included and conforming to the general. We can make inferences based on inherences. If we know that the general group of cows have horns, then we know that this particular cow must have horns. Likewise, if we know that generally rainclouds cause rain, then we can infer that this particular rain must have been caused by clouds.
7) Non-existence or Emptiness (abhava): non-being, nothingness and void. Nuf said.
Kanada tries to give a systematic account of the many types of each object and the relationships between each object (ex: substances and qualities can produce actions, but actions cannot).
In the second chapter, Kanada gives us an early understanding of what would later be called Modus Tollens in European Logic following Aristotle. Kanada writes “in the absence of cause is the absence of effect but in the absence of effect there is no absence of cause”. This means that if you know “If P then Q”, then you also know and can infer “If not Q then not P” but you do not know and cannot infer “If not P then not Q”. This is very important to understand for basic logic, and many people make the mistake of thinking that one can infer “not P then not Q”.
Kanada discusses fire as energy. It is interesting that fire was the most common form of energy seen and used in the ancient world, whereas electricity is the most common form seen and used in the modern world. Thus, the Egyptians, Greeks, Indians and Chinese thought of energy as fire whereas we think of energy as electricity.
In the third Chapter, Kanada describes types of proofs and fallacies. Gotama and the Nyaya school try to give an entire encyclopedia, and disagree with Kanada on many points. Kanada like Aristotle argues that you can disprove arguments by finding contradictions and that you cannot infer the general from the particular (you cannot infer that all cows have spots from the individual cow that has spots).
Kanada argues that sound is caused and therefore it is impermanent. Some have argued this seems to be a subtle critique of the earlier Vedic tradition (like arguing “paper is perishable” as a safe and subtle way of suggesting that the Bible must be temporary, not eternal).
Kanada argues that things move downward naturally, so things must have additional causes/forces to move sideways or upward (thus, smoke shows additional force or energy, namely that it has fire in it and fire moves upward. He also argues thus that water moves upward by sun/fire in it, then comes downward in cycles. Then, when the water collects in clouds, it causes the fire to be released as lightning. He argues that the arrow flies first from cause and then from inherent tendency to remain in motion, similar if not identical to the modern concept of ‘inertia’.
Kanada says there are many organs in the body, but each has its own particularity as they have different causes/purposes. We believe this today, but consider the ancient world understanding that Aristotle shared called the teleological view: every individual thing has a particular purpose as if the whole is conscious. There is a Roman stoic writer who speaks of the horrible mystery of underground caverns that seem to exist in spite of no animals or humans being present. This is a horrifying mystery because without conscious use, the ancient mind would be baffled by its existence.
Gautama and the Nyaya School of Debate
Medhatithi Gautama, who lived sometime about 550 BCE, is considered the founder of the Nyaya school and the author of the Nyaya Sutra, a textbook and manual on logical debate. The Nyaya Sutra was not the first Indian text concerned with logical argument and analysis, but it became one of the most popular and thus foundational for the Nyaya school. It is believed that the Jains and Buddhists, who are more skeptical thinkers about logic but very involved in debate, later took much from the Nyaya Sutra and school. Nyaya means “right”, “just”, “justified” or “justifiable”, the same way we use ‘logical’ to mean ‘right debate or speech’. The school reached its height in 150 CE, but it traces itself back to Gautama and his teachings.
Gautama is also called ‘Akshapada’, ‘Eyes in the Feet’, from a legend that he was so deeply absorbed in thought one day on a walk that he fell into a well, and God (Brahma) gave him eyes in his feet to prevent this from happening again. Notice that, like the Vaisheshika ‘particular’ school, Nyaya is concerned with putting particular things into categories and relationships. Objects and substances can be called the ‘feet’ of things, and their families or causes (generalities) the head or mind of things.
The Buddha, who also lived sometime around 550 BCE is also called Gautama or Gotama. Some scholars used to argue that Gautama may have been the Buddha himself, but in fact they were two different founders of two different schools who were both from the Gautama region in Northern India which is how they share the name. Gautama, Buddha and Mahavira (the founder of Jainism), were also of the warrior caste, the second class in the Indian caste system beneath the first class Brahmins, the Vedic priests and scholars. This shows that the period produced new thinkers with new ideas that were questioning the established Vedic tradition, and the schools of this period are known to have become very popular because they were open to people of all castes including the lowest. A story from the period says that a scholar who gave up on the Vedas and turned entirely to logic turned into a Jackal. This story was obviously told by Vedic scholars and priests who found the new systems a threat to the old established traditions. Like science in Europe, however, the new ways were gradually added to the old ways, until the new system was an old standard alongside the Vedic traditions.
The Nyaya Sutra is one of many debate manuals that was written for Indian philosophical or cosmological debates. Questions asked included: “Is the self/soul/mind eternal or temporary?”, “Is the world and its laws eternal or temporary?”, “Is it better to renounce or indulge in luxuries?”, “Are there particular things which are sacred or is everything equally sacred?”, and, a question seen last week in Kanada’s text, “Is sound (and thus the oral tradition of the Vedas) eternal or temporary?”. This last question is central to the Nyaya text and Gautama’s form of proof that we will study.
It is noticeable that many of these debates are concerned with distinguishing the eternal from the temporary. In ancient world cosmology, the eternal was the sacred and the object of true knowledge. If one could determine which things and laws are eternal, one would grasp the ways of the cosmos.
Notice that these debates (vadas) are also all of the form: Is object X in group Y or group not Y? We will call this the Form of Nyaya Debate or Nyaya Vada. If one could justifiably claim that all Xs are Ys, one could then argue for further truths based on the established truths. Jains and Buddhists also took this form as fundamental. For instance, the Vedic priests argued that the self/soul/mind was eternal, while the Jains and Buddhists argued that it is temporary. In Greek thought, particularly with Plato and Aristotle, this arguing back and forth between opposite positions is called “Dialectic”.
Later, in Buddhist debates about 200 BCE, just after Nyaya hits its height, three areas of debate for a proposition were conducted in order: “Is X always Y?”, “Is X everywhere Y?” and “Is X Y in everything?”.
In ancient India, a king, authority or rich patron would organize a debate and banquet, invite participants from various schools of thought to debate (often the teachers of competing rival schools, like a competition in a Kung Fu movie). Women were not unheard of as debate participants, but not nearly as common as male debaters (one can unfortunately say this of American and British philosophical departments today).
Debate manuals like the Nyaya Sutra were designed to introduce students and scholars to typical forms of argument as well as methods of attack and defense. They also listed fallacies, types of false arguments that sound solid but have flaws. The Nyaya Sutra tells us that the best debater will not take cheap moves, ‘quibbles’ or ‘clinchers’, but one is free to make them at one’s own risk. The text is surprisingly honest and insightful on this point. By using deceptive reasoning, you could win the debate but you could also could lose if your opponent points out your errors or shortcuts. This is still true of argument today even in the most casual setting, and a good reason that looking into old Logic texts like the Nyaya Sutra is still useful today. Aristotle’s Organon, his ‘Tool’, are six books that cover different areas of debate and knowledge, similarly dealing with construction of argument and fallacies. Aristotle also must straddle the sometimes contrary goals of arguing truth and winning the debate.
The Nyaya Sutra and System
The Four Sources of Knowledge are Perception, Inference, Comparison, and Testimony. All of these can potentially give valid knowledge, but there are problems with each. Perception is seeing or experiencing something for oneself.
Perception can only be valid if it tells you something determinate that doesn’t vary or change. Two examples of false perception given in the text are confusing smoke and dust, and thinking that the hot earth is wet when in fact this is a mirage.
Inference is knowledge of an object produced by perception. This shows Induction of perception passing into Deduction of inference which is still held in Philosophy and Psychology today. There are two kinds of inference that one can have based on perception of associations (like rain always falling from clouds).
First, there is inference from perception of cause the knowledge of possible and potential effect. For example, if one sees dark rain clouds, one can infer that it may possibly rain. According to Kanada, Gautama and Modus Tollens (a basic form of Logic we saw first last week with Kanada), this is knowledge of a possibility, a potential, but not a certainty. If one sees clouds, it is wise to get ready for rain but it is not certain that it will rain.
Second, there is inference from perception of effect to knowledge of cause. For example, if one sees rain one knows there are clouds or if one sees a swollen river one knows that it must have rained. According to Kanada, Gautama and Modus Tollens this sort of knowledge is certain provided that one is not deceived. For example, if one sees smoke and it is not in fact dust then one knows that there is fire.
Comparison is knowledge of a thing by comparing it to something else that is similar or different. For example, if one knows that cows are mortal and temporary, one is quite justified in believing that horses, quite similar to cows in many ways, are mortal and temporary. Comparisons can often lead to valid beliefs, but there is the possibility of error. An example is believing wrongly that a horse has four stomachs because one knows this is true of a cow.
Testimony is instructive words from a reliable person or authority. There are two types, testimony of the perceived and testimony of the unperceived. The text gives the example of a physician saying butter makes you stronger as perceived and a priest saying you win over heaven with horse sacrifices as unperceived. Notice that, like Kanada’s text, this is a subtle attack on the older Vedic ways and suggests that they are uncertain compared to inferences drawn from perception. The Nyaya school is founded on the idea that valid deductive inferences must be based on regular and invariable perception, quite comparable to the modern scientific method.
The Form of Nyaya Proof
Some authors have claimed that Aristotle’s syllogisms are deductively valid but the Nyaya proof is not and based on induction. Actually, Aristotle has many syllogisms he admits are not deductively valid on their own and he also believes that one can only argue based on what one perceives and one can be mistaken exactly like the Nyaya School and Gautama. We can see induction and deduction working together in both Aristotle’s syllogisms and Gautama’s form of proof. As can see in the text, there are five steps but as the Buddhists correctly perceived the first and second are identical to the fifth and the fourth. To make it easier, I have boiled it down to two steps. The first is a general rule backed by an example. The second step is a reason which leads to a conclusion. The text gives us an example:
Wherever there is smoke there is fire (rule), as in a kitchen (example).
Because there is smoke on the hill (reason), there is fire on the hill (conclusion).
For each of these parts, there are particular sorts of questions or doubts one can raise. If one is in a debate against an opponent, it is critical to know the sorts of doubts that one can raise against the opponent’s argument as well as the doubts one’s opponent can raise against one’s own argument.
The text gives us examples that can be used against its own example of proof. One can argue that an iron ball is on fire, but there is no smoke as a counter example to the rule “Wherever there is smoke, there is fire”, or one can argue that dust can be confused with smoke, so “There is smoke on the hill” may be misperception.
There is also two types of proof, positive homogeneous (proof by sameness) and negative heterogeneous (proof by difference).
Example of Proof By Sameness:
Whatever is produced is not eternal, as a pot.
Because it is produced, sound is not eternal.
Notice we saw this in Kanada’s text, and scholars have suggested it attacks the older Vedic tradition. The example above concerning fire on the hill is also a proof by sameness. This is quite similar to the structure of Aristotle’s most famous and basic syllogism:
If B, then C (plus example D), (If smoke then fire)
If A then B, then (if hill has smoke)
A then C (hill has fire)
Example of Proof By Difference:
Whatever is eternal is not produced, as in the soul.
Because it is produced, sound is not eternal.
Doubts, Fallacies and Quibbling:
Doubt comes from five sources. There is doubt by sameness (ex: seeing in twilight, can’t tell bush or man), by difference (ex: seeing two men in twilight, and thinking still one is a tree), by conflicting testimony (ex: Hinduism says there is an eternal soul or self, while Buddhism says there is no eternal self or soul), by irregular perception (ex: one sees a horse with horns attached to its head and questions whether horses can have horns), and by irregular non-perception (ex: one sees a cow with its horns removed and questions whether cows can have no horns).
Fallacies are false arguments. Examples include changing the thesis, contradicting the thesis, meaningless utterance, incoherent speech (‘colorless sleep furiously green’ is a famous example by Noam Chomsky), repetition, silence, ignorance (failing to understand typically), evasion (‘I am called by nature’, ‘I have another appointment’), sharing the fault (problem with both sides), overlooking fallacies, pointing out false fallacies.
Quibbling is objecting to an argument as a fallacy when it is not actually a fallacy. Quibbling can lose a debate just as surely as giving a fallacious argument. The text gives three types: Term (ex: Someone claims to have a new (“nava”) blanket, but this is confused with the claim of nine (also “nava”) blankets), Genus (ex: Someone claims Brahmins are educated but the opponent objects that some Brahmins are two years old), Metaphor (ex: Someone claims poetically, “The scaffolds cry out”, and the opponent objects, “Impossible, they are inanimate objects”).
Logic: Indian Logic Assignment
BCC Logic NAME__________________________
Indian Logic Assignment
1) According to Modus Tollens, if we know “If p then q”, we also know:
2) According to Modus Tollens, if we know “If there is rain there are clouds”, we also know:
3) Give the form of Nyaya debate (both sides) using x and y.
4) Give an example of a Nyaya debate (both sides).
5) Give the four sources of knowledge according to the Nyaya Sutra, with an example for each.
6) Give an example of a Nyaya proof (rule, example, reason, conclusion).
7) What is the difference between a fallacy and quibbling? Give an example of each.
Indian Logic Assignment
1) According to Modus Tollens, if we know “If p then q”, we also know:
2) According to Modus Tollens, if we know “If there is rain there are clouds”, we also know:
3) Give the form of Nyaya debate (both sides) using x and y.
4) Give an example of a Nyaya debate (both sides).
5) Give the four sources of knowledge according to the Nyaya Sutra, with an example for each.
6) Give an example of a Nyaya proof (rule, example, reason, conclusion).
7) What is the difference between a fallacy and quibbling? Give an example of each.
Asian Philosophy: The Upanishads & the Hindu Epics
Last time, looking at the Vedas, we saw that many different traditions and interpretations flourish in Indian thought and Hinduism. We also briefly discussed that the Vedas were followed by the Upanishads and then by Vedanta, both which extended the interpretations of the Vedas toward philosophical monism beyond any specific deity or dogma.
In the last section of the Vedas in your reader, we can see several passages that foreshadow the Upanishads and their more monistic understanding of the metaphoric narratives. This is also how we can understand the Hindu Epics we will examine this session. Often, teachings of the ancient world that are legendary can be understood by the common person as a real and miraculous event of history while the elite and wise could understand the legend as containing a deeper truth that can be transmitted to the common people as a story to be taken as history but which is more properly revealed as a metaphor. Particularly aided by the plurality of stories and traditions accepted into Indian and Hindu thought, there is much room for skepticism and subjectivism concerning conflicting truths and the shared common meaning having more importance than the conflicts in literal meaning. This is reflected in these Vedic passages, which were then extended in the Upanishads and Vedanta.
In a hymn to Indra, the storm father god who was often the chief sky father all god until unseated by Brahman (a more abstract, all-godhead), we find that we should praise Indra, if indeed he does exist. It asks, if someone wishes to purchase Indra from me for a modest price, you can return him after he has slain the demons. This is surprising humor found in the central Veda, the Rg Veda. A hymn to Vishvedevas asks, “Who hath beheld him as he sprang to being, seen how this boneless One supports the bony? Where is the blood of earth, the life, the spirit? Who may approach the man who knows, to ask it?”. The boneless One, a humorous portrayal of the monistic All which has no bones because it is one without any articulation or part, supports all the many things with their many parts. Whenever we say, “All” or “reality”, we are summing everything together effortlessly without any divisions and without leaving any particular thing out. A hymn to frogs tells us that, just as Vedic priests gather together with their rituals, so too do the frogs gather around the pond croaking to celebrate the first rain. This is remarkably similar to a passage of Zhuang Zi, the Daoist patriarch, who asks if the supreme wisdom of humans is any different from the chirping of baby birds we will read much later in the course. Another hymn asks for blessings for the “liberal worshipers”, who will hopefully turn in faith to the gods rather than doubt their existence with philosophical monism. Notice that the hymn refers to these skeptical and philosophical individuals as “worshipers”, not as atheists or heathens.
It is just these sort of individuals who would go on to write the Upanishads, the Vedanta and both the orthodox and unorthodox schools of Indian thought, including the Jainism and Buddhism we will study in the next few weeks. As the Upanishads continued to gain teachers and followers, there was a new flowering of many schools of thought between 700 and 400 BCE that took much from the Vedas and Upanishads but developed the teachings in new directions. These new schools often rejected the caste system (still in place today in spite of these ancient rebellions) and thus gained massive followings among all classes and castes of India. Jainism was one of the first, but it was quickly developed and transformed itself into a religion that is possibly the most popular system of thought in history, Buddhism.
The Upanishads (beginning in 800 BCE, most having been written by 600 BCE) were philosophical teachings about the soul/self (atman) and how to release the soul from desire and identity to merge with the great One and All (the goal of moksha or nirvana, discussed last time). The Upanishads frequently interpret the stories of the Vedas as metaphoric teachings, instructions for the truly wise on how to develop the mind/soul/self. The self (atman) was to be united with the supreme reality, oneness, and spirit of all, Brahman. ‘Upanishad’ means “sitting down near/beside”, (upa, ‘near’, ni, ‘down’, sad, ‘sit’) as these are the close teachings of the priest, philosopher or master who has taught the Vedas for a long time and knows their secret and hidden ‘inner’ meaning. The students who were talented and advanced would sit down beside the teacher after the normal lecture to get the advanced, inner teaching that the normal students were not ready to hear. Unfortunately, there are no authors to which the texts are ascribed, having been lost to history. Perhaps some of these teachings are as old as the Vedas, and were only written down after 800 BCE. There are over 200 Upanishad texts, though there are 10 central Upanishads.
One of the most famous sayings from the Upanishads is Tat Tvam Asi, “That is you”. No matter what “that” you are looking at, it is in fact your own self because all is one and there are no complete or permanent separations between any two things. This means there is no complete distinction between any ‘this’ or ‘that’, and thus no complete distinction between atman and Brahman, or between any of the gods and Brahman. This is similar to another passage of Zhuang Zi the Daoist, one of my favorite skeptical passages of philosophy, which says, “A sage too has a this and a that, but his that has a this, and his this has a that”. Notice the monism that unites all connecting not only the various Hindu gods together but all individuals in the singular One of reality.
In Indian artwork, for all schools of Indian thought including both Hinduism and Buddhism, one of the most common hand gestures or ‘mudras’ is the thumb and index finger touching forming a circle with the rest of the fingers extended, much like the ‘OK’ hand sign. The thumb and index finger are symbolically pinching the seed, grain or essence of a thing. While we may be skeptical of spiritual powers associated with hand gestures, hand and finger positioning has been shown to stimulate the same areas of the brain as counting, numbers and language. This is likely because the development of number and language systems went ‘hand in hand’, so to speak, with the earliest gestures for primitive communication. We naturally begin and often continue counting on our fingers, and use our fingers to point, intend and indicate. The sages instructing students in the Upanishads and the Buddha are often portrayed displaying the essence/grain mudra, as it is associated with not only teaching, and teaching about essences (such as, the self is essentially, at bottom, basically an illusion), but also on a deeper level the supreme One which is the true undifferentiated reality supporting and consisting of all particular things and all individual selves.
Just like the unorthodox systems of Jainism and Buddhism would do later, the Upanishads point beyond particular duties to ritual, sacrifice, caste or class to the supreme goal of self-liberation. This had a great appeal to those who were not Brahmins, the priests who formed the top level of the caste system. While the Upanishads did not say to abandon the caste system, the teachings were applicable to all. As we will see, Mahavira who founded Jainism and the Buddha both had great appeal as they openly said that one did not need to be reborn as a priest to have a shot at nirvana. Rather, one could have it in this very life and not need to reposition oneself for a better life through karma. Both Mahavira and Buddha were warrior’s sons and so were second class themselves. We can see that, as the Upanishads caught on and became one of if not the most influential source in the further developments of Indian thought, people increasingly questioned the Vedas and the caste system even as they continued to retain them as many still do today.
Let us read selections from the Upanishads. In the Isha Upanishad, we find:
“Onward, descending, go whoever are slayers of the self. Unmoving, the One is swifter than the mind…It moves. It moves not. It is far, and it is near. It is within all this, and it is outside of all this….What delusion, what sorrow is there, of him who perceives the unity! The bright, the bodiless, the scathe-less, the sinew-less, the pure…Appropriately he distributed objects through the eternal years. Into blind darkness enter they that worship ignorance. Into darkness greater than that they that delight in knowledge. Other, indeed, they say, than knowledge! Other, they say, than non-knowledge!...Knowledge and non-knowledge: He who this pair conjointly knows, with non-knowledge passing over death, with knowledge wins the immortal. Into blind darkness enter they who worship non-becoming. Into darkness greater than that they who delight in becoming. Other, they say, than origin! Other, they say, than non-origin…Becoming and destruction: He who this pair conjointly knows, with destruction passing over death, with becoming wins the immortal.
Notice this passage suggests that the One moves and does not move, is knowledge and the opposite of knowledge, is the permanent and eternal as well as endless transformation, both evolution and decomposition. It warns that you can fall into ignorance by preferring any one of these to its opposite, as you would then be following a part, not the whole. Remember that Vishnu is the great savior and preserver god in the Hindu tradition, and Shiva is the great destroyer and transformer god. This Upanishad is quite compatible with seeking a union of Vishnu, Shiva and all of their incarnations as not only Brahma, the singular One personified as a god, but Brahman, the One as un-personified, as beyond personifications and anthropomorphism.
In the Katha Upanishad, a dialog between the sage Naciketas and Yama, god of death, the good is praised above the pleasant. As the sourcebook points out, this is very similar to what Socrates argues in dialogues written by Plato. The highest mind is to be pursued, rather than the simple passing pleasures. Naciketas says to Death, after being taught: “Ephemeral things! That which is a mortal’s, O End-maker, even the vigor of all the powers, they wear away. Even a whole life is slight indeed. Yours are the vehicles! Yours is the dance and the song!”. This passage uses ‘vehicles’ as vessels or individual things that convey pleasure or anything else. The vehicle is a popular metaphor for teaching or school in Indian thought, and as we will see the various schools of Buddhism are known as vehicles.
Yama replies that those who teach that reality is some part rather than the whole are blind men led by a blind man. This is, in fact, the origin of the phrase, “blind leading the blind”. Yama says, “Him who is the bodiless among bodies, stable among the unstable, the great, all-pervading self, on recognizing him, the wise man sorrows not”. Yama uses a metaphor used by Plato through the mouth of Socrates, the self as charioteer, the body as a chariot, and the senses and passions as the horses. Yama tells of a complex stack of higher and truer selves: “Higher than the senses are the objects of sense. Higher than the objects of sense is the mind, and higher than the mind is the intellect (buddhi, also ‘consciousness’ or ‘awareness’, just as the Buddha is the ‘awakened one’). Higher than the intellect is the great self. Higher than the great is the un-manifest. Higher than the un-manifest is the great person. Higher than the person is nothing at all. That is the goal. That is the highest course.”
In the Mundaka Upanishad, we read: “There are two knowledges to be known, as indeed the knowers of Brahman are wont to say: a higher (para) and a lower (apara). Of these, the lower is the Rg Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Sama Veda, and the Atharva Veda (the four principle Vedas, the central canonical and dogmatic texts above which there is no other). Now, the higher is that whereby that Imperishable is apprehended. That which is invisible, ungraspable, without family, without caste, without sight or hearing is It, without hand or foot, eternal, all-pervading, omnipresent, exceedingly subtle, that is the imperishable, which the wise perceive as the source of beings…He who knows that, set in the secret place of the heart, he here on earth, my friend, rends asunder the knot of ignorance…What that is, know as being and non-being, as the object of desire, higher than understanding, as what is the best of creatures!...Taking as a bow the great weapon of the Upanishad, one should put upon it an arrow sharpened by meditation. Stretching it with a thought directed to the essence of that, penetrate that imperishable as the mark, my friend…As the flowing rivers in the coean disappear, quitting name and form, so the knower, being liberated from name and form, goes unto the heavenly person, higher than the high. He who knows that supreme Brahman, becomes very Brahman.”
In the Chanddogya Upanishad, we see Jabala leaving to study sacred knowledge and seek a teacher, so he asks his mother what family he comes from. This is important, as family is caste and ethnicity according to the tradition and purity laws. His mother tells him, and he in turn tells his teacher and sage, that when she was young she was a maid and got pregnant and does not know who his family is. His teacher replies that he will accept him as a student, as only a Brahmin, the top priestly caste, could answer that way. This is an interesting reversal, considering that the Brahmins are supposed to be pure and preserve their purity, while his mother’s story seems anything but top caste or pure. He then begins to be taught:
“In the beginning, my dear, this world was just being (sat), one only, without a second. To be sure, some people say in the beginning this world was just non-being (asat), one only, without a second, from that non-being, being was produced. But verily, how could this be?...It bethought itself, would that I were many. Let me procreate myself…As the bees prepare honey by collecting the essences of different trees and reducing the essence to a unity, as they are not able to discriminate, ‘I am the essence of this tree’ or ‘I am the essence of that tree’, even so, indeed, all creatures here, though they reach being, know not ‘We have reached being’. Whatever they are in this world, whether tiger or lion, or wolf, or boar, or worm, or fly, or gnat, or mosquito, that they become. That which is the finest essence, this whole world has that as its self. That is reality. That is self. That art thou” (This is the place where this central thought, ‘Tat tvam asi’, is expressed in its famous phrase).
The sage asks Jabala to bring him a fig, and then cut it up. He asks what is inside, and Jabala says seeds. He asks Jabala to cut the seeds, and asks what he sees inside, and Jabala replies, ‘Nothing’. The sage responds, “That is the essence that you do not perceive, and it gives rise to the entire fig tree”.
Then the sage asks Jabala to put salt in water so it dissolves and asks him to sip from several sides, and each time Jabala replies that he tastes salt. Like the inside of the fig seed, the sage says that the essence of all is hidden yet perceivable in all things equally.
In a hilarious passage of the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, a student questions that master about how many gods there are repeatedly, and the master keeps changing his answer. At first, he says that the Vedic hymn to all the gods says there are 303 and 3003, which would be 3306 all together. Then he says there are 33, then 6, then 3 (likely Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma), then 2, then one and a half, and finally one, which is breath and Brahman.
The sage goes on to teach the student: “There are two conditions: being in this world and being in the other world. There is a third condition that is being in sleep. By standing in this condition one sees both of the others…When one goes to sleep, one takes along the material of this all containing world , himself tears it apart, himself builds it up, and dreams by his own brightness, by his own light. Then this person becomes self-illuminated. There are no chariots there, no spans, no roads, but he projects from himself chariots, spans, roads. There are no blisses there, no pleasures, no delights, but he projects from himself blisses, pleasures, and delights. There are no tanks there, no lotus pools, no streams, but he projects from himself tanks, lotus pools and streams, for he is a creator. While he does not there know, he is truly knowing, though he does not know, for there is no cessation of the knowing of a knower, because of his imperishability…There is on earth no diversity. As a unity only is it to be looked upon, this indemonstrable, enduring being, spotless, beyond space, the unborn self, great enduring.”
In the Maitri Upanishad, we read, “In this cycle of existence I am like a frog in a waterless well…In thinking ‘This is I’, and ‘That is mine’, one binds oneself with oneself, as does a bird with a snare…Therefore, by knowledge (vidya), by austerity (tapas), and by meditation (cinta), Brahman is apprehended…For thus has it been said: He who is in the fire, and he who is here in the heart, and he who is yonder in the sun – he is one”.
The Hindu Epics: The Ramayana and Mahabharata
As the Upanishads gained prominence and pushed towards philosophical monism, for Brahman beyond even the personification of Brahma, the Hindu tradition simultaneously gathered theistic traditions together in the great epics. These tails tied many gods together along with Hindu traditional law and philosophical teachings of the Upanishads. This is why these texts have such a key role in Hinduism.
The Ramayana is a story of Rama, incarnation of Vishnu, and his quest with Hanuman, the monkey god, to rescue his wife Sita from the demon Ravana. There are two moments of the Ramayana that fit with what we are studying. In the beginning of the story, Ravana is a demon but also a sage who meditates for an impossibly long time and grows nine other heads that give him all the magical powers in the world. Having obtained everything achievable, he decides to end his existence and proceeds to cut off one head at a time and throw them into a fire. Just as he is about to cut his original and final throat, Brahma appears and says that he will grant Ravana whatever he desires, and Ravana asks to never be killed by gods, spirits or demons. Brahma grants this, and from this moment on Ravana is the villain of the story. The first thing Ravana does is go to Shiva, who is portrayed as stoned on bhang (milk steeped in pot), and demand Shiva, the destroyer, submit to him. Shiva responds by lifting a finger and imprisoning Ravana in stone for thousands of years. When Ravana finally breaks free he is quite pissed, Vishnu decides to be incarnated as Rama so that Ravana can be killed by a mortal human.
In the second moment, when Rama is following Brahma and his consort goddess Gayatri through the jungle, and as the goddess sways as she walks Rama (who is, of course, identical with Brahma not only as an individual but an incarnation of a central god himself) catches glimpses of Brahma. This is clearly symbolizing desire as in motion (as the hips of a goddess), and even though it too is one with all you can see glimpses of the All amidst and beyond the motions of desire.
The Mahabharata is ridiculously long. It is almost two million words, ten times the length of the Odyssey and the Iliad, the two Greek Epics. The central and most celebrated part of the Mahabharata is the Bhagavadgita, the story of crown prince Arjuna hesitating before fighting a civil war against his family and former friends and teachers, and then being counseled by Krishna as an incarnation of Vishnu that as a warrior it is Arjuna’s duty to fight the just fight even if is against everyone else. Along the way, Krishna explains Hindu doctrines of past lives, karma, liberation, the caste system, and duty. In the peak moment, Krishna reveals his true self to Arjuna, which is so dazzling, complex and monstrous that Arjuna trembles with fright. Krishna teaches Arjuna that if you do your duty not for yourself but for the cosmos, you are free of doubt and death.
In the last section of the Vedas in your reader, we can see several passages that foreshadow the Upanishads and their more monistic understanding of the metaphoric narratives. This is also how we can understand the Hindu Epics we will examine this session. Often, teachings of the ancient world that are legendary can be understood by the common person as a real and miraculous event of history while the elite and wise could understand the legend as containing a deeper truth that can be transmitted to the common people as a story to be taken as history but which is more properly revealed as a metaphor. Particularly aided by the plurality of stories and traditions accepted into Indian and Hindu thought, there is much room for skepticism and subjectivism concerning conflicting truths and the shared common meaning having more importance than the conflicts in literal meaning. This is reflected in these Vedic passages, which were then extended in the Upanishads and Vedanta.
In a hymn to Indra, the storm father god who was often the chief sky father all god until unseated by Brahman (a more abstract, all-godhead), we find that we should praise Indra, if indeed he does exist. It asks, if someone wishes to purchase Indra from me for a modest price, you can return him after he has slain the demons. This is surprising humor found in the central Veda, the Rg Veda. A hymn to Vishvedevas asks, “Who hath beheld him as he sprang to being, seen how this boneless One supports the bony? Where is the blood of earth, the life, the spirit? Who may approach the man who knows, to ask it?”. The boneless One, a humorous portrayal of the monistic All which has no bones because it is one without any articulation or part, supports all the many things with their many parts. Whenever we say, “All” or “reality”, we are summing everything together effortlessly without any divisions and without leaving any particular thing out. A hymn to frogs tells us that, just as Vedic priests gather together with their rituals, so too do the frogs gather around the pond croaking to celebrate the first rain. This is remarkably similar to a passage of Zhuang Zi, the Daoist patriarch, who asks if the supreme wisdom of humans is any different from the chirping of baby birds we will read much later in the course. Another hymn asks for blessings for the “liberal worshipers”, who will hopefully turn in faith to the gods rather than doubt their existence with philosophical monism. Notice that the hymn refers to these skeptical and philosophical individuals as “worshipers”, not as atheists or heathens.
It is just these sort of individuals who would go on to write the Upanishads, the Vedanta and both the orthodox and unorthodox schools of Indian thought, including the Jainism and Buddhism we will study in the next few weeks. As the Upanishads continued to gain teachers and followers, there was a new flowering of many schools of thought between 700 and 400 BCE that took much from the Vedas and Upanishads but developed the teachings in new directions. These new schools often rejected the caste system (still in place today in spite of these ancient rebellions) and thus gained massive followings among all classes and castes of India. Jainism was one of the first, but it was quickly developed and transformed itself into a religion that is possibly the most popular system of thought in history, Buddhism.
The Upanishads (beginning in 800 BCE, most having been written by 600 BCE) were philosophical teachings about the soul/self (atman) and how to release the soul from desire and identity to merge with the great One and All (the goal of moksha or nirvana, discussed last time). The Upanishads frequently interpret the stories of the Vedas as metaphoric teachings, instructions for the truly wise on how to develop the mind/soul/self. The self (atman) was to be united with the supreme reality, oneness, and spirit of all, Brahman. ‘Upanishad’ means “sitting down near/beside”, (upa, ‘near’, ni, ‘down’, sad, ‘sit’) as these are the close teachings of the priest, philosopher or master who has taught the Vedas for a long time and knows their secret and hidden ‘inner’ meaning. The students who were talented and advanced would sit down beside the teacher after the normal lecture to get the advanced, inner teaching that the normal students were not ready to hear. Unfortunately, there are no authors to which the texts are ascribed, having been lost to history. Perhaps some of these teachings are as old as the Vedas, and were only written down after 800 BCE. There are over 200 Upanishad texts, though there are 10 central Upanishads.
