Philosophy about East Asia Religions

Wednesday, August 29, 2018

Hinduism

Arguably the oldest of all the world’s surviving organized religion

A tremendously diverse set of traditions

The Vedas (~1500 - 1000 BCE)

Written in Sanskrit

4 of item

Rigveda

Yajurveda

Samaveda

Atharvaveda

Each has 4 parts

Samhites: mantras and benedictions

Aranyakas: texts on rituals, ceremonies, and sacrifices

Brahmanas: commentaries on rituals, ceremonies, and sacrifices

Upanishads: philosophical, discussion meditation and spiritual knowledge

U (at) pa (foot) nishat (sitting down)

About 200 0f them

The Katha Upanishad

Written in verse, poetic language

Dialog between Yama (god of death) and Nachiketas (a mortal man)

Has a narrative structure

Nachiketas is killed bu his father

Nachiketas ends up in the land of the dead, goes to visit Yama

Yama is unavailable, and Nachiketas has to wait for three days

As a form of reconciliation, Yama offers three boons (wishes)

Reconciliation with his father

Learn how to do the fire ritual

The answer to one question: what happened after death?

“what is the ultimate destiny of us all?”

Yama hesitates, and cautions that the answer to the question to something that not even the gods truly understand

Yama recommends asking for pleasurable tings: wealth, women, song, etc.

Nachiketas insists that he does want the answer, Yama is impressed, and he begins to explain.

Two main concepts that arise in this dialog

The Self, Atman

Brahman

Not the same as

Brahma: one of the three most fundamental deities

Brahmin: the priestly caste

The Big Claim: Atman is Brahman

Question 1: what is it the makes a person the same person over time?

“what makes the table the same table over time?”

Same material

Looks the same

Been through the same wear and tear

Has the same apparent bumps and bruise

The same history

Functions the same way

Same component: two legs

Same chemical structure

Same form

All the same chemicals

Same location

“what makes materials/chemicals/etc the same over time?”

Atomism: all material things are made up of fundamental, indivisible particles.

Philosophers have replaces the word “atom” with “simple”

Claim: identity of material is just containing the same simples over time

Claim: what makes a simple the same simple is its continuous causal history

What about humans?

Same essence

Person’s soul

Same mind

Same personality

Same experiences

Same genetic makeup

Some thoughts from the teleportation case

Maybe we want there be some THING that continues from state to state

The thing that has the experience, etc

Candidates

Soul

The body (Brain)

A continuous history of functionality

Ship of Theseus

The parts matter

And the continuity of function matters

But neither is enough its own to establish identity

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

In this story, we are invited to accept that there are two people residing in the same body

If this is the case, then continuity of body is not sufficient for personal identify

What we’ve learned so far

Personal identity over time is not a straightforward philosophical issue

The two most common answers are continuity of consciousness and continuity of body

But each of these face serious objections

What causes the problem?

The subjects we are considering (the people) are complex, made up of many things

Ans it is not clear which / how many of things are sufficient for identity

A proposed solution: Atman

A continuity of soul view

T make this as philosophically resilient as possible

Now part

No properties

Does not change

What makes it different from other souls?

Nothing

So there is only one soul: Atman

This is clearest with living thing, but ultimately all things are identical

If we all have the same soul, what makes things different?

Nothing

Nothing is different

The appearance of difference is an illusion

Hopefully a helpful analogy

What we believe about everyday material objects vs what science says

Question 2: what is the ultimate explanation of the world around us?

The Cosmological Argument

There are many things that need to be explained

Especially things that change and have a variety of properties

We can explain them in terms of prior parents, etc

Children explained by their parents, etc

There should be a thing that explains all the other things, but does not need to be explained

Aquinas: call this thing “God”

First Cause

Unmoved Mover

Necessary Being

But there is still a puzzle

What about properties like God’s goodness?

Why is God good rather than evil?

A principle: the explanation of a thing must transcend that thing

Ex: the ultimate explanation of matter can not be a material object

Implication: the explanation of all things must transcend all distinctions

What would that be like?

Simple

Changless

Featureless

brahman: the ultimate explanation in Hinduism

Conclusion: Atman is Brahman, the should of the individual is the cause of the Universe, I am God.

How do we live with this insight?

We can not understand this

We are not going to be able to reason ourselves into believing that al things are ultimately One.

Should this worry us?

No

Hinduism is a mystical religion

Mystical: the true nature of a thing to be inaccessible by reasoning and intellect. BUT accessible via certain experience

Some terminology

Samsara: reincarnation, the cycle of death and rebirth

Moksha: liberation from samsara

Karma: a bitch, what goes around comes around, perfect justice, having done to you what you have done to others

Yoga: any set of practices that is aimed at the achievement of Moksha

Bendy body stuff

Many forms of meditation

Practical activities

Some more intellectual and philosophical

Hindu meditation

Moksha

Hyper - wakefulness

Wakefulness

Barely awake

Light sleeping

Dreaming sleep

Deep sleep / dreamless

Moksha

An engagement with the reality of Brahman

There is an experience, but it has no qualities

A pure conscious experience, to experience being, but not being any particular thing

Om: the source of reality, how Brahman would sound if you could hear it

The Chandogya Upanishad

Chapter VI

So far, we’ve been trying to engage the very difficult claim that all things are identical to a single featureless cosmic soul

But, Hinduism is more diverse than that

This passage invites a variety of interpretation of the relationship between Atman and Brahman

Context

Svetaketu is talking to his father, Uddalaka

Uddalaka is giving to the son about how to live his life

Uddalaka repeals one phrase many times in the passage

Tat tvam asi - you are that

Analogies

Clay / gold / iron

If you truly know what thing is made of, then you know about all other things made if the same stuff

By studying the individual thing, we can come to know it’s fundamental properties and thereby know about all other thing with those fundamental properties

We know about ultimate reality because of shared properties (not necessarily stick identity)

Riveters merging into the ocean

The rivers flow into (become part of) the ocean

Brahman is like the ocean

The rivers are Brahman (the Ataman) that dissolve and become part of the sea

Brahman is a composite of all the parts that exist

Although all branches of Hinduism believe a deep metaphysical union of all things, there is a good amount of variation in how this is interpreted

Some of them are more easy to understand than others

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