exam due by 5pm est 11/25/2020
Milan929
Week2Notes.docxWeek 2-Indian Theologies and Philosophies
- Indus Valley Civilization (3000-1600)- Bronze Age
- Vedic Age (1600-800)- Migrations with Aryans- Iron Age
- Hindu Age (800-500)- Religion and tribes
- Mahajapanda (500-350)- Warring states
-Mauryