Eastern Philosophy

1
Eastern Philosophy
2
Eastern Religion Philosophy

• Hinduism
• Buddhism
• Islamic Philosophy
• Taoism
• Confucianism
• Zen Buddhism
• The way of the Warrior- Samurai

3
Hinduism

• Vedas
• Vishnu

4
Hinduism

• The term refers to the collect faiths that
  originated in India.
• Hinduism does not have a clear origin.
• There is not one holy book or text.
• There is not a single founder.

5
Shaivism

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

6
Saktism

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

7
Vaisnavism

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

8
Vedas

• Those who know it, do not speak it Those who
  speak it, do not know it.

9
Vedic Scriptures

• Are writing that reveal the hidden nature of
  reality.
• The Vedas were the religious writings of the
  Aryans, a nomadic people that invaded India in
  the around 1500 B.C.
• Hold the universe to be one, monism.

10
What is the meaning of Life?

• According to some versions of Hinduism the
  purpose of life is to find enlightenment.
• Most people cannot discover these truths in one
  lifetime- as such we are reincarnated.

11
Samsara

• Samsara- The cycle of birth and death.
• Humans are basically good, but are caught up in a
  cycle of desire of and suffering that is a direct
  result of ignorance and ego.
• Humans are tormented by many desires.
• Desire is the root of evil.

12
Karma

• Karma- chain of causes consequences
• Actions we perform today can have consequences
  for us far into the future all of our actions
  will eventually have consequences.

13
Nirvana

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

14
Buddhism

• Buddha
• Four Noble Truths
• Eightfold Path

15
Buddhism

• A philosophical tradition, founded by Gautama
  Siddhartha Buddha in the fifth century b.c., that
  took on various forms as a religion and spread
  throughout Asia It is a branch of Hinduism
• Buddhism attempts to help the individual conquer
  the suffering and mutability of human existence
  through the elimination of desire and ego and
  attainment of the state of nirvana.

16
Eightfold Path

• The way or practice recommended in Buddhism that
  includes
• Right View,
• Right Aim,
• Right Speech,
• Right Action,
• Right Living,
• Right Effort,
• Right Mindfulness,
• Right Contemplation.

17
Four Noble Truths

• Buddha's answer to the central problem of life
  (1) There is suffering (2) suffering has
  specific and identifiable causes (3) suffering
  can be ended (4) the way to end suffering is
  through enlightened living, as expressed in the
  Eightfold Path.

18
Different planes of reality

• For some Buddist, this plane of existence is not
  the only one.
• You can be reincarnated as a higher or lower
  being, depending upon your karma at death.

19
Islamic Philosophy

• Al-Kindi
• Al-Farabi
• Avicenna
• Al-Ghazali
• Averroes
• Sufism
• Mulla Sadra Kabir

20
Neo-Platonism 

•  A further development of Platonic philosophy
  under the influence of Aristotelian and
  Pythagorean philosophy and Christian mysticism
  it flourished between the third and sixth
  centuries, stressing a mystical intuition of the
  highest One or God, a transcendent source of all
  being.

21
Al-Kindi

• A ninth-century Islamic thinker, used Greek ideas
  to define God as an absolute and transcendent
  being.
• God created the world by means of his will.
• All of reality comes from God.

22
Al-Farabi

• A ninth-century Islamic philosopher, posited the
  philosopher-prophet as the one providing the
  necessary illumination for his society.
• Also claimed God to be Absolute Being, and that
  God was the first cause.
• He based this view on Aristotles argument of the
  unmoved mover.

23
Avicenna

• A tenth-century Islamic thinker, felt that there
  is a parallelism between philosophy and
  theology.Arabian physician and philosopher, born
  in 980 died at Hamadan, in Northern Persia,
  1037.
• Avicenna was actually Persian, not Arabian.

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Roots of his Philosophy

• Avicenna's philosophy, like that of his
  predecessors among the Arabians, is
  Aristoteleanism mingled with neo-Platonism, an
  exposition of Aristotle's teaching in the light
  of the Commentaries of Thomistius, Simplicius,
  and other neo-Platonists.

25
Practical and Speculative

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

26
Speculative Philosophy

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

27
Practical philosophy

• Practical philosophy is divided into ethics
  (which considers man as an individual) economics
  (which considers man as a member of domestic
  society) and politics (which considers man as a
  member of civil society).

28
Conceptualist

• A favourite principle of Avicenna, which is
  quoted not only by Averroes was intellectus in
  formis agit universalitatem, that is, the
  universality of our ideas is the result of the
  activity of the mind itself.
• Avicenna is a conceptualist. The mind makes
  ideas real.

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Our mind can know the truth.

• He explicitly maintains that the individual mind
  retains its individuality and that, because it is
  spiritual and immaterial, it is endowed with
  personal immortality.
• He claims that souls are capable of arriving at a
  very special kind of union with the Universal,
  Active, Intellect, and of attaining thereby the
  gift of prophecy.

30
Al-Ghazali

• A late eleventh-century and early-twelfth-century
  Islamic philosopher, attacked Avicenna regarding
  the eternity of the world and the reduction of
  religious law to a mere symbol of higher truths.

31
Averroës 

• Arabian philosopher, astronomer, and writer on
  jurisprudence born in 1126 died at Morocco,
  1198.
• A twelfth-century Islamic thinker, was thought of
  as holding two separate truths, that of religion
  and that of philosophy.

32
Knowledge thru Faith

• Averroes openly admitted his inability to hold on
  philosophic grounds the doctrine of individual
  immortality, being content to maintain it as a
  religious tenet.
• Averroes' greatest influence was as a
  commentator.

33
Sufism

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

34
Mulla Sadra

• A late sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century
  thinker who was influenced by the mystical
  tendencies in Neo-Platonism, sought a return to
  the first principle of being.

35
Kabir

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

36
Taoism

• Lao Tzu
• Chuang Tzu
• Sun Tzu
• Lieh Tzu
• Yin and Yang

37
Tao

• Taoism is based on the idea that behind all
  material things and all the change in the world
  lies one fundamental, universal principle the
  Way or Tao.

38
Tao Continued

• This principle gives rise to all existence and
  governs everything, all change and all life.
  Behind the bewildering multiplicity and
  contradictions of the world lies a single unity,
  the Tao. The purpose of human life, then, is to
  live life according to the Tao, which requires
  passivity, calm, non-striving (wu wei ),
  humility, and lack of planning, for to plan is to
  go against the Tao.

39
Lao Tzu

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

40
Tao Te Ching

• The whole world recognizes the beautiful as the
  beautiful, yet this is the ugly the whole world
  recognizes the good as the good, yet this is bad.
• Thus Something and Nothing produce each other.
• The difficult and the easy complement each other

41
Seek peace

• Lao Tzu believed that human life, like everything
  else in the universe, is constantly influenced by
  outside forces.
• He believed "simplicity" to be the key to truth
  and freedom.
• Lao Tzu encouraged his followers to observe, and
  seek to understand the laws of nature to develop
  intuition and build up personal power and to use
  that power to lead life with love, and without
  force.

42
The way

• Look, it cannot be seen - it is beyond
  form.Listen, it cannot be heard - it is beyond
  sound.Grasp, it cannot be held - it is
  intangible.These three are indefinable, they are
  one. From above it is not bright

43
The way Continued.

• From below it is not darkUnbroken thread beyond
  description.It returns to nothingness.Form of
  the formless,Image of the imageless,It is
  called indefinable and beyond imagination.
• Stand before it - there is no beginning.Follow
  it and there is no end.Stay with the Tao, Move
  with the present.
• Knowing the ancient beginning is the essence of
  Tao.

44
Chuang Tzu

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

45
Sun Tzu

• Sun Tzu  A sixth-century B.C. Taoist philosopher
  and general, applied Taoist philosophy to
  military strategy.
• Some scholars have concluded that Sun Tzu's work
  was actually authored by unknown Chinese
  philosophers and that Sun Tzu did not actually
  exist as a historical figure. There is more
  evidence to support this theory than the
  traditional one of Sun Tzu as an individual
  historical figure.

46
Lieh Tzu

• Lieh Tzu was born around 450 B.C. As for the
  events of his lifetime, his trade etc. - we know
  nothing.
• Wrote book The Perfect Emptiness

47
Lieh Tzu Free your Mind

• My mind was frozen, my body in dissolution, my
  flesh and bones all melted together. I was wholly
  unconscious of what my body was resting on, or
  what was under my feet. I was borne this way and
  that on the wind, like dry chaff or leaves
  falling from a tree. In fact, I knew not whether
  the wind was riding on me or I on the wind.

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Yin and Yang

• Contractive and expansive forces in the universe.

49
The universe divided

• The essentials of the yin-yang school are as
  follows the universe is run by a single
  principle, the Tao, or Great Ultimate. This
  principle is divided into two opposite
  principles, or two principles which oppose one
  another in their actions, yin and yang. All the
  opposites one perceives in the universe can be
  reduced to one of the opposite forces.

50
5 agents or causes

• The yin and yang accomplish changes in the
  universe through the five material agents, or wu
  hsing , which both produce one another and
  overcome one another. All change in the universe
  can be explained by the workings of yin and yang
  and the progress of the five material agents as
  they either produce one another or overcome one
  another. Yin-yang and the five agents explain all
  events within the universe..

51
Everything is explained

• All phenomena can be understood using yin-yang
  and the five agents the movements of the stars,
  the workings of the body, the nature of foods,
  the qualities of music, the ethical qualities of
  humans, the progress of time, the operations of
  government, and even the nature of historical
  change.

52
Let the stars be your guide?

• All things follow this order so that all things
  can be related to one another in some way one
  can use the stars to determine what kind of
  policy to pursue in government, for instance.

53
Male and female

• The yin and yang represent all the opposite
  principles one finds in the universe. Under yang
  are the principles of maleness, the sun,
  creation, heat, light, Heaven, dominance, and so
  on, and under yin are the principles of
  femaleness, the moon, completion, cold, darkness,
  material forms, submission, and so on.