One of the most famous sayings from the Upanishads is Tat Tvam Asi, “That is you”. No matter what “that” you are looking at, it is in fact your own self because all is one and there are no complete or permanent separations between any two things. This means there is no complete distinction between any ‘this’ or ‘that’, and thus no complete distinction between atman and Brahman, or between any of the gods and Brahman. This is similar to another passage of Zhuang Zi the Daoist, one of my favorite skeptical passages of philosophy, which says, “A sage too has a this and a that, but his that has a this, and his this has a that”. Notice the monism that unites all connecting not only the various Hindu gods together but all individuals in the singular One of reality.
In Indian artwork, for all schools of Indian thought including both Hinduism and Buddhism, one of the most common hand gestures or ‘mudras’ is the thumb and index finger touching forming a circle with the rest of the fingers extended, much like the ‘OK’ hand sign. The thumb and index finger are symbolically pinching the seed, grain or essence of a thing. While we may be skeptical of spiritual powers associated with hand gestures, hand and finger positioning has been shown to stimulate the same areas of the brain as counting, numbers and language. This is likely because the development of number and language systems went ‘hand in hand’, so to speak, with the earliest gestures for primitive communication. We naturally begin and often continue counting on our fingers, and use our fingers to point, intend and indicate. The sages instructing students in the Upanishads and the Buddha are often portrayed displaying the essence/grain mudra, as it is associated with not only teaching, and teaching about essences (such as, the self is essentially, at bottom, basically an illusion), but also on a deeper level the supreme One which is the true undifferentiated reality supporting and consisting of all particular things and all individual selves.
Just like the unorthodox systems of Jainism and Buddhism would do later, the Upanishads point beyond particular duties to ritual, sacrifice, caste or class to the supreme goal of self-liberation. This had a great appeal to those who were not Brahmins, the priests who formed the top level of the caste system. While the Upanishads did not say to abandon the caste system, the teachings were applicable to all. As we will see, Mahavira who founded Jainism and the Buddha both had great appeal as they openly said that one did not need to be reborn as a priest to have a shot at nirvana. Rather, one could have it in this very life and not need to reposition oneself for a better life through karma. Both Mahavira and Buddha were warrior’s sons and so were second class themselves. We can see that, as the Upanishads caught on and became one of if not the most influential source in the further developments of Indian thought, people increasingly questioned the Vedas and the caste system even as they continued to retain them as many still do today.
Let us read selections from the Upanishads. In the Isha Upanishad, we find:
“Onward, descending, go whoever are slayers of the self. Unmoving, the One is swifter than the mind…It moves. It moves not. It is far, and it is near. It is within all this, and it is outside of all this….What delusion, what sorrow is there, of him who perceives the unity! The bright, the bodiless, the scathe-less, the sinew-less, the pure…Appropriately he distributed objects through the eternal years. Into blind darkness enter they that worship ignorance. Into darkness greater than that they that delight in knowledge. Other, indeed, they say, than knowledge! Other, they say, than non-knowledge!...Knowledge and non-knowledge: He who this pair conjointly knows, with non-knowledge passing over death, with knowledge wins the immortal. Into blind darkness enter they who worship non-becoming. Into darkness greater than that they who delight in becoming. Other, they say, than origin! Other, they say, than non-origin…Becoming and destruction: He who this pair conjointly knows, with destruction passing over death, with becoming wins the immortal.
Notice this passage suggests that the One moves and does not move, is knowledge and the opposite of knowledge, is the permanent and eternal as well as endless transformation, both evolution and decomposition. It warns that you can fall into ignorance by preferring any one of these to its opposite, as you would then be following a part, not the whole. Remember that Vishnu is the great savior and preserver god in the Hindu tradition, and Shiva is the great destroyer and transformer god. This Upanishad is quite compatible with seeking a union of Vishnu, Shiva and all of their incarnations as not only Brahma, the singular One personified as a god, but Brahman, the One as un-personified, as beyond personifications and anthropomorphism.
In the Katha Upanishad, a dialog between the sage Naciketas and Yama, god of death, the good is praised above the pleasant. As the sourcebook points out, this is very similar to what Socrates argues in dialogues written by Plato. The highest mind is to be pursued, rather than the simple passing pleasures. Naciketas says to Death, after being taught: “Ephemeral things! That which is a mortal’s, O End-maker, even the vigor of all the powers, they wear away. Even a whole life is slight indeed. Yours are the vehicles! Yours is the dance and the song!”. This passage uses ‘vehicles’ as vessels or individual things that convey pleasure or anything else. The vehicle is a popular metaphor for teaching or school in Indian thought, and as we will see the various schools of Buddhism are known as vehicles.
Yama replies that those who teach that reality is some part rather than the whole are blind men led by a blind man. This is, in fact, the origin of the phrase, “blind leading the blind”. Yama says, “Him who is the bodiless among bodies, stable among the unstable, the great, all-pervading self, on recognizing him, the wise man sorrows not”. Yama uses a metaphor used by Plato through the mouth of Socrates, the self as charioteer, the body as a chariot, and the senses and passions as the horses. Yama tells of a complex stack of higher and truer selves: “Higher than the senses are the objects of sense. Higher than the objects of sense is the mind, and higher than the mind is the intellect (buddhi, also ‘consciousness’ or ‘awareness’, just as the Buddha is the ‘awakened one’). Higher than the intellect is the great self. Higher than the great is the un-manifest. Higher than the un-manifest is the great person. Higher than the person is nothing at all. That is the goal. That is the highest course.”
In the Mundaka Upanishad, we read: “There are two knowledges to be known, as indeed the knowers of Brahman are wont to say: a higher (para) and a lower (apara). Of these, the lower is the Rg Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Sama Veda, and the Atharva Veda (the four principle Vedas, the central canonical and dogmatic texts above which there is no other). Now, the higher is that whereby that Imperishable is apprehended. That which is invisible, ungraspable, without family, without caste, without sight or hearing is It, without hand or foot, eternal, all-pervading, omnipresent, exceedingly subtle, that is the imperishable, which the wise perceive as the source of beings…He who knows that, set in the secret place of the heart, he here on earth, my friend, rends asunder the knot of ignorance…What that is, know as being and non-being, as the object of desire, higher than understanding, as what is the best of creatures!...Taking as a bow the great weapon of the Upanishad, one should put upon it an arrow sharpened by meditation. Stretching it with a thought directed to the essence of that, penetrate that imperishable as the mark, my friend…As the flowing rivers in the coean disappear, quitting name and form, so the knower, being liberated from name and form, goes unto the heavenly person, higher than the high. He who knows that supreme Brahman, becomes very Brahman.”
