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Module 2. Classical eastern philosophy

Eastern philosophies were intimately tied to their respective religious traditions of

Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism. Distinguishing Eastern
philosophy from its religion is an issue of emphasis: its philosophy deals less with
worship rituals and depictions of the gods, and more with larger questions of our
relation to the cosmos.
 
Reference:

James Fieser, 2020. The History of Philosophy: A Short Survey

 
Objective:
1. To discuss Hindu philosophy, Buddhist philosophy, Confucian philosophy,
Daoist philosophy

Discussions
 
 
A. Introduction
 
At the time that ancient Greek philosophy was blossoming, on the other side of
the world a different set of philosophical traditions emerged within the Eastern
Asian regions of India and China. Like Greece, both of these areas had complex
social structures, sophisticated cultures, and, most importantly, systems of
writing that enabled people to record their thoughts. But unlike Greek philosophy
which was largely secular, Eastern philosophies were intimately tied to their
respective religious traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism.
Distinguishing Eastern philosophy from its religion is an issue of emphasis: its
philosophy deals less with worship rituals and depictions of the gods, and more
with larger questions of our relation to the cosmos.
             While the specific elements of the various Eastern philosophies differ
dramatically, many share a specific conception of God and the cosmos.
Philosophers and theologians of all traditions try to understand how God, or
some ultimate reality, relates to the world, and there are two general approaches
to this: transcendence and immanence. The transcendence approach maintains
that God is entirely separate or distinct from the finite world in which we live.
When I look at a mountain, a forest or even a human being, I may see these as
external objects that God creates, which are not literally part of God himself. God
thus transcends or rises above the things in the world, and is beyond even the
cosmos itself. To communicate with God, I must look beyond this finite created
world and seek God in his secluded realm. A common expression used to depict
the transcendent nature of God is that he is "wholly other", and the Western
religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam typically depict God in this
way. By contrast, the immanence, approach is that God is not external to the
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cosmos, but dwells within it or is immanent to it. Thus, when I look at a mountain,
forest of a human being, what I see are literally parts of God. This view is often
called pantheism, a term literally meaning all-God. On this view, God dwells
within me too since I am part of the cosmos. To communicate with God I look
within myself, and not outwards to a secluded divine realm beyond the cosmos.
Communication with God, then, involves a mystical experience by which I
become aware of my union with God. Eastern religious traditions in general
gravitate towards this pantheistic notion of God.
 
B. Hindu philosophy
 
The best place to begin examining Eastern Philosophy is by looking at Hinduism.
Hindu texts are among the oldest in the East, and their concepts directly or
indirectly influenced the philosophy of other Eastern philosophical traditions.
While many of the world’s religious traditions were founded by renown people
(Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad) Hinduism has no founding figure, and it covers a
diversity of views of the people of India dating as far back as 3,500 BCE. The
term “Hindu” comes from the Persian word “Hind,” which was the name given to
the Indus River region of northern India. Most generally, “Hinduism” means the
religion of the Indus River region. Early Hindu religion was polytheistic, similar to
the religion in ancient Greece and Rome. Their sacred text is a large work called
the Vedas, which literally means “bodies of knowledge,” written between 1,500-
800 BCE in the ancient language Sanskrit. It describes features of various gods,
rituals to appease them, and hymns to chant to them. Hindu philosophical
discussions emerged shortly after, from around 800 BCE to 200 CE.,
emphasizing the pantheistic notion of the divine reality that permeates the
cosmos. The Hindu name for this reality is the Atman-Brahman, literally meaning
the Self-God, and much of Hindu philosophy focuses on this concept.
 
The Self-God
The dramatic implication of the notion of the Self-God is that I am the God of the
cosmos. At first glance this may sound strange or even delusional, but classical
Hindu philosophers provide an explanation. The Atman is our true Self that lies at
the inner core of our human identities, and it is only this inner core that is
identical with God. Hindus sometimes use an analogy of an onion to describe the
various layers of our identities. Like an onion with many layers of skin, our human
identities also have different layers. The outer layers of our identities involve
common sense views of ourselves that we experience empirically, such as our
individual physical bodies, sensations, thoughts and feelings. The Self-God is like
the inner core of the onion, hidden beneath many distracting layers, and
consequently we fail to immediately comprehend the very existence of that inner
core and our divine status. Instead, we see ourselves as distinct beings, each of
us with our own bodies and minds, and we see the world itself as consisting of a
multiplicity of isolated parts. By pealing away the outer layers of our identities,
though, we will find the Self-God within each of us and see the underlying unity of
the world.
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             The doctrine of the Self-God was put forward in two specific Hindu
works: The Upanishads and The Bhagavad Gita. The Upanishads is a series of
more than 200 anonymously-written texts, although Hindu tradition gives special
emphasis to only about 18 early ones composed between 600 and 400 BCE. In
one of the most famous of these, a father picturesquely describes to his son how
things that seem diverse in fact have an underlying common reality. Plants,
animals, humans, and everything else are united in the Self-God that exists
beneath the physical structure of things. Take, for example, how bees collect
juices from a variety of trees and unify those juices in their honey:
 
Bees make honey by collecting the juices of distant trees and reducing the juices
into one form. These juices have no discrimination and do not say “I am the juice
of this tree or that tree.” In the same manner, when all these creatures merge
with Being [either in deep sleep or in death], they do not know that they merged
with Being. Whatever these creatures are here — whether a lion, a wolf, a boar,
a worm, a fly, a gnat, or a mosquito — they become that again and again.
Everything that exists has as its soul that which is the finest essence. It is Reality.
It is the Atman, and you are that, my son. [Chandogya Upanishad]
 
This passage makes a distinction between our physical identities and our
underlying true identities. Our physical identities go through continual cycles of
reincarnation; this is so of animal life as well as human life. Our true underlying
identities, though, merge with God, which is undifferentiated reality. The father
says to his son, “You are that,” meaning that his son is the Self-God that he’s
describing (Tat Tvam Asi in the Sanskrit language). According to later Hindu
tradition, this phrase “You are that,” as spoken by the father, encapsulates the
message of all the Upanishads.

             The Bhagavad Gita, or Song of God, is a 100-page section of an epic

poem called the Mahabharata. At about 5,000 pages and composed over an 800
year period, the Mahabharata is the world’s longest epic poem. It chronicles a
legendary feud between two branches of a royal family. The long-standing
quarrel culminates in a bloody battle. The story behind the Bhagavad
Gita focuses on prince Arjuna, the leader on one side of the feud, who is
despairing about going into battle against his kinfolk. He expresses his grief to
his charioteer, Krishna, who, it turns out, is the manifestation of the Hindu god
Vishnu in human form. Krishna comforts Arjuna with a philosophy lesson about
discovering the Self-God within him:
 
Those who distinguish between the slayer and the slain are ignorant of them
both. No one slays, and no one is slain. No one is born, and no one dies. No one
who once existed, ceases to exist. They are unborn, perpetual, eternal and
ancient, and are not slain when their bodies are slaughtered. If we understand a
person to be indestructible, perpetual, unborn, undiminishing, how can that
person slay, or be slain? [Bhagavad Gita, Sect. 2]
 
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Krishna’s point is that we are all eternal by virtue of the Self-God within us, and
what happens to our bodies is insignificant. For this reason, Arjuna should not
worry about the conflict with his relatives since even if their bodies die in battle,
their inner selves are untouched.
 
Release from Rebirth
Hindus have a long tradition of belief in reincarnation, which, most simply, is the
view that one’s present life is followed by a series of new lives in new physical
bodies. There are two components to rebirth. First, there is the basic process of
rebirth itself: when I die, my true Self will be reborn into another body, and when
that body dies, I will be reborn into another, and so on. The Bhagavad
Gita picturesquely states “As a person throws off worn-out garments and takes
new ones, so too the dweller in the body throws off worn-out bodies and enters
into others that are new” (Bhagavad Gita, 2). Some Hindu writings are explicit
about the mechanics of the rebirth process. When I die, and my body is
cremated, my soul rises with the smoke and travels through the heavens for
several months. My soul then falls back to earth, mixes with natural elements,
and is consumed by humans. From there my soul works its way into a man’s
semen, and, through intercourse, enters a woman’s womb.

             The second component of rebirth is that the moral consequences of my

behavior in this life are carried over to my next lives. Known as the doctrine
of karma (or "action") the quality of my existence in my new life is largely a
function of my good or bad actions in my present and previous lives. To illustrate,
imagine that my true Self carries around a karma pouch from one life to another.
Each time I perform a good deed, a good-karma token is tossed into the pouch,
and when I perform a bad deed, a bad-karma token is thrown in. When I die, I
carry the karma pouch and all its tokens on to the next life. If I have an
abundance of good-karma tokens, then in my next life I may be healthier,
wealthier, and more spiritually mature than I am now. On the other hand, if I die
with an abundance of bad-karma tokens, then I may be reborn sickly, poor, and
ignorant. To make my next life better, I should do what I can in this life to
accumulate as many good-karma tokens as possible.
             While we might think of reincarnation as a good thing, it is instead
something that we should dread for it places us in a seemingly endless cycle of
struggles. We need to do what we can to become released (moksha) from the
rebirth cycle. Hindu writings stress several approaches to release, two of which
are especially dominant. The first approach is that release is a matter of
accumulating a great abundance of good karma over our various lives. When I
get as good as I can possibly be, then the rebirth process is over and my true
Self remains with God. The appeal of this approach is that it underscores the fact
that life is a moral journey, with perfection as our ultimate goal. The second
approach to release involves discovering the Self-God within me through
reflection and meditation. The appeal of this approach is that I can go more
directly towards my final goal and experience the pure Self-God right here and
now. Both of these approaches, though, are interconnected. Before I’m capable
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of reflectively experiencing the Self-God within me, I must first be morally mature.
If I rob a bank this morning, I stand little chance of discovering the Self-God
within me this afternoon, no matter how hard I meditate. Developing that moral
maturity might require that I go through several more reincarnations until my
karma pouch is filled with good tokens, at which time I’ll be a better person and
be more successful at meditating.
 
Yoga
It is one thing for me to merely understand the concept of the Self-God as a
philosophical theory about the cosmos, but it is an entirely other for me to
actually discover the Self-God within me. To assist believers in this task, Hindu
tradition developed a series of Yoga techniques. The term Yoga literally means
“to yoke” or “to harness,” but its more general meaning is to discipline oneself.
The Bhagavad Gita is something like a handbook of the various Yoga methods,
and we will look it its account of two of them.
             The first of these is the Yoga of selfless action (karma), which involves
routinely behaving with indifference to the fruits of our actions. By engaging in
pure action, unconcerned with the action’s results, we distance ourselves from
the outer layers of our identities and our perceptions of the world. We thus
become more sensitive to the reality of the Self-God. Suppose, for example, that
it is lunchtime and I make a sandwich. Ordinarily, I do this to ward off hunger
pangs, to satisfy my food craving, to keep me healthy, or to keep me alive. All of
these reasons, though, emphasize the outer layers of my identity: my bodily
cravings, my desires, and the continuation of my finite life. This all distracts me
from my true inner Self. I should continue make and eat the sandwich as I usually
do, but at the same time I should train myself to disassociate my identity from the
act of eating, and view that act impartially as though someone else is eating.
Since all my daily actions focus on my outer self, the Yoga of selfless action
helps train me to disassociate myself from everything that I do. When distractions
of my outer layers are finally removed, and I then have some hope of
experiencing the glimmer of my true inner Self.  This also brings me one step
closer to ending the cycle of reincarnation: “By renouncing the fruit of one’s
actions, the person who is endowed with intellect is freed from the bond of birth
and goes to the place that is devoid of illness” (Bhagavad Gita, 2). I am locked
into my physical body as long as I enjoy the results of my activities, and I need
an evenness of mind to give up the fruits of my actions which the Yoga of selfless
action provides.
             According to the Bhagavad Gita, we will not reach this degree of
indifference in our actions by following traditional customs in sacred texts:
“Scriptures prescribe many ceremonies to attain pleasure and power, but rebirth
is the fruit of those actions” (ibid). Like eating a sandwich, we perform religious
rituals for a purpose; in this case, the purpose is to appease God or to get to
heaven. However, religious actions are no less distracting than any other action.
There are clear psychological indicators when we disassociate ourselves from
our actions, namely, we are freed from all emotions and attachments:
 
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When a person abandons all the desires of his heart and is satisfied in the Self
and by the Self, then he is called “stable in mind.” A sage of stable mind is free
from anxiety when surrounded by pains, is indifferent when surrounded by
pleasures, and is freed from passion, fear and anger. He is without attachments
on every side, whether desirable or undesirable, and neither likes nor dislikes.
The person of understanding is well poised. Just as a tortoise pulls in all its limbs,
the sage withdraws his senses from the objects, and his understanding is well
poised.
 
The analogy of the tortoise in the final sentence explains the benefit of freeing
ourselves from emotions and attachments. Through detachment, we withdraw
from the world of the senses, which in turn enables us to internally focus on the
Self-God.

             A second type of Yoga discussed in the Bhagavad Gita is that

of meditation (raja), which involves immediately experiencing our union with God
through contemplation. The practice of meditation requires a disciplined effort,
and to that end the Bhagavad Gita provides step-by-step instructions. When
attempting meditation, we should first find a private spot, assume a seated
posture, gaze ahead, subdue our thoughts and senses, and lose self-
consciousness. Through this method, we directly experience the unified Self-God
within us:
 
The Yogi should constantly engage himself in Yoga, staying in a secret place by
himself, subduing his thoughts and Self, and freeing himself from hope and
greed. He should set up a fixed seat for himself in a pure place, which is neither
too high, nor too low, made of a cloth, a black deerskin, and grass, one over the
other. Once there he should practice Yoga for the purification of the Self; he
should make his mind one-pointed, subduing his thoughts and the functions of
his senses. He should hold his body, head and neck erect, immovably steady,
looking at the point of his nose with an unseeing gaze. His heart should be
serene, fearless and firm in the vow of renunciation. His mind should be
controlled as he sits in harmony. In this manner he will think on me and aspire
after me.
 
The point of all these steps in the meditative process is to block out distractions.
Imagine that you are in a room with 50 radios playing, all tuned to different
channels, and in the back of the room a cat is meowing. The only way to hear the
cat is to first shut off all the radios, one by one. Similarly, the meditative
techniques guide us in successively shutting down the commotion of ordinary
consciousness so that we can experience our inner Selves.
             In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna and Arjuna discuss some of the pitfalls of
the Yoga of meditation. Krishna says that this meditation method is not for
everyone, but only for those who can avoid extremes in their conduct and
desires:
 
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Yoga is not for the person who eats too much or too little, or who sleeps too
much or too little. Yoga kills all pain for the person who is moderate in eating,
amusement, performing actions, sleeping, and waking. When his subdued
thought is fixed on the Self and free from desiring things, then we can say that he
is harmonized. Just as a lamp in a windless place does not flicker, so too will the
subdued thought of the Yogi be absorbed in the Yoga of the self. . . . The Yogi
who harmonizes the self and puts away evil, will enjoy the infinite bliss of unity
with the eternal God. The self, harmonized by Yoga, sees the Self abiding in all
beings, and all beings in the Self. Everywhere he sees the same thing.
 
Thus, if we succeed in being moderate, then we will see the unity of the Self in
everything. In response to Krishna, Arjuna objects that some people’s minds are
so restless that it is impossible to bring it under control as Krishna advises.
Krishna replies that through practice and the subduing of our passions we may
successfully restrain our thoughts; this underscores the challenge in bringing our
Self under control, and why we may appropriately refer to Yoga as a “discipline.”
Pressing the issue, Arjuna asks what will happen to the person who attempts the
Yoga of Meditation, but fails. Krishna responds that, even if you fail at the Yoga
of Meditation in your current incarnation, through good deeds you may eventually
be reincarnated as a Yogi who finally succeeds at meditation. “In this reborn
state, he retains the characteristics belonging to his previous body, and with
these he again works for perfection” (ibid).
 
Vedanta: Monism
In philosophy, monism is the view that the universe is composed of only  one type
of thing, and Hinduism as a whole tends to be monistic, with its pantheistic
conception of God enveloping everything. Beginning in the eighth-century CE,
the issue of monism was debated by a group of philosophers within
Hinduism’s Vedanta tradition, which drew its inspiration directly from
the Upanishads. The debate started with the views of a scholar named Sankara
(788-820 CE). Philosophically, there are two ways that we can understand the
notion of monism. The first, which we will call weak monism, is the view that the
universe consists of one basic thing, but that thing is divided into sub-units. An
orange, for example, is a unified whole insofar as it is a self-contained biological
unit. However, the orange clearly has parts to it, such as its outer peal, inner
sections, and seeds. Thus, it is a monistic whole that consists of parts. The
second kind of monism, which we will call strong monism, is the view that the
universe consists of one undifferentiated thing that has no sub-units. A cannon
ball, for example, is composed of a single metallic stuff through and through, and
has no obvious internal parts that differentiate it. When reflecting on the monistic
themes in the Upanishads, Sankara had to decide between interpreting them as
weak monism or strong monism. He took the Upanishad’s notion of unity literally
and went with strong monism. In the chapter on the Presocratics, we've seen that
this is the approach that Parmenides takes with his conception of the One: a
single thing with no parts.
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             There are dramatic implications to strong monism. If reality as a whole is

the single, unchanging God, then there is something unreal about our
commonsense perception that the world has parts. That is, as I look around me, I
visually perceive a world that is composed of distinct elements, such as houses,
mountains, and rocks. Also, I ordinarily see myself as a distinct thing from the
people and objects that surround me. For Sankara, all of these commonsense
perceptions are unreal, and the truth of the matter is that beneath these
commonsense perceptions is the underlying unity of God beneath the unreal
appearance of things. In the following, Sankara argues that individual selves and
the world of appearances are unreal. The only reality is the unchanging,
undifferentiated God, in spite of how things seem from our common sense
perspective. He makes this point here using the analogy of a rope that
mistakenly appears to be a snake:
 
When accepted as the doctrine of the Vedas, this doctrine of the individual soul
having its Self in God does away with the independent existence of the individual
soul. This is just as the idea of the rope does away with the idea of the snake [for
which the rope had been mistaken]. And if the doctrine of the independent
existence of the individual soul has to be set aside, then the view of the entire
phenomenal world having an independent existence must likewise be set aside
insofar as it is based on the individual soul. [Commentary on the Vedanta
Sutra 2.1.14]
 
As Sankara suggests above, suppose that when walking down the road I see a
snake. On closer inspection, though, it is not a snake at all, but only a rope. In
the same way, the world deceptively appears differentiated, but on closer
inspection it is undifferentiated. There is an unreality to how we ordinarily
perceive the world as having parts.
             According to Sankara, the strong monistic view of the world is embedded
in the famous phrase from the Upanishads “You are that”:
 
everything has its Self in God, [and so] the whole world of appearances is non-
existent, including actions, agents, and consequences of actions. Nor can it be
said that this non-existence of the phenomenal world is declared by Scripture to
be limited to certain states. For the passage “You are that” shows that the
general fact of God being the Self of all is not limited by any particular state. [Ibid]
 
For Sankara, this means that all (not just some) elements of the world of
appearances are unreal. Thus, the tree I see in front of me may seem to be
there, but it is actually unreal. Similarly, although I myself seem to be a real
physical person that performs actions, this component of me is unreal too. Why,
though, do I perceive the world of appearances in this illusory and deceptive
way? According to Sankara, this deception is caused by a force
called Maya (literally "illusion"), sort of like a magician who has the ability to
create illusions. It shields us from knowledge of the true nature of God, and
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makes me think that the illusory world of appearances is real. My goal, then, is to
overcome this ignorance and see the undifferentiated nature of God as it truly is.
             A rival Vedanta scholar named Ramanuja (1017–1137 CE) rejected
strong monism in favor of the theory of weak monism, and here’s why. Suppose
that Sankara’s strong monism is correct. That is, suppose that the only thing that
exists in the universe is a single, unchanging and undifferentiated God. Anything
else that I think exists is a matter of deception. A consequence of this is that it
makes no sense at all for me to worship God. First, if God is completely without
parts, then God has no personality and is much like a huge glob of clay. There’s
no point in worshipping that kind of thing. Second, if my true inner Self is this
God, then by worshipping God I am worshiping myself, which also seems silly.
Third, any acts of worship that I perform, such as prayer, sacrifice, or charity,
would be part of the world of appearances. But the world of appearances is not
real, so any acts of worship I perform would also be unreal. Strong monism, then,
undermines the whole notion of religious worship; thus, Ramanuja concludes, we
must reject it in favor of weak monism.
             According to Ramanuja’s weak monism, although the world is unified in a
single God, God has differentiated parts. Like the different internal parts of a
single orange, individual souls and the physical world make up the body of God.
So, we are in one sense united with God, but in another we are distinct from
God. This approach rescues the world of appearances, which Sankara rejected
as unreal. For Ramanuja, when I perceive various houses, mountains and rocks
around me, they are all real parts of God. When I distinguish between my own
personal identity and other beings around me, I am again perceiving a genuine
distinction within God. This approach also rescues the meaningfulness of
religious worship. Since I am only a small component of God, it is reasonable for
me to show devotion to the totality of God.
             To make his point, Ramanuja offers his own interpretation of the phrase
“You are that” from the Upanishads:
 
The words “That” and “You” denote a God distinguished by difference. The word
“that” refers to God as omniscient, etc., which had been introduced as the
general topic of consideration in previous passages of the same section, such as
“It thought, may I be many.” The word “you,” which stands in relation to “that,”
conveys the idea of God insofar as its body consists of the individual souls
connected with non-intelligent matter. [Commentary on the Vedanta Sutra, 1.1.1]
 
According to Ramanuja, the terms “That” and “You” clearly have different
meanings, and so there is some difference within God which allows me and the
world of appearances to have distinct existences, even though they are all unified
within God.
 
C. Buddhist philosophy
 
Buddhism was founded in India by a former Hindu monk named Gautama
Siddhartha (563-483 BCE), better known as Buddha, a term which means the
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“enlightened one.” Buddha came from a wealthy family in what is now the country
of Nepal, where his father was a feudal lord. The night before he was born his
mother dreamed that a white elephant entered her womb through her side. Hindu
priests interpreted the dream as a dual destiny: he would either be a universal
monarch, or universal teacher. Hoping that his son would take the path of a
monarch, his father confined him to the family estate, sheltering him from the
ugly experiences of illness and death. At age 29, he had three occasions to
glimpse the outside world, and each time he was shocked to learn about the
suffering that humans experience. First he saw an old man, then a sick man, and
then a dead body. On a fourth occasion he saw a Hindu monk, which inspired
him to leave his family estate to pursue a life of religious devotion. Buddha
wandered for six years, learning what he could from holy people about the
solution to the human predicament. He joined a band of five ascetic monks who
taught him the practice of self-renunciation. So austere were Buddha’s efforts,
though, that he almost died of starvation. He started eating again to regain
health, and his ascetic colleagues left him in disgust. Disheartened by his
failures, Buddha sat under a fig tree, vowing to not rise until he achieved
supreme awakening. He stayed up all night, and at the first glimpse of the
morning star he became enlightened. He eventually drew a large crowd of
followers and set up monasteries in every major city. Buddha eventually died by
accidentally eating poisoned mushrooms at the home of a close disciple.
             Through his early experiences as a monk, Buddha became dissatisfied
with many traditional Hindu teachings, such as the role of the priests and the
authority of their scriptures. Nevertheless, Buddha’s underlying philosophy draws
heavily from Hinduism, and one contemporary scholar has gone so far as to say
that Buddhism is Hinduism stripped for export. Buddha himself wrote nothing,
and the oldest accounts of his teachings are in a voluminous collection called
the Pali Canon, compiled during the first five centuries after Buddha’s death. The
texts are written in a language related to Sanskrit, called “Pali”, hence the
designation “Pali Canon.”
 
Four Noble Truths
The most famous part of the Pali Canon is a section known as “The First
Discourse,” which, according to tradition, Buddha delivered to his ascetic friends
immediately after his enlightenment. The content of the discourse is the
foundation of all Buddhist teaching. The discourse presents “four noble truths”
concerning the quest for enlightenment. The first truth is that life is suffering:
 
Now this is the noble truth concerning suffering. Birth is attended with pain,
decay is painful, disease is painful, and death is painful. Union with the
unpleasant is painful, and separation from the pleasant is painful. Any craving
that is unsatisfied is also painful. In brief, the five components which spring from
attachment are painful. This then is the noble truth concerning suffering.
[Samyutta-nikaya, 56.2]
 
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The Pali word for suffering is sometimes translated as anxiety or frustration, but a

good description is dislocation. For example the pain that I experience from a
dislocated shoulder is the result of my arm being yanked out of its normal
position. Similarly, the root of all suffering involves some twisting or distortion of
our true nature. A poignant illustration of suffering is the birth process. From the
moment we come into the world as infants, we find suffering. With each
contraction the mother is gripped with perhaps the greatest physical pain that she
will experience in life, while anxious friends and relatives stand by helplessly.
Physically contorted as it emerges, the baby is forced to cry so that it may begin
breathing. Once giving birth, the mother remains in pain for some time, and the
frail baby requires continual monitoring at the risk of dying. Buddhist writings offer
an endless list of suffering that we experience throughout our lives, such as that
from sickness, old age, fear of death, failure to fulfill ambitions, separation from
loved ones, and association with people we dislike. Even on a good day, if we
can escape some actual human tragedy, our lives are nevertheless dominated by
preemptively avoiding suffering. We monitor our diets, struggle to keep up with
an exercise routine, cautiously drive around town, lock our doors, and stay clear
of hostile people.
             The second noble truth is that the cause of suffering is desire:  
Now this is the noble truth concerning the origin of suffering. It is that thirst or
craving which causes the renewal of existence, accompanied by sensual delight,
and the seeking of satisfaction first here, then there. That is to say, it is the
craving for the gratification of the passions, or the craving for a future life, or the
craving for success in this present life. This then is the noble truth concerning the
origin of suffering.
 
The above quote describes desire as an insatiable craving for private fulfillment.
We cling or grasp to virtually anything that might satisfy our yearnings, much like
a child that jealously clutches a favorite toy. Ultimately, our cravings can never be
truly satisfied, and so we suffer, as a child does when we attempt to wrench a toy
from his hands. The central point of this noble truth is that for every type of
suffering we experience, there is some misguided craving that is at its source.
Suppose, for example, that my leg gets broken in a car accident on my way to
the store. Chronologically, I had several desires that led up to the accident. One
desire impelled me to buy a car to begin with, rather than take public
transportation. Another desire inclined me to purchase something at the store,
and yet another had me go shopping at that particular time. Further, once I’m at
home in my leg cast, lying in bed, my present desires perpetuate my suffering. I
want to go back to work, but I can’t. I’d like to go to a restaurant, but I can’t. I’d
prefer to walk around outside but I can’t. The more things that I desire and cling
to, the more I increase my suffering. Why are we driven to cling so ferociously to
so many things? Buddha has an answer. Desire arises from five
distinct components of our human nature. These components are matter,
sensation, perception, predisposition, and consciousness. Each of these five
components has me rely on something outside of me. Even if I want to do
something as simple as walk from the living room into the kitchen, I rely on the
 12

material construction of the house itself, my raw sense perception of it, and how
these perceptions automatically register in my mind. Since the human condition
is shaped by desire, many if not most of which go unfulfilled, then our condition is
one of suffering.

             The third noble truth is that the end of suffering is achieved by
extinguishing our desire; this is the state of nirvana, a term that literally means “to
extinguish.” Of the virtually endless number of desires that bubble up from my
five components, my goal should be the destruction of these, as Buddha
describes here:
 
Now this is the noble truth concerning the elimination of suffering [i.e., the
attainment of nirvana]. It is the destruction of this very thirst, in which no passion
remains. It is the laying aside of, the getting rid of, the being free from, and the
harboring no longer of this thirst. This, then, is the noble truth concerning the
destruction of suffering.
 
In this passage Buddha depicts nirvana as a state in which “no passion remains.”
We all understand the importance of eliminating at least some desires, such as
the desire for unhealthy foods. But the idea here is that we should
extinguish all desires, and this will bring on a mental state of enlightenment.

             The fourth noble truth tells us how to extinguish our desires, namely, by
adopting a series of moral attitudes, beliefs, and actions, which Buddha
collectively calls the eightfold path: “This is the noble truth concerning
the path that leads to the elimination of suffering. It is the noble eightfold path.”
Briefly, these are the eight recommendations. (1) We should adopt right
views that are free from superstition or delusion. (2) We should have right
aims that are high and worthy of the intelligent and earnest person. (3) We
should practice right speech, which is kindly, open, and truthful. (4) We should
perform right conduct that is peaceful, honest, and pure. (5) We should adopt
a right livelihood that brings no harm or danger to living things. (6) We should put
forth the right effort in self-training and self-control. (7) We should have right
mindfulness insofar as we are fully aware of the present moment and not
preoccupied with hopes or worries. (8) We should engage in right concentration,
which involves proper meditation that leads to the nirvana experience.

             On the surface, the eightfold path endorses many of the values that
we’ve been taught to adopt since childhood. In fact, these eight
recommendations appear integral to simply conducting our normal desire-filled
lives in a civilized manner. How, then, do these recommendations lead to
nirvana, the extinguishing of all desires? Buddha’s explanation is that they all
involve adopting a Middle Way, which is the calm detachment achieved by
avoiding the extremes of asceticism and self-indulgence:
 
 13

There are two extremes, fellow monks, which a holy person should avoid: the
habitual practice of ... self-indulgence, which is vulgar and profitless ... and the
habitual practice of self-mortification, which is painful and equally profitless.
There is a middle path discovered by the Buddha – a path which opens the eyes
and bestows understanding which leads to peace of mind, to the higher wisdom,
to full enlightenment, and to Nirvana. Truly, it is the noble eightfold path. [Ibid]
 
For each of the recommendations in the eightfold path, we can see how we must
follow a middle course. For example, with the first path of right aims, I should
strive to be free from superstition and delusion. If we look at common
superstitions and delusions today, such as belief in alien abduction or racial
superiority, these are clearly extremist views that we should steer clear of. This
middle course “opens the eyes and bestows understanding,” which eventually
leads to nirvana. The Middle Path is a stepping-stone towards nirvana insofar as
it creates a mental disposition, which in turn enables us to be receptive to the
nirvana experience.
 
Improper Questions and the No-Self Doctrine
Philosophers and theologians worldwide devote much attention to speculative
issues that cannot be easily demonstrated. What is God’s nature? How did the
world come about? Is there life after death? What kind of existence can I expect
to have in the afterlife? In fact, many religions feel that their main mission is to
give decisive answers to these questions and convey their answers to as many
people as they can. We readily recognize that some religious speculations are
superfluous to the central aim of religion – for example, speculations about how
many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Where, though, do we draw the line
between the superfluous and essential? The starting point is to determine what in
fact is the main goal of religion. Buddha’s single complaint about the formal
religion of his time was that its rituals and speculations detracted from religion’s
main goal, namely, enlightenment.
             Buddha makes this point in a dialogue with a student. The student, who
has heard Buddha teach for some time, is puzzled that Buddha apparently
ignores a number of issues that philosophers commonly address. Foremost
among these are whether the world is eternal and whether there is life after
death. In response, Buddha says that he refuses to discuss these topics since
they do not help attain enlightenment. In the passage below, he uses an analogy
to explain his resistance to these questions. If someone is shot with a poisoned
arrow, his main concern should be to have his wound treated, and not to inquire
after details about his attacker's social caste:
 
Suppose that a man had been wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with
poison. When friends and relatives went to procure for him a physician, suppose
the sick man said, “I will not have this arrow taken out until I have learned
whether the man who wounded me belonged to the warrior caste, priestly caste,
worker caste, or servant caste.” Or again, suppose he said, “I will not have this
arrow taken out until I have learned the name of the man who wounded me, and
 14

to what clan he belongs.” . . . That man would die without ever having learned
these things. Suppose similarly someone said “I will not lead the religious life
under the Buddha until he explained to me that the world is eternal or not
eternal ... or that the saint exists or does not exist after death.” That person too
would die before the Buddha ever explained this to him. [Majjhima-Nikaya, 63]
 
Buddha continues arguing that speculations on such things do not address the
basic problem of the human condition. We are in a state of seemingly endless
suffering, and the only way to overcome this is to extinguish our desires.
Ultimately, these are the truths that matter:
 
I have not explained that the world is eternal, ... that the world is not eternal, ...
and that the saint neither exists nor does not exist after death. And why have I
not explained this? Because this does not profit us, it has nothing to do with the
fundamentals of religion, and does not tend to aversion, absence of passion,
cessation, calm, the supernatural faculties, supreme wisdom, and nirvana. ... And
what have I explained? Misery, the origin of misery, the cessation of misery, and
the path leading to the cessation of misery. And why have I explained this?
Because this does profit and concerns the fundamentals of religion. [Ibid]
 
Accordingly, Buddha distinguishes between essential and nonessential religious
speculations on the basis of whether they bring about the end of suffering
through nirvana.
             Buddha’s resistance to nonessential speculations is seen clearly in how
he addresses the issue of personal identity, and questions like “Do I exist?” and
“What does my self consist of?” My commonsense notion of my conscious self is
that it is a fixed and permanent feature of my identity. Just as my arms and legs
are features of my body, my consciousness is a feature of my non-physical self.
As I travel through life, a conscious part of me receives new experiences through
my senses, reflects on them, recalls other experiences from my memory, and
has me act out in a variety of ways. There is always some permanent me that is
watching, thinking, and acting. However, Buddha denies the meaningfulness of
such notions of the self, a position known as the no-self doctrine. He explains
that our ordinary notion of the self consists of five components or aggregates,
namely, matter, sensation, perception, predisposition, and consciousness.
However, if we examine each of these one by one, we will see that they cannot
be the foundation of a permanent self. For example, sensations come and go in
rapid succession and are far too fleeting to have any permanence. One moment
I’m having a pleasant sensation, the next moment a painful one. The other four
components of the self are equally temporary and changing. In the end, there is
not a shred of permanence to be found in the self, and all that these five
components will give is us suffering:
 
When a follower hears and sees this, he will find suffering in matter, suffering in
sensation, suffering in perception, suffering in predisposition, suffering in
consciousness. [Samyutta Nikaya 22:59]
 15

 
By rejecting this common notion of the self and its five components, we thereby
free ourselves of suffering associated with it. Embracing the no-self doctrine is
thus integral to the very act of nirvana, which has us extinguish our identities and
frees us from suffering.
 
Doctrine of Dependent Origination
The Hindu law of karma maintains that our actions have moral consequences
that will affect us either in this life or in a reincarnated life. The mental image we
might have of this Hindu position is that an invisible supreme judge watches us
and tallies up our good and bad deeds. He then appropriately rewards or
punishes us as time permits, and, if time runs out in this life, then he carries the
rewards and punishments over to the next life. Buddha rejected this particular
picture of the doctrine of karma. There are no mysterious tally sheets with our
names on them. However, Buddha does not completely reject the notion of
karma, but instead gives it an earthly-grounded interpretation. According to
Buddha, all events that take place are the result of precise causal chains of
events. When I trace back the series of causes of any given unfortunate event, I
find that it causally rests upon my desire, and, ultimately, on an unjustified
concept I have of my conscious self. This notion of causal connectedness is
called the doctrine of dependent origination.
             In a dialogue from the Pali Canon, one of Buddha’s followers claims to
have a perfectly clear conception of the doctrine of dependent origination.
Buddha, though, is not impressed and explains how complicated the notion really
is:
 
Dependent origination appears complicated and is indeed complex. It is through
not understanding and penetrating this doctrine that humankind is accordingly
like an entangled twist, an ensnared web, or like jumbled grass. It fails to
disengage itself from punishment, suffering, destruction, and rebirth. [Digha-
nikaya 256, Mahanidana sutta]
 
In the final sentence Buddha suggests that misconceptions about punishment
owe to our failure to grasp true causal connections. Suppose, for example, that
my friend gets injured in an automobile accident shortly after he and I visited with
each other. I might then feel partly responsible for the accident because our visit
lasted too long, which put him in the wrong place at the wrong time. I might then
expect to receive some karmic punishment for my role. However, I may have a
more realistic view of my responsibility if I better understand all of the causal
forces at work in the accident, particularly the mental states of those involved as
well as the long string of sorrowful consequences that follow from the accident.
             We know from the first two Noble Truths that desire is the ultimate cause
of suffering. According to Buddha, the doctrine of dependent origination allows us
to explain the connecting links between desire and suffering in very precise
terms. Focusing on the suffering associated with old age and death, Buddha
traces these back to their initial sources:
 16

 
If one asks whether old age and death depend on anything, the reply should be
that old age and death depend on birth. . . . birth depends on existence . . .
existence depends on attachment . . . attachment depends on desire . . . desire
depends on sensation . . . sensation depends on contact . . . contact depends on
mental and physical phenomena . . . physical phenomena depend on
consciousness.
 
Human consciousness, then, kicks off the entire series of causal events that
results in the suffering from old age and death. The successive links are these:
 
consciousness > mental and physical phenomena > contact > sensation > desire
> attachment > existence > birth > old age and death.
 
To attack the problem at its source, we should subdue our consciousness, and
this is the message of the third noble truth, namely, to extinguish all desire
through nirvana.
 
Emptiness and Zen Buddhism
Around 100 CE, Buddhism split into two main denominations, Theravada and
Mahayana. While Theravadists held fast to the teachings of the Pali Canon,
Mahayanists argued that Buddha’s more advanced teachings were transmitted
orally and ultimately recorded in later Mahayana texts. A running theme within
these new Mahayana works is the notion of emptiness, the view that all reality is
devoid of any discernable content or description. The view here is not a nihilistic
denial that reality exists; instead, it is a denial that reality has any describable
distinctions. The metaphor of emptiness presumes that there is something like a
container that has nothing in it. The container, in this case, has a label on it that
reads “reality”. But is the container literally empty in the sense that nothing at all
exists within it? No. It is one thing to say that reality is not as it initially appears,
and it is another to say simply that nothing exists. The point of the metaphor is
this: when we look inside the container we find that it has no distinguishable parts
or qualities that define its true nature. It is for all practical purposes empty, but
there is still some characterless thing in the container.
             One anonymously written Mahayana text, the Heart Sutra, pushes the
notion of emptiness to its extreme. It starts by maintaining that everything about
our identities and the ordinary world we live in are empty and have no true
content. However, the author continues with the more radical claim that even the
four noble truths and nirvana are empty:
 
There is no knowledge, no ignorance, or no destruction of knowledge. There is
no decay and death, or no destruction of decay and death. There are no [four
noble truths, namely,]  pain, the origin of pain, the elimination of pain, and the
path to it. There is no knowledge, no obtaining, no not obtaining of nirvana.
[Heart Sutra]
 
 17

It’s not enough to merely concede that the ordinary realm of life and death are
empty of descriptive content. What’s more important is that nirvana, the very
solution to our misery, also has no descriptive content. Why is this so dramatic?
We’ve seen that Buddhist teachings in the Pali Canon make a fundamental
distinction between (a) the ordinary realm of life, death and suffering, and, (b) the
realm of nirvana in which suffering is extinguished. But the point of the Heart
Sutra is that even this distinction is not justified. Stated most forcefully, the
ordinary realm and the nirvana realm are the same thing; that is, the world itself
does not change when viewing it in nirvana. The entirety of reality is one huge
empty thing that is incapable of distinction or descriptive content.
            Grasping the notion of emptiness is a genuine challenge, and one branch
of Mahayana Buddhism devised an innovative method for conveying the idea.
Founded in China around the fifth-century CE, Zen Buddhism is famous for its
paradoxical meditative puzzles, such as “what is the sound of one hand
clapping?” Zen resists any verbal formula, and has no creeds. The focus of Zen
is experience, and rational discourse and doctrine play no role in gaining
enlightenment. In Zen, the experience of enlightenment is transmitted from the
mind of a seasoned teacher to the student in training. It is sometimes compared
to a flame that is passed from candle to candle.
             The Zen approach is based on one of Buddha’s discourses known as the
Flower Sermon, in which he simply held up a golden lotus flower. No one in the
crowd understood Buddha’s cryptic meaning except his leading disciple. The
historical origin of Zen is attributed to a possibly fictitious figure named
Bodhidharma (470-543 CE) who reportedly moved from Northern India into
China. For nine years he sat in meditation and was eventually approached by a
young man named Hui-K’o who wanted to be Bodhidharma’s disciple.
Bodhidharma resisted, until, in an act of desperation, Hui-K’o cut off his left arm
and said to Bodhidharma, “My mind is not at peace; please bring it peace.” In
reply Bohdhidharma said, “If you bring me your mind I will give it peace.” Hui-K’o
replied, “When I look for it, I cannot find it.” Bodhidharma answered, “There! I
have pacified it for you.” Hui-K’o then became enlightened.
             Some centuries later Zen made its way into Japan, and one of its main
schools developed what is known as the koan system. Koans are absurd riddles,
such as the famous “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” which defies any
logical response. The koan system involves a Zen master having his student
answer a series of up to 50 absurd riddles over the course of many years.
Around the eleventh-century famous koans were assembled in written
collections. Some classic beginners’ koans found in these collections are “What
was your face like before you were born?” and “Does a dog have the Buddha-
nature?” By struggling with these conceptually paradoxical questions, the
student’s mind would be loosened from traditional reasoning, he would see that
ultimate reality is not discoverable, and experience the emptiness of all things.
Some classical “correct” responses include lifting one finger, kicking a ball, and
slapping the face of an inquirer. There are also intermediary level koans which
request impossible tasks, such as “Stop that ship on the distant ocean,” or “Take
the four divisions of Tokyo out of your sleeve.” A solution in this latter one might
 18

be to take out a paper handkerchief folded in four sections, which symbolically

become the four divisions of Tokyo. In a series of formal consultations, the
student would meet with his master twice daily to discuss progress on the
solution to his assigned koan. Usually the master would criticize the student’s
solution, and, ultimately, the student will recognize by himself when he gets it
right. The end result is enlightenment for the student.
 