54
Heaven and Earth

• Each of these opposites produce the other Heaven
  creates the ideas of things under yang, the earth
  produces their material forms under yin, and vice
  versa creation occurs under the principle of
  yang, the completion of the created thing occurs
  under yin, and vice versa, and so on.

55
Cyclical existence

• This production of yin from yang and yang from
  yin occurs cyclically and constantly, so that no
  one principle continually dominates the other or
  determines the other. All opposites that one
  experienceshealth and sickness, wealth and
  poverty, power and submissioncan be explained in
  reference to the temporary dominance of one
  principle over the other. Since no one principle
  dominates eternally, that means that all
  conditions are subject to change into their
  opposites.

56
Confucianism

• Confucius
• Mencius

57
Confucius

• Founder of the most dominant system of Chinese
  thought, emphasized the perfectibility of people
  as well as their ability to affect things for the
  better.
• Confucius himself had a simple moral and
  political teaching to love others to honor
  one's parents to do what is right instead of
  what is of advantage to practice "reciprocity,"
  i.e. "don't do to others what you would not want
  yourself" to rule by moral example instead of by
  force and violence and so forth.

58
Govern not kill

• Confucius thought that a ruler who had to resort
  to force had already failed as a ruler -- "Your
  job is to govern, not to kill" (Analects XII19).
  This was not a principle that Chinese rulers
  always obeyed, but it was the ideal of benevolent
  rule.

59
Self Control

• Confucius thought that government by laws and
  punishments could keep people in line, but
  government by example of virtue and good manners
  would enable them to control themselves (Analects
  II3). "The way the wind blows, that's the way
  the grass bends" (Analects XII19).

60
No need for Money

• Although Confucius himself says, "Wealth and high
  station are what men desire" (Analects, IV5),
  later Confucians turned warnings against the
  temptation of profit into a condemnation of
  profit, which meant that their influence was
  often turned against the development of Chinese
  industry and commerce.

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Later followers did not follow the way.

• Confucians themselves were perfectly happy to
  seek "high station," while stiffling the ability
  of ordinary Chinese to produce "wealth." Over
  time, this was an evil influence in Chinese
  history.

62
Mencius

• A Confucian thinker second in importance to
  Confucius.One cannot discuss Confucianism
  without at least mentioning the man the Chinese
  call "The Second Sage," Meng Tzu, or, in
  Latinized form, Mencius (372-289 B.C.) Mencius,
  like Confucius, concerned himself entirely with
  political theory and political practice he spent
  his life bouncing from one feudal court to
  another trying to find some ruler who would
  follow his teachings.

63
Did not change his Government

• Like Confucius he was largely unsuccessful in his
  endeavor. In fact, China had degenerated
  precipitously in Mencius's time individual
  states were preying on and conquering others and
  the rulers of the time had no patience for what
  they considered prattling about the ancients and
  their ways.

64
Radical Thinker

• Mencius several times throughout Chinese history
  has been regarded as a potentially "dangerous"
  author, leading at times to outright banning of
  his book. This is because Mencius developed a
  very early form of what was to be called in
  modern times the "social contract."

65
Purse your purpose

• Mencius also highlighted other desirable
  qualities such as a steadfastness of purpose that
  enables one to follow what is proper without
  being swayed by fear or uncertainty. He urged
  that one should cultivate oneself so that one
  follows what is proper and willingly accepts
  unfavorable conditions of life that are not
  within one's control or are of such a nature that
  altering them requires improper conduct.
• One should devote effort to ethical pursuits and
  not worry about these external conditions of
  life.

66
Zen Buddhism

• Zen
• Chan
• Hui Neng
• Murasaki Shikibu
• Dogen Kigen
• Samurai

67
Zen

• A form of Buddhism that reached its zenith in
  China and later developed in Japan, Korea, and
  the West its name (Chinese Ch'an, Japanese Zen)
  derives from the Sanskrit dhyana (meditation).
• In early China, the central tenet of Zen Buddhism
  was meditation rather than adherence to a
  particular scripture.

68
Chan

• Chinese Zen Buddhism.

69
Hui Neng

• Sixth patriarch of Chinese Zen, emphasized the
  oneness of all things.

70
Murasaki Shikibu

• An influential Japanese Mahayana Buddhist
  philosopher of the late tenth and early eleventh
  centuries, held that women were responsible moral
  agents who were capable of enlightenment and
  could influence their destines, reach nirvana,
  and achieve salvation.

71
Dogen Kigen

• A Japanese Zen monk, stressed the importance of
  acquiring the perspective of the universal Self,
  given the impermanence of life.

72
Samurai

• Miyamoto Musashi
• Yamamoto Tsunetomo
• Samurai writers who helped record and preserve
  samurai ideals of preparedness indifference to
  pain, death, and material possessions, wisdom,
  and courage.

73
Bushido

• The way or ethic of the samurai warrior, based on
  service and demanding rigorous training, usually
  both in the military and literary arts.