In the Chanddogya Upanishad, we see Jabala leaving to study sacred knowledge and seek a teacher, so he asks his mother what family he comes from. This is important, as family is caste and ethnicity according to the tradition and purity laws. His mother tells him, and he in turn tells his teacher and sage, that when she was young she was a maid and got pregnant and does not know who his family is. His teacher replies that he will accept him as a student, as only a Brahmin, the top priestly caste, could answer that way. This is an interesting reversal, considering that the Brahmins are supposed to be pure and preserve their purity, while his mother’s story seems anything but top caste or pure. He then begins to be taught:
“In the beginning, my dear, this world was just being (sat), one only, without a second. To be sure, some people say in the beginning this world was just non-being (asat), one only, without a second, from that non-being, being was produced. But verily, how could this be?...It bethought itself, would that I were many. Let me procreate myself…As the bees prepare honey by collecting the essences of different trees and reducing the essence to a unity, as they are not able to discriminate, ‘I am the essence of this tree’ or ‘I am the essence of that tree’, even so, indeed, all creatures here, though they reach being, know not ‘We have reached being’. Whatever they are in this world, whether tiger or lion, or wolf, or boar, or worm, or fly, or gnat, or mosquito, that they become. That which is the finest essence, this whole world has that as its self. That is reality. That is self. That art thou” (This is the place where this central thought, ‘Tat tvam asi’, is expressed in its famous phrase).
The sage asks Jabala to bring him a fig, and then cut it up. He asks what is inside, and Jabala says seeds. He asks Jabala to cut the seeds, and asks what he sees inside, and Jabala replies, ‘Nothing’. The sage responds, “That is the essence that you do not perceive, and it gives rise to the entire fig tree”.
Then the sage asks Jabala to put salt in water so it dissolves and asks him to sip from several sides, and each time Jabala replies that he tastes salt. Like the inside of the fig seed, the sage says that the essence of all is hidden yet perceivable in all things equally.
In a hilarious passage of the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, a student questions that master about how many gods there are repeatedly, and the master keeps changing his answer. At first, he says that the Vedic hymn to all the gods says there are 303 and 3003, which would be 3306 all together. Then he says there are 33, then 6, then 3 (likely Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma), then 2, then one and a half, and finally one, which is breath and Brahman.
The sage goes on to teach the student: “There are two conditions: being in this world and being in the other world. There is a third condition that is being in sleep. By standing in this condition one sees both of the others…When one goes to sleep, one takes along the material of this all containing world , himself tears it apart, himself builds it up, and dreams by his own brightness, by his own light. Then this person becomes self-illuminated. There are no chariots there, no spans, no roads, but he projects from himself chariots, spans, roads. There are no blisses there, no pleasures, no delights, but he projects from himself blisses, pleasures, and delights. There are no tanks there, no lotus pools, no streams, but he projects from himself tanks, lotus pools and streams, for he is a creator. While he does not there know, he is truly knowing, though he does not know, for there is no cessation of the knowing of a knower, because of his imperishability…There is on earth no diversity. As a unity only is it to be looked upon, this indemonstrable, enduring being, spotless, beyond space, the unborn self, great enduring.”
In the Maitri Upanishad, we read, “In this cycle of existence I am like a frog in a waterless well…In thinking ‘This is I’, and ‘That is mine’, one binds oneself with oneself, as does a bird with a snare…Therefore, by knowledge (vidya), by austerity (tapas), and by meditation (cinta), Brahman is apprehended…For thus has it been said: He who is in the fire, and he who is here in the heart, and he who is yonder in the sun – he is one”.
The Hindu Epics: The Ramayana and Mahabharata
As the Upanishads gained prominence and pushed towards philosophical monism, for Brahman beyond even the personification of Brahma, the Hindu tradition simultaneously gathered theistic traditions together in the great epics. These tails tied many gods together along with Hindu traditional law and philosophical teachings of the Upanishads. This is why these texts have such a key role in Hinduism.
The Ramayana is a story of Rama, incarnation of Vishnu, and his quest with Hanuman, the monkey god, to rescue his wife Sita from the demon Ravana. There are two moments of the Ramayana that fit with what we are studying. In the beginning of the story, Ravana is a demon but also a sage who meditates for an impossibly long time and grows nine other heads that give him all the magical powers in the world. Having obtained everything achievable, he decides to end his existence and proceeds to cut off one head at a time and throw them into a fire. Just as he is about to cut his original and final throat, Brahma appears and says that he will grant Ravana whatever he desires, and Ravana asks to never be killed by gods, spirits or demons. Brahma grants this, and from this moment on Ravana is the villain of the story. The first thing Ravana does is go to Shiva, who is portrayed as stoned on bhang (milk steeped in pot), and demand Shiva, the destroyer, submit to him. Shiva responds by lifting a finger and imprisoning Ravana in stone for thousands of years. When Ravana finally breaks free he is quite pissed, Vishnu decides to be incarnated as Rama so that Ravana can be killed by a mortal human.
In the second moment, when Rama is following Brahma and his consort goddess Gayatri through the jungle, and as the goddess sways as she walks Rama (who is, of course, identical with Brahma not only as an individual but an incarnation of a central god himself) catches glimpses of Brahma. This is clearly symbolizing desire as in motion (as the hips of a goddess), and even though it too is one with all you can see glimpses of the All amidst and beyond the motions of desire.
The Mahabharata is ridiculously long. It is almost two million words, ten times the length of the Odyssey and the Iliad, the two Greek Epics. The central and most celebrated part of the Mahabharata is the Bhagavadgita, the story of crown prince Arjuna hesitating before fighting a civil war against his family and former friends and teachers, and then being counseled by Krishna as an incarnation of Vishnu that as a warrior it is Arjuna’s duty to fight the just fight even if is against everyone else. Along the way, Krishna explains Hindu doctrines of past lives, karma, liberation, the caste system, and duty. In the peak moment, Krishna reveals his true self to Arjuna, which is so dazzling, complex and monstrous that Arjuna trembles with fright. Krishna teaches Arjuna that if you do your duty not for yourself but for the cosmos, you are free of doubt and death.
Asian Philosophy: Syllabus & Class Schedule
PHIL 37: Asian Philosophy, FALL 2011 Instructor: Eric Gerlach
FRI 9 – 11:50 AM Office Hours: Mondays 11-12 @ K’s Coffee
Class Code: 43688 Email: ericgerlach@gmail.com
Room: BCC 54 Blog: ericgerlach.blogspot.com
Introduction to Asian Philosophy
Syllabus & Class Schedule
Course Description
This course introduces students to the history of Indian, Tibetan, Chinese and Japanese Philosophy by focusing on the core ideas of central thinkers.
Required Texts
-The only text for the class is the Course Reader, available at Lazer Image, 61 Shattuck Square, Berkeley, (510) 644-3339. A copy of the reader will be put on reserve in the BCC Library.