D. Confucian philosophy
 
Around 500 BCE, China was in social upheaval and went through what is called
its Warring States period. National emperors lost control over China’s various
territories while local rulers increased their strength, waging wars against each
other to the point that only the strongest states could survive. Although
exaggerated, stories reported that as many as 400,000 people were slaughtered
in battles. In response to the problem of this social chaos that impacted nearly
everyone’s life, a Period of 100 Philosophers emerged in which sages proposed
various solutions. Some recommended a totalitarian system, concentrating
power in the ruler. Others recommended loving everyone as a means of attaining
peace. It was in this context that China’s great teacher Confucius emerged,
offering his own solution to the problem of social chaos.
             Confucius (551–479 BCE) was born in what is now China’s Shandong
province, along the country’s mid-costal region. His family name was Kung, and
the name “Confucius,” by which we know him in the West, is a Latinized version
of “Kung Fu-tzu”, which means master Kung. His father, a distinguished soldier,
and his mother both died when he was a child. He married at 19, had a son and
daughter, and worked as a clerk in a temple in which he learned rituals from
elders. Confucius set his eye on governmental work and eventually, in his 50s,
held posts including police commissioner and imperial ambassador for a peace
conference. Disillusioned by these jobs, he traveled for 13 years to the various
states in China, giving advice on government. He made the grandiose claim to
show concrete social improvements within one year, and achieve complete
change within three years. No ruler took him up on his offer and, disillusioned
again, he returned to his home state. He continued teaching his followers and
died at age 73. Although he considered himself a failure, his followers preserved
and developed his teachings, which ultimately resulted in the flourishing of the
Confucian school that heavily impacted Chinese intellectual life for 2,000 years.
             Confucius’s solution to the problem of anarchy was to return to the old
Chinese customs before social turmoil broke out. To aid in that effort he
researched China’s old cultural traditions and edited several books of ancient
Chinese history and literature. Confucius wrote nothing of his own views, though,
and the principal record of his teachings is a work called the Analects, or
“digested conversations,” which is an unsystematic collection of discussions,
recorded by his students after his death. While the Analects is somewhat sketchy
and does not record any of Confucius’s organized discourses, it does offer a
picture of his central teachings. As a philosopher, Confucius was foremost and
ethicist who emphasized the importance of virtuous conduct. Much of his ethical
 19

thought focuses on four specific themes: ritual conduct, humaneness, the

superior person, child obedience, and good government.
 
Ritual Conduct
Foremost among Confucius’s teachings is the notion of ritual conduct (li), which
is the effortless adherence to social norms and the performance of customs. By
Confucius’s time, ritual conduct became associated with ceremonial formality,
particularly in religious practices. But Confucius uses the notion more broadly to
include customs as diverse as major holiday celebrations and simple greetings.
             For Confucius, rituals and traditions are the visible glue that binds society
together. For virtually every activity, there is a proper way of behaving. If we don’t
follow these customs, then, despite our best intentions, we behave like bumbling
fools. He makes this point here:
 
Respectfulness without the rules of ritual conduct becomes laborious bustle.
Carefulness without the rules of ritual conduct becomes timidity. Boldness
without the rules of ritual conduct becomes insubordination. Straightforwardness
without the rules of ritual conduct becomes rudeness. When those who are in
high stations properly perform all their duties to their relations, the people are
inspired towards virtue. When old friends are not neglected by them, the people
are preserved from meanness. [Analects, 8.2]
 
Here’s an example of how ritual conduct might apply to political life. Imagine that,
during a city council meeting, I want to propose the development of a new park.
As I make my case, I need to be respectful and careful, yet bold and
straightforward. If I don’t know the rules of ritual conduct, my efforts will be
strained, and in the course of the discussion I might understate my view or
unintentionally insult the council members. On the other hand, if I am properly
skilled in the ritual conduct of business discussions, then I’ll be able to make my
case easily and effectively.
             There is both an inward and outward component of ritual conduct. The
outward component concerns simply the visible ritual itself. The inward
component, however, involves having the proper attitude when engaged in ritual
conduct, rather than simply going through the motions with no thought of their
significance. Confucius argues that the true development of ritual conduct
requires that we subdue ourselves. Also, when performing our various duties, it is
important that our actions flow from within ourselves, and are not motivated by
outward pressures:
 
Yen Yuan asked about perfect virtue. The Master said, “To subdue one’s self and
return to ritual conduct is perfect virtue. If a person can for one day subdue
himself and return to ritual conduct, all under heaven will attribute perfect virtue
to him. Is the practice of perfect virtue from a person himself, or is it from
others?” Yen Yuan said, “I beg to ask the steps of that process.” The Master
replied, “Do not look at what is contrary to ritual conduct; do not listen to what is
contrary to ritual conduct; do not speak what is contrary to ritual conduct; do not
 20

make movements which are contrary to ritual conduct.” Yen Yuan then said,
“Though I am deficient in intelligence and vigor, I will make it my business to
practice this lesson.”
 
For Confucius, learning ritual conduct involves active social participation, similar
to how we learn any skill or art form through direct involvement. Insofar as it is a
skill, Confucius says that the development of ritual conduct is similar to learning
skills such as writing poetry or music. What all these skills have in common is
that they involve cultivating a special aesthetic sense of appreciation. They also
refine us, elevate the quality of our lives, and serve as a tool for moral instruction.
 

Humaneness and the Superior Person

The Confucian notion of humaneness (jen, wren), is the attitude of goodness,
benevolence, and altruism towards others. Again, there is a distinction between
one’s mere outer expressions of humaneness and one’s inner sense of it: “Fine
words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true
humaneness” (ibid, 1.3). When we think of humane behavior, we think of the
various ways that we relate to other people, has Confucius states here:
 
 The Master said, “It is humane manners that constitute the excellence of a
neighborhood. If a person in selecting a residence does not fix on one where
such prevail, how can he be wise?” The Master said, “Those who are without
humaneness cannot abide long either in a condition of poverty and hardship, or
in a condition of enjoyment. The virtuous rest in humaneness; the wise desire
humaneness.” The Master said, “It is only the truly humane person who can love,
or who can hate, others.” The Master said, “If one’s will is set on humaneness,
there will be no practice of wickedness.”
 
To acquire humaneness, I should develop the virtues of dignity and patience,
which will help me be at peace regardless of the difficulties that I face in life.
             Central to the concept of humaneness is the Confucian principle of
reciprocity (shu), which is “Do not do to others what you would not have them do
to you.” This principle is similar to the famous Golden Rule, namely, “Do to others
what you would want done to yourself.” The principal difference, though, is that
the Golden Rule puts forward a positive duty, that is, I should treat you
benevolently or charitably since that is how I prefer to be treated. The principle of
reciprocity, on the other hand, involves negative duties to avoid harm. For
example, I should not steal from you or lie to you since I would not want that kind
of treatment myself. Because of this difference in emphasis, the principle of
reciprocity is sometimes called the “Silver Rule.” We find Confucius present the
principle of reciprocity in several passages throughout the Analects. In one case
he chastises a student for not following the principle: “Tzu-kung said, ‘What I do
not wish people to do to me, I also wish not to do to people.’ The Master said,
‘you have not attained to that’” (ibid, 5.11). In another passage Confucius states
that the principle of reciprocity should be the guiding principle of one’s life: “Tzu-
 21

kung asked, saying, ‘Is there one word that may serve as a rule of practice for all
one’s life?’ The Master said, ‘Is not reciprocity such a word? What you do not
want done to yourself, do not do to others’” (ibid, 15.23). In another passage, the
principle appears among a longer list of moral recommendations:
 
Chung-kung asked about perfect virtue. The Master said, “It is, when you go
abroad, to behave to everyone as if you were receiving a great guest; to employ
the people as if you were assisting at a great sacrifice; not to do to others as you
would not wish done to yourself; to have no murmuring against you in the
country, and none in the family.” Chung-kung said, “Though I am deficient in
intelligence and vigor, I will make it my business to practice this lesson.”
 
             Because of its emphasis on mere avoidance, the principle of reciprocity
is sometimes criticized for being too passive: it is one thing to say that I should
simply avoid harming you, but it is another and much better thing to say that I
should actively seek your improvement. However, the wording of the principle of
reciprocity is flexible enough to include positive as well as negative duties. For
example, since I would not want anyone to withhold charity from me, then I
should not withhold charity from others.
             For Confucius, the superior person (chun-tzu, junzi) is the ideal human
who personifies the virtue of humaneness. The term originally referred to children
of aristocrats who inherited their family estates, but, like the term “gentleman” in
English, the notion of a superior person acquired a broader ethical meaning. In
the Analects, Confucius sees the superior person as the ideal to which his
followers should strive. The superior person consistently exhibits a range of
virtuous qualities, including humility, respectfulness, kindness, justice,
impartiality, honesty, consistency, caution, and studiousness. Although this is a
somewhat abstract list of qualities, a set of passages in the Analects points out
some very particular attitudes of the superior person:
 
The Master said, “The superior person is distressed by his lack of ability. He is
not distressed by people not knowing him.” The Master said, “The superior
person dislikes the thought of his name not being mentioned after his death.” The
Master said, “What the superior person seeks is in himself. What the inferior
person seeks is in others.” The Master said, “The superior person is dignified, but
does not wrangle. He is sociable, but not a partisan.” The Master said, “The
superior person does not promote someone simply on account of his words, nor
does he put aside good words because of the person.”

In the above we see that, paradoxically, the superior person is not driven by a
need for fame, yet at the same time he “dislikes the thought of his name not
being mentioned after his death.” What Confucius had in mind is something like
this. The drive for fame while we are alive is too frequently tied with how wealthy,
powerful, or successful we are. The underlying passions here are pride and
arrogance, which the superior person should clearly reject. On the other hand,
when we consider our life-long legacy and how people remember us after our
 22

deaths, we think more about how good we’ve been as human beings, and less
about the degree of wealth and power that we’ve obtained. It is, then, admirable
to hope to be remembered for our legacy as a good person.
             In spite of the lengthy list of values that the superior person holds,
Confucius stresses that the superior person is not a by-the-book rule follower,
whose beliefs are rigidly fixed. On the contrary, “The superior person in the world
does not set his mind either for anything, or against anything. What is right he will
follow”.). That is, the superior person’s attitudes and conduct will be guided by an
overall sense of justice, and not by a nitpicky set of regulations. In keeping with
his emphasis on the internal aspects of moral attributes, Confucius describes the
psychological state of tranquility to which the superior person must rise. Distress,
anxiety, and fear are all obstructions: “The superior person is satisfied and
composed; the inferior person is always full of distress” (ibid, 7.36). Regardless
of how much tragedy we might experience, our internal sense of virtue should
give us peace: “When internal examination discovers nothing wrong, what is
there to be anxious about? What is there to fear?”. That is, if I know that my
internal character contains the marks of virtue, then I can take faith in this, even if
I’m plagued with misfortunes such as family tragedy or financial disaster.
             Becoming a superior person involves an ongoing process that cannot be
quickly attained, and an anecdote about a seventeenth-century Confucian monk
illustrates this point. Upon turning 90, the monk commented that he now saw how
foolish he was at 80, and he looked forward to when he’d have better knowledge
at a later age. Similarly, Confucius did not believe that he himself was a perfectly
superior person: “In matters of learning I am perhaps equal to other people, but I
have not yet attained to the character of the superior person, who carries out in
his conduct what he professes” .That is, Confucius did not yet fully embody the
values he knew that he should possess.
 
Child Obedience and Good Government
Confucius held that there are five relationships (wulun) that underlie the order of
society, namely, (1) father and son, (2) elder brother and younger brother, (3)
husband and wife, (4) elder friend and junior friend, and (5) ruler and subject.
Confucian writings sometimes refer to a shorter list of relationships called the
“Three Bonds”, which include those of the father-son, husband-wife, and ruler-
subject. Each of these involves a superior and a subordinate, and special duties
are required of both parties:
 
What are “the things which people consider right?” Kindness on the part of the
father, and child obedience on that of the son. Gentleness on the part of the elder
brother, and obedience on that of the younger. Righteousness on the part of the
husband, and submission on that of the wife. Kindness on the part of elders, and
reverence on that of the juniors. Benevolence on the part of the ruler, and loyalty
on that of the minister. These ten are the things which people consider to be
right.
 
 23

With each of these five relationships, the subordinate person is duty bound to
show obedience, and the superior person to show kindness. Of the five
relationships, the two that Confucius discusses the most are the father-son and
the ruler-subject, which we’ll consider here in more detail
             The relationship between father and son, commonly known as child
obedience (hsiao, xiao), sets a standard for the others. Respect for all superiors
is ultimately an extension of respect for one’s parents, and we should treat all
elders with respect almost as if they were surrogate parents” (Analects, 1.6). By
respecting parents we will respect elders in general, and by doing this we will be
less likely to stir up confusion and thereby undermine social order, either in or
outside of the home. Virtually all cultures stress the obligations that children have
to respect and obey their parents and, to that extent, this value is not a Confucian
invention. Like other virtues, though, Confucius gives a unique twist to this one
by emphasizing the importance of having the proper attitude in fulfilling this duty,
rather than simply abiding by the letter of the law. Without this proper inner
attitude, we are no better than animals that might help provide for older members
of its species: “Child obedience nowadays means to support one’s parents. But
dogs and horses also are able to do something in the way of support. Without
reverence, what is there to distinguish the one support given from the other?”
(Analects, 2.7). By having the proper attitude of respect for our parents, we will
perpetuate the value system that we learned at home, long after we are grown
and leave the house: “If the son for three years does not alter from the way of his
father, he may be called an obedient child” (ibid, 4.10). The respect that we have
for our parents while they are alive continues in the form of ancestral veneration
when they die, and requires that we perform various sacrificial duties.
             Suppose that my father asks me to do something that was obviously
wrong, such as steal the neighbor’s wheelbarrow or rob a store. Would child
obedience obligate me to follow my father’s instructions? Confucius’s reply to this
question was “When a command is wrong, a son should resist his father, and a
civil servant should resist his noble ruler.” Respect for parents, then, is not blind
obedience. One benefit of resisting is that we will remind our father of his moral
duty and prevent him from committing some wrong: “If a man has a good friend
to resist him in doing bad actions, he will have his reputation preserved. So, if a
father has a son to resist his wrong command, he will be saved from committing
serious faults” (Classic of Child Obedience). The prospect of resisting one’s
parents and attempting to morally instruct them places the child in an awkward
situation. This highlights the obligation that parents are under to cultivate a
proper sense of morality within themselves and thus avoid forcing this dilemma
on their children.
             Turning next to the ruler-subject relationship, Confucius saw himself as a
political reformer, and he held that good governing consists of the ruler setting
the moral example for the whole country. His goodness will trickle down through
the various layers of social hierarchy, and the whole country will prosper when he
is benevolent. According to Confucius, “He who exercises government by means
of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and
all the stars turn towards it”.
 24

             What, though, must the ruler himself do to acquire virtue? Confucius lists
five kinds of actions that will lead to good government:
 
“When the person in authority is beneficent without great expense; when he lays
tasks on the people without their grieving; when he pursues what he desires
without being selfish; when he maintains a dignified ease without being proud;
when he is majestic without being cruel.”
 
First on this list is beneficence, and, to display this, the ruler does not necessarily
have to actively shower his subjects with luxuries. Instead, the ruler can
emphasize things from which people naturally benefit, such as efficient
governmental programs and honest governmental administrators. Second,
concerning laying tasks on people without making them grieve, Confucius
believes that the ruler should discover people’s natural capacities and encourage
them to work in those areas. A musician, for example, should not be forced to
work as an accountant. Third, a ruler can unselfishly pursue what he desires
when he restricts those desires to cultivating a good government. Fourth, without
being arrogant, he should carry himself with dignity with everything and everyone
he comes in contact with. Fifth, without being fierce, a ruler should appear
majestic in everything that he does – right down to how he places a hat on his
head.
             Good government is the theme of a later Confucian classic titled The
Great Learning, which tradition attributes to Confucius’s grandson. According to
this work, good government is a matter of rulers exhibiting their clear character to
the world, that is, displaying their virtue as a model for others to follow.   How
does the ruler acquire clear character?  The Great Learning, tells us that there
are eight causal links that culminate in clear character and effective governing.
The underlying theme of these eight steps is intense moral and philosophical
reflection:
 
The ancients who wished to exhibit their clear character to the world first brought
order to their states. Wishing to order their states, they first regulated their
families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their personal
lives. Wishing to cultivate their personal lives, they first corrected their minds.
Wishing to correct their minds, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts.
Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended their knowledge. Such
extension of knowledge rests in investigating things. [The Great Learning]
 
The order of the eight steps, then, is this:
 
Investigate things > extend knowledge > sincerity in thoughts > correct one’s
mind > cultivate personal life > regulate families > order states > exhibit clear
character
 
The first step in acquiring clear character is extending our knowledge by
“investigating things.” For Confucius this involves not only knowledge of arts and
 25

sciences, but a knowledge of oneself and one’s limitations: “When you know a
thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that
you do not know it; this is knowledge” (Analects, 2.17).
 
Mencius: Inherent Human Goodness
The second most influential philosopher in the Confucian tradition is Mencius
(390–305 BCE), or Mengzi. A few generations removed from Confucius, Mencius
studied under a disciple of Confucius’s grandson and, like Confucius, Mencius
traveled around China to promote political reform. He confronted rival
philosophical schools, typically those that emphasized human selfishness.
Mencius believed that governments should be run through exemplary conduct,
with goodness as the goal. The most well known aspect of Mencius’s thought is
his view of the inherent goodness of people. According to Mencius, our minds
and hearts house our inherent tendency towards moral goodness. Evil, he
believes, results from bad social influences that reduce our natural moral
strength.
             Mencius presents this idea in a conversation between himself and a
skeptical philosopher named Kao. Kao argues that human nature is neither good
nor bad, but can be molded either way, just as we can mold a piece of wood into
different things. “Human nature,” says Kao, “is like a tree, and righteousness is
like a wooden cup or a bowl. The fashioning of benevolence and righteousness
out of a person’s nature is like the making of cups and bowls from the tree”
(Mencius, 6a.1). But Mencius rejects Kao’s analogy and argues that any such
“molding”, even for the sake of moral goodness, would do violence to our nature.
We would thus be forced to see moral virtues such as benevolence and
righteousness as distortions of who we are. Mencius asks,
 
Without touching the nature of the tree, can you make it into cups and bowls?
You must do violence and injury to the tree before you can make cups and bowls
with it. If you must do violence and injury to the tree in order to make cups and
bowls with it, on your principles you must in the same way do violence and injury
to humaneness in order to fashion from it benevolence and righteousness. Thus,
your words would certainly lead all people on to consider benevolence and
righteousness to be calamities.
 
             As the conversation continues, Kao insists that human nature is neither
inherently good nor inherently evil. But, just as we might redirect the flow of water
east or west, society is capable of directing our nature towards good or towards
evil. Thus, according to Kao, “Human nature is indifferent to good and evil, just
as water is indifferent to the east and west” . But Mencius rejects this analogy
too, and argues that human nature possesses potential goodness, just as the
nature of water is to flow downhill:
 
Water indeed will flow indifferently to the east or west, but will it flow indifferently
up or down? The tendency of human nature to do good is like the tendency of
water to flow downwards. All people have this tendency to good, just as all water
 26

flows downwards. Now, by striking water and causing it to leap up, you may
make it go over your forehead, and, by damming and leading it, you may force it
up a hill. But are such movements according to the nature of water? It is the force
applied which causes them. When people are made to do what is not good, their
nature is dealt with in this way.
 
Mencius tells us exactly what our inherently good nature consists of. First, he
argues that we naturally have four specific moral virtues, namely, commiseration,
shame, respect, and approval. Second, these four virtues naturally give rise to
others, namely humaneness, righteousness, ritual conduct, knowledge. Mencius
insists that nature has instilled these in all of us, which we can all find if we just
look for them: “We are certainly furnished with them. Any different view simply
owes to an absence of reflection”.
 
E. Daoist philosophy
 
Like Confucianism, Daoism emerged during China’s Warring States period, and
its specific recommendation for ending social chaos was that we should imitate
nature and go back to the primitive tradition of China before the appearance of
kings and feudal systems. Tradition credits the founding of Daoism to a figure
named Lao-tzu (Laozi), literally meaning “master Lao.” But virtually nothing
concrete is known about him, and some modern scholars argue he was created
by early Daoists as a kind of rival to Confucius. Tradition also credits him with
composing Daoism’s most important text, the Dao de Jing (Tao te Ching), which
literally means The Book of the Way and its Power. According to one story, as
Lao-tzu was leaving his home town, the city gatekeeper was sorry to see the
great master go and asked that he write a book of his views by which people
could remember him. Lao-tzu sat down on the spot and composed the Dao de
Jing. Although tradition dates the Dao de Jing at around 450 BCE, scholars today
place it at around 300 BCE based on its literary style. The work is an anthology
of sayings compiled to instruct kings on government; specifically it recommends
that kings should rule through an extreme “hands off” policy, allowing social
events to conform to nature.
             The second most important book in Daoism is the work attributed to and
named after Daoist philosopher Chuang-tzu (Zhuangzi, 369-286 BCE), or,
“master Chuang”. Unlike the Dao de Jing, the Chuang-Tzu is not a political
treatise. Intended for a more general readership, it is composed in a popular style
with vivid stories and parables. We know few facts about Chuang-tzu’s life, and
tradition maintains that he held a minor political position. According to one story,
he was once invited to become a prime minister but replied, “I would rather leave
myself to my own enjoyment in the mire than be a slave to the ruler of a state. I
will never take office. Thus, I shall remain free to follow my own inclinations”
(Chuang-Tzu, 37). We also find an anecdote about his burial plans, which
highlights the theme of naturalness in Daoism:
 
 27

When Chuang-tzu was about to die, his disciples indicated their wish to give him
a grand burial. He replied, “I will have heaven and earth for my coffin and its
shell; the sun and moon for my two round symbols of jade; the stars and
constellations for my pearls and jewels; and all things assisting as the mourners.
Will not the provisions for my burial be complete? What could you add to them?”
 
We will look at some of the more prominent themes that appear in both the Dao
de Jing and the Chuang-tzu.
 
The Dao
The notion of the Dao is the central concept in Daoism. Literally the term means
“way” or “path”, but it more specifically refers to the fundamental ordering
principle behind nature, society, and individual people. It is the ultimate reality of
the cosmos, and one English version of the Dao de Jing even translates the
word "Dao" as "God", though is probably not the best choice. An initial obstacle
to understanding the concept of the Dao is that it has an unspeakable mystical
quality and cannot be defined. We see this in the opening and most famous
passage of the book:
 
The Dao that can be named is not the eternal and unchanging Dao. The name
that can be spoken is not the eternal and unchanging name. The nameless is the
source of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of all things. Always be
without desires and you will see mystery. Always be with desire, and you will see
only its effects. These two are really the same, although, as development takes
place, they receive the different names. They are both a mystery, and where
mystery is the deepest we find the gate of all that is subtle and wonderful. [ Dao
de Jing, 1]
 
According to the above, if you try to name, speak, or describe the Dao, then you
have missed the point and distorted the Dao’s meaning. It is an indescribable
source of all existence, and we grasp the Dao only by mystically experiencing its
subtlety. This experience begins with subduing one’s desires. From the start,
the Dao de Jing advocates a non-intellectual and even anti-intellectual approach.
We should abandon hopes of finding an adequate verbal description of the Dao,
and instead psychologically realign ourselves so that we are not driven by our
desires. With no mental conceptions or desires to muddy the waters, we then
allow the Dao to exhibit itself through our own lives, and we can recognize its
presence in the natural world around us.
             Another passage early on in the Dao de Jing states that the
indescribable nature of the Dao is like an empty container, which we should
never try to fill with concrete descriptions that will invariably misrepresent it:
 
The Dao is like the emptiness of a container; and in our employment of it we
must be on our guard against all fullness. How deep and unfathomable it is, as if
it were the honored ancestor of all things. We should blunt our sharp points, and
unravel the complications of things; we should dim our brightness, and bring
 28

ourselves into agreement with the obscurity of others. How pure and still the Dao
is, as if it would continue forever. I do not know whose son it is. It might appear to
have been before God.
 
The Dao’s nature, according to the above, is infinitely deep and as mysterious as
any investigation into the origin of things in the far distant past. To understand it,
we must take an approach that is opposite to what we might expect. For
example, we typically learn about things through our senses of sight, hearing, or
touch. But the Dao lacks any sensory qualities that might enable us to perceive it
in those ways. In fact, if we try to investigate the Dao as though it were just
another physical object of perception, we will find that its nature actually consists
of lacking any tangible qualities: “We look at it, and we do not see it, and we
name it ‘the colorless.’ We listen to it, and we do not hear it, and we name it ‘the
soundless.’ We try to grasp it, and do not get hold of it, and we name it ‘the
bodiless’” (ibid, 14). What is the Dao’s form? It is formless. What is its
appearance? It is invisible. Try as we might to list its qualities, we are left with
empty descriptions.
             In spite of the Dao’s unspeakable quality, the Dao de Jing tells us at
least something about the Dao’s nature. One recurring point is that the Dao both
creates and sustains everything that exists: “The Dao produces all things and
nourishes them; it produces them and does not claim them as its own; it does all,
and yet does not boast of it; it presides over all, and yet does not control them” .
Although the Dao is the originator of all things, it should not be misconstrued as a
kind of pre-existing God who created a universe distinct from itself. Rather,
before things originated, the Dao was in a formless state of potential. As it took
on the state of existence, the Dao produced things that remain part of its nature:
 
There was something undefined and complete, coming into existence before
Heaven and Earth. How still and formless it was, standing alone, and undergoing
no change, reaching everywhere and in no danger of being exhausted. It may be
regarded as the Mother of all things. I do not know its name, and I give it the
designation of the Dao, the Way or Course.
 
The Dao de Jing repeatedly refers to the Dao as the mother of everything, and
the metaphor of a mother has important implications. A cosmic father evokes
images of a craftsman or builder who aggressively manufactures the world from
some external raw material. But a cosmic mother gives birth to things, generating
them from within herself, and continually nurturing them. It is like a great tree that
sprouts branches, leaves, and fruit, continually feeding them all from within. It is
like a great river that spawns and sustains a myriad of life forms.
             The takeaway message is that we should all strive to follow the Dao.
Animals and plants do this naturally, and it is only humans that have the capacity
to act contrary to it since our minds make us think that we are independent
entities apart from nature. We create artificial environments in which to live and
see nature as something to conquer for our personal benefit, rather than
something that we should be part of. When we go against the Dao, the
 29

consequences are disastrous for us personally, and for everything that we

damage in our path.
 
Return
A central theme of Daoism is that of return: all things eventually decay and return
to their ultimate source within the Dao. There are clear natural cycles in the
cosmos: everything around us has been recycled and will again be recycled. We
tend to praise human accomplishments that have the most lasting value, such as
timeless works of art, scientific discoveries, and moral traditions. However, when
we look at nature, we see that nothing is permanent and everything comes and
goes in cycles. Growth and decay are not just one-time events, but occur again
and again in an endless natural cycle. This is the pulse of the universe that we
find in most everything that we observe. Trees, animals, and even societies grow
and die, and their elements will ultimately be recycled. The passage below
illustrates this point with plants, which first display luxuriant growth, and then
return to their origin:
 
All things alike go through their processes of activity, and then we see them
return to their original state. When things in the vegetable world have displayed
their luxuriant growth, we see each of them return to its root. This returning to
their root is what we call the state of stillness; and that stillness may be called a
reporting that they have fulfilled their appointed end.
 
             Plants and animals die and decay, leaving their elements to become the
raw materials of other things. We too will wither, die and decay, whether we like it
or not. Chuang-tzu gives a story of a dying man whose body has become
deformed. Rather than be angry and resistant to his physical changes, he gladly
accepts them:
 
If the creator transformed my left arm into a rooster, I would watch the time of the
night. If he transformed my right arm into a cross-bow, I would then be looking for
a duck to shoot for roasting. If he transformed my rump-bone into a wheel and
my spirit into a horse, I would then be able to ride in my own chariot. I’d never
have to change horses. I obtained life because it was my time. I am now parting
with it in accordance with the same law. [Chuang-Tzu, 6]
 
According to Chuang-tzu, then, we should submit to the natural process of
transformation, and to do otherwise amounts to disobedience: “If a parent tells a
son to go east, west, south, or north, the son simply follows the command. The
yin and yang [forces of nature] are more to a man than his parents are. If they
are hastening my death and I do not quietly submit to them, I would be obstinate
and rebellious.” Ultimately, we have no say in the matter.
 
Non-Action and Non-Mind
The most practical advice of Daoism is that of non-action (wu wei), also
called effortless action: everything we do should flow with simple spontaneity and
 30

without contrivance. Artificial actions run counter to the natural course of things,
and usually involve aggression and competition. Picture a log floating down a
river with a large rock in its path. Rather than knocking the rock over, the log
gently bumps into it, casually floats around it, and continues on its course.
Passivity, rather than aggression, is the attitude towards life that we should
adopt. In the natural world, weakness is linked with life, and strength with death:
 
Man at his birth is supple and weak; at his death, firm and strong. So it is with all
things. In their early growth, trees and plants are soft and brittle; at their death
they are dry and withered. In this manner, firmness and strength are the
accompaniments of death, whereas softness and weakness are the
accompaniments of life. [Dao de Jing, 76]
 
Chuang-Tzu gives a story that vividly describes non-action. A prince was
watching his cook slice meat with a rhythmical and harmonious cutting technique.
The cook then explained his secret:
 
I am devoted to the method of the Dao, which is superior to any
skill. . . . Observing the natural lines in the meat, my knife slips through the great
crevices and slides through the great cavities, taking advantage of the
accommodations thus presented. My skill avoids the ligaments, and even more
so the large bones. A good cook changes his knife every year because he
cleanly cuts. An ordinary cook changes his every month because he hacks. Now
I have used my knife for nineteen years.
 
By working in harmony with the meat and slicing between the joints, rather than
hacking through bone, the cook incorporated the practice of non-action. He lost
awareness of the techniques of butchering and cut the meat almost as if he was
in a trance. Impressed by the cook’s explanation, the Prince concluded, “I have
heard the words of my cook, and learned how to care for life.”
             We might think that passivity and weakness would make us easy targets
of attack, and more vulnerable to manipulation than we otherwise might be.
Paradoxically, though, the Dao de Jing explains that non-action is actually the
most successful means of self-defense and military engagement: “The softest
thing in the world dashes against and overcomes the hardest; that which has no
substantial existence enters where there is no crevice” (Dao de Jing, 43). We
overcome obstacles by homing in on an adversary’s vulnerabilities and then
effortlessly shattering their strength. A good illustration of this is the Martial Arts,
which distinguish between hard and soft techniques. Hard defense forms such as
Tae Kwon Do attempt to batter an adversary into submission through forceful
kicks and punches. By contrast, soft defense forms such as Aikido attempt to
redirect an adversary’s force against himself through techniques of twisting and
throwing. Daoists prefer a soft approach when engaging in combat: “The person
who relies on the strength of his forces does not conquer, just as a tree that has
grown strong is doomed by the lumberjack” The effectiveness of this soft
approach is evident in the devastating effects that water sometimes has: “There
 31

is nothing in the world more soft and weak than water, and yet for attacking
things that are firm and strong there is nothing that can outrank it”.
             Paralleling the notion of non-action is that of non-mind (wu-hsin): we
need to eliminate knowledge and act spontaneously through natural intuition.
Accumulated knowledge hinders creativity and can make one inflexible or subject
to a false sense of security. Since the Dao runs through each of us, everything
that we need to know about life is already within ourselves. Nature will
automatically direct us when needs arise. The Dao de Jing rejects traditional
methods of education, such as learning from a master or traveling around and
gaining knowledge through experience.  The true sage never has to even leave
home:
 
Without going outside his door, one understands all that takes place under the
sky; without looking out from his window, one sees the Dao of Heaven. The
further that one goes out from himself, the less he knows. Therefore the sages
got their knowledge without traveling, gave their right names to things without
seeing them, and accomplished their ends without any purpose of doing so.
 
Not only should we avoid acquiring knowledge by conventional means, but we
should also rid ourselves of the cumbersome knowledge that we’ve acquired
throughout the years. Most importantly, our understanding of the Dao itself
comes through the practice of non-mind: “Those who are skilled in the Dao do
not dispute about it, and those who dispute are not skilled in it” (ibid, 81).
Philosophical discourse and debate will be of no help, and the most perceptive
Daoists avoid debating about the Dao.
 
Minimal Governing
As a political treatise, the Dao de Jing insists that if rulers follow the Dao then
their states will be well ordered and in natural harmony: “If a prince or the king
could hold onto the Dao, all would spontaneously submit themselves to him”. To
rule in accord with the Dao, leaders must abandon common notions of
governance, which typically involve authoritatively imposing their wills on the
people. Instead, a more Dao-centered way of ruling involves not ruling at all, but
allowing society to function naturally.
             Successful rulers should adopt the attitude of non-action when
governing: the more aggressive input and regulation a government imposes on
its citizens, the more that disorder results. But when a leader sits back and does
nothing, society develops on its own. Nature needs no help from rulers, and
when the general public follows the Dao, each person will naturally find peaceful
and simple ways to flourish. Even a well-intentioned leader may disrupt the
natural flow of social order by imposing rules. The mere existence of rules will
generate rule-breakers. Daoism thus recommends political anarchy in the true
sense of the word, namely, a peaceful state of no rule in which we naturally find
our place:
 
 32

A sage has said, “I will do nothing with purpose, and the people will transform
themselves; I will keep still, and the people will correct themselves. I will not
trouble with them, and the people will become rich by themselves; I will show no
ambition, and the people will arrive at primitive simplicity by themselves.”
 
             The best style of governing, then, is for the ruler to take a hands-off
approach through the practice of non-action. However, to the extent that rulers
do intervene in society, they should try to rid artificial values from their subjects’
minds through the practice of non-mind:
 
In exercising his government, the sage empties the people’s minds, fills their
bellies, weakens their wills, and strengthens their bones. He constantly tries to
keep them without knowledge and without desire, and where there are those who
have knowledge, to keep them from acting on it. When there is this abstinence
from action, good order is universal.
 
As noted earlier, while things in the natural world automatically follow the law of
the Dao, people do so by choice, and this may require rulers to help empty
people’s minds of ideas that distract from the Dao. The specific kind of
knowledge that is most damaging to social harmony involves conventional
standards of value and worth. Nature does not teach us to value one style of
clothes over another, for example. The value that we place on specific luxury
items, leisure activities, concepts of beauty, or human accomplishments, are
principally matters of cultural brainwashing. Criminals break the law because
they cannot easily acquire the endless array of things society dangles before
them. If rulers can get their citizens to practice non-mind and shed their
preconceived standards of value, then they won’t be seduced into criminal
behavior.
             The perfect society envisioned by Daoism does not consist of large and
complex cities of the sort that exist throughout the world today. Instead, primitive
simplicity is the ideal, which in practical terms means small farming families and
communities. Chuang-tzu describes this original and more natural human living
environment:
 
People originally wove and made themselves clothes; they tilled the ground and
for food. These are common to humaneness. They all agreed on this, and did not
form themselves into separate classes. In this way they were constituted and left
to their natural tendencies. Therefore in the age of perfect virtue people walked
along quietly, steadily looking forward. At that time, on the hills there were no
footpaths or excavated passages. On the lakes there were no boats or dams.
[Chuang-Tzu, 9]
 
This, according to Chuang-tzu, is how society originally was; but then rulers
came along and disrupted its natural simplicity by imposing rules and artificial
standards:
 
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When sages appeared, tripping people up with charity and constraining people
with the duty to one’s neighbor, then people universally began to be perplexed.
The sages went to excess in performing music and fussed over the practice of
ceremonies. Then people began to be separated from each other. . . . The injury
done to the Dao in order to practice charity and duty to one’s neighbor was the
error of the sages.
 
Leaders first disrupted the natural order of things by introducing an alien
standard of morality: “they dangled charity and duty to one’s neighbor in order to
comfort their minds” (ibid). Leaders added to this an endless list of complex
ceremonies, which only confused people and created differences between them. 
These differences prompted people to outdo each other by striving for knowledge
and pursuing personal gain. Finally, leaders created governments to assure that
people conformed to these new standards. The best rulers, then, are those that
facilitate a primitive society, and the worst rulers are those that try to force order
on people through the creation of rules.
 
Lieh-Tzu: Following Natural Desires
After the Dao de Jing and the Chuang-Tzu, the third most important book in
Daoism is the Lieh-Tzu, meaning “master Lieh”. Tradition attributes it to a scholar
named Lieh Yukou from period of 100 philosophers, but scholars today date its
composition at around 300 CE. Sometimes called the Classic of Complete
Emptiness, the Lieh-Tzu recommends pursuing the path of emptiness as a
means of becoming united with the Dao. As a whole, the work has a skeptical
and dismal undertone, emphasizing the certainty of our annihilation, resigning
oneself to fate, and abandoning efforts in life.  In view of the shortness of life, the
work recommends that we follow our own natural inclinations in pursuit of
happiness.
             In the most famous part of the book (Section 7, titled Yang-Tzu), Lieh-tzu
criticizes the emphasis we often place on pleasing others and acquiring notoriety
that will last beyond the grave. This emphasis is especially strong in
Confucianism, which we've seen holds that “The superior person dislikes the
thought of his name not being mentioned after his death” (Analects, 15.20). Lieh-
tzu begins his argument by noting how short life is. If we’re lucky we will live for
at most 100 years, but most of our lives will be consumed by infancy, the
incapacities of old age, sleeping, suffering and illness. After all of this “there is
less than an hour during which time we are comfortable, satisfied and carefree.”
Where, then, are we to find happiness during our brief lives? Lieh-tzu’s answer
is pleasure: “It is only found in beautiful things and good food, music and sex”
(Lieh-tzu, 7). Unfortunately, he continues, our efforts here are often thwarted.
Sometimes these pleasures are out of our reach. Worse yet, we often voluntarily
forego available pleasures in the hopes of attaining fame or empty praise after
our deaths. And even when alone we deny ourselves pleasures simply to
conform to what others expect. “We thus deny ourselves happiness in our best
years, and we cannot live freely for a moment”.
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             Lieh-tzu’s solution is that we should enjoy life’s pleasures when the
opportunities arise, and avoid conforming for the sake of praise from others. It is
irrelevant whether you leave an honorable or dishonorable legacy after your
death since, once dead, you won’t be conscious of your legacy at all:
 
People of long ago understood that in life we are here temporarily and in death
we are gone temporarily. ... The wicked and foolish both die. While alive they
were the virtuous emperors Yao and Shun. When dead they are rotten bones.
While alive they were the evil emperors Chieh and Chou. When dead they are
rotten bones. In either case, they are rotten bones. Can anyone tell them apart?
Enjoy your life right now while you still have it. Why bother with what happens to
you after you die?
 
On face value, Lieh-tzu’s emphasis on pursuing pleasure seems to run counter to
the Daoist rejection of desire, which we find in the opening verse of the  Dao de
Jing: “Always be without desires and you will see mystery; always be with desire,
and you will see only its effects.” But there may be some wiggle room here. On
the one hand, if we are preoccupied with desire then we will not be able to see
the Dao work through all things, including our own lives. On the other hand,
though, part of our nature is to have desires: our natural inclinations should guide
our conduct. The issue then rests on whether the desires for pleasure are natural
or artificially imposed. Leih-tzu’s list appears to be firmly grounded in our natural
human inclinations, which includes desires for beautiful things, good food, music
and sex.

 
F. CONCLUSION
 
This chapter opened stating that Eastern philosophies tend to be pantheistic—
the view that God is the totality of the cosmos. While the general notion of
pantheism may be easy enough to grasp, the devil is in the details, and the
various Eastern philosophies wrestled with this concept in different ways.
Classical Hindu writings, like the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita, focused on the
pantheistic idea of God at the core of our true identities, and how we might
discover the Self-God through Yoga practices like meditation. Vedanta
philosophers pushed the idea of monism (the cosmos being composed of one
divine stuff) but disagreed about whether God was undifferentiated or had parts.
Within Buddhism, the theme of pantheism emerges first with the notion of
nirvana, the idea that we should extinguish all desire and components of our
ordinary consciousness. Within the nirvana state, we subdue our individual
selves and experience the oneness of everything. Mahayana notions of
emptiness stress that even the nirvana experience is undifferentiated and empty
of descriptive content. While classical Confucian philosophy focused more on
moral virtue than on the nature of God, its moral message has a strong theme of
social interconnectedness. Some later Confucian philosophers developed this
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idea of interconnectedness in pantheistic ways. Daoism’s pantheism appears

clearly in its view that the Dao is the natural force of the universe, which
underlies everything. While Hinduism and Buddhism have us gain enlightenment
by disassociating ourselves from the world of appearances, Daoism takes the
opposite approach and has us discover the interconnectedness of ultimate reality
within the cycles in the natural world.
             Eastern religions invariably maintain that understanding ultimate reality
and reaching enlightenment are difficult tasks: it is hard for us to find the Self-
God within us, or reach Nirvana, or become a Superior Person, or live in accord
with the Dao. If Easterners themselves must struggle to internalize these
concepts, what chance do people in Western cultures have who lack the benefit
of life-long exposure to pantheistic ideas? Even if we can intellectually grasp the
central points of these Eastern philosophies, we may not be able to take them
seriously or adapt them into our already formed views of things. But while there is
a gap between pantheistic and non-pantheistic views of divine reality, some
middle ground may still be found. It will invariably, though, require at least some
compromise of the Western view that God is a distinct being from his creation.
             Those who doubt the existence of a divine being face yet a different
obstacle when approaching Eastern philosophy: is all this Eastern talk about
undifferentiated ultimate reality and mystical enlightenment just nonsense? But
even here there may be some room for compromise, since the pantheistic
message of Eastern philosophy is capable of a naturalistic spin. The natural
world is interconnected, both with its general laws and forces of nature that
govern physical bodies throughout the universe, and with the ecological
interdependence of living things on earth. Daoism in particular has been adapted
to a non-religious view of the natural world: the Dao is just the flow of all the
interconnected components of nature. On this view, we humans can become
enlightened about our part in this unified fabric through what is called nature
mysticism: we might experience a unity of all things when reflecting on some
dramatic component of the natural world. For some mystics, reflecting on
something like a sunset, a forest or an ocean can trigger a sense of connection
with the natural world.
 
Assessment

1. Briefly discuss the basic tenets of Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian and Daoist
Philosophy.
2. Cite some ideas from the above philosophies which you can adopt into
your personal philosophy.