Required Assignments
- Four Response Essays 40%
- MIDTERM Exam 30%
- FINAL Exam 30%
CLASS SCHEDULE
Aug 26 Introduction to Asian Thought
Sept 2 Indian Thought & Hinduism
Sept 9 The Upanishads & The Indian Epics
Sept 16 Jainism & other Indian schools (FIRST RESPONSE)
Sept 23 Buddhism in India & Tibet
Sept 30 Buddhism in China & Japan
Oct 7 Chan/Zen Buddhism & Koans (SECOND RESPONSE)
Oct 14 MIDTERM EXAM
Oct 21 Chinese Thought & The Period of the Hundred Schools
Oct 28 Confucianism, Confucius & Mencius
Nov 4 Xun Zi, Neo-Confucianism & Wang Yang Ming (THIRD RESPONSE)
Nov 18 Mo Zi & the Sophists
Dec 2 Daoism, Lao Zi & Zhuan Zi
Dec 9 Warriors & Strategy: Sun Zi & Bushido (FOURTH RESPONSE)
Dec 16 FINAL EXAM
Student Learning Outcomes:
Information Competency: understand philosophical concepts and systems
Critical Thinking: evaluate philosophical concepts and argue for and against viewpoints
Global Awareness & Valuing Diversity: understand and appreciate diverse cultures of thought
General Student Requirements
Students are expected to come to class prepared to ask questions and participate in discussions. All readings and assignments should be completed by the beginning of class on the day they are listed here. This class is run as a lecture/discussion course.
Students are responsible for all class material (even if they miss class). If you miss class, it is strongly advised that you ask a classmate for notes. It is your responsibility to ask if you missed something; it is not the instructor’s responsibility to remind you. Please read through the syllabus and plan ahead.
Late assignments will only be excused in cases of well-documented emergencies; in addition, students must have evidence that substantial progress has been made on the assignment before the emergency took place. If a student has any extenuating circumstances which may affect full participation in the class, the student must speak to the instructor as far ahead of any due date as possible. All assignments must be completed and all requirements must be met in order to pass the class. You must turn in all assignments (even if they are late) in order to be eligible to receive a “C” grade or higher. There are no exceptions, under any circumstance.
Plagiarism—“[t]o use another person’s ideas or expressions in your writing without acknowledging the source” (MLA Handbook, 5th ed., §1.8)—will not be tolerated. Plagiarists, intentional or inadvertent, will receive a zero on the assignment in question; repeat offenders will get an F for the course and will be subject to college disciplinary action. Students are encouraged to review plagiarism policies in the current Vista College catalog.
Attendance is mandatory. If you miss more than five classes, you will receive an F in the course. (Note: I do not distinguish between “excused” and “unexcused” absences; if you miss more than five classes, for any reason, you cannot pass the class.)
A Note on Disabled Student Program and Services (DSP&S): DSP&S services are provided for any enrolled student who has a verified disability that creates an educational limitation that prevents the student from fully benefiting from classes without additional support services or instruction. Please let the instructor know if you require any support services or would like more information about DSP&S.
The syllabus is subject to change at the discretion of the instructor. Any changes will be announced in class. Additional handouts of required readings may also be added.
FRI 9 – 11:50 AM Office Hours: Mondays 11-12 @ K’s Coffee
Class Code: 43688 Email: ericgerlach@gmail.com
Room: BCC 54 Blog: ericgerlach.blogspot.com
Introduction to Asian Philosophy
Syllabus & Class Schedule
Course Description
This course introduces students to the history of Indian, Tibetan, Chinese and Japanese Philosophy by focusing on the core ideas of central thinkers.
Required Texts
-The only text for the class is the Course Reader, available at Lazer Image, 61 Shattuck Square, Berkeley, (510) 644-3339. A copy of the reader will be put on reserve in the BCC Library.
Required Assignments
- Four Response Essays 40%
- MIDTERM Exam 30%
- FINAL Exam 30%
CLASS SCHEDULE
Aug 26 Introduction to Asian Thought
Sept 2 Indian Thought & Hinduism
Sept 9 The Upanishads & The Indian Epics
Sept 16 Jainism & other Indian schools (FIRST RESPONSE)
Sept 23 Buddhism in India & Tibet
Sept 30 Buddhism in China & Japan
Oct 7 Chan/Zen Buddhism & Koans (SECOND RESPONSE)
Oct 14 MIDTERM EXAM
Oct 21 Chinese Thought & The Period of the Hundred Schools
Oct 28 Confucianism, Confucius & Mencius
Nov 4 Xun Zi, Neo-Confucianism & Wang Yang Ming (THIRD RESPONSE)
Nov 18 Mo Zi & the Sophists
Dec 2 Daoism, Lao Zi & Zhuan Zi
Dec 9 Warriors & Strategy: Sun Zi & Bushido (FOURTH RESPONSE)
Dec 16 FINAL EXAM
Student Learning Outcomes:
Information Competency: understand philosophical concepts and systems
Critical Thinking: evaluate philosophical concepts and argue for and against viewpoints
Global Awareness & Valuing Diversity: understand and appreciate diverse cultures of thought
General Student Requirements
Students are expected to come to class prepared to ask questions and participate in discussions. All readings and assignments should be completed by the beginning of class on the day they are listed here. This class is run as a lecture/discussion course.
Students are responsible for all class material (even if they miss class). If you miss class, it is strongly advised that you ask a classmate for notes. It is your responsibility to ask if you missed something; it is not the instructor’s responsibility to remind you. Please read through the syllabus and plan ahead.
Late assignments will only be excused in cases of well-documented emergencies; in addition, students must have evidence that substantial progress has been made on the assignment before the emergency took place. If a student has any extenuating circumstances which may affect full participation in the class, the student must speak to the instructor as far ahead of any due date as possible. All assignments must be completed and all requirements must be met in order to pass the class. You must turn in all assignments (even if they are late) in order to be eligible to receive a “C” grade or higher. There are no exceptions, under any circumstance.
Plagiarism—“[t]o use another person’s ideas or expressions in your writing without acknowledging the source” (MLA Handbook, 5th ed., §1.8)—will not be tolerated. Plagiarists, intentional or inadvertent, will receive a zero on the assignment in question; repeat offenders will get an F for the course and will be subject to college disciplinary action. Students are encouraged to review plagiarism policies in the current Vista College catalog.
Attendance is mandatory. If you miss more than five classes, you will receive an F in the course. (Note: I do not distinguish between “excused” and “unexcused” absences; if you miss more than five classes, for any reason, you cannot pass the class.)
A Note on Disabled Student Program and Services (DSP&S): DSP&S services are provided for any enrolled student who has a verified disability that creates an educational limitation that prevents the student from fully benefiting from classes without additional support services or instruction. Please let the instructor know if you require any support services or would like more information about DSP&S.
The syllabus is subject to change at the discretion of the instructor. Any changes will be announced in class. Additional handouts of required readings may also be added.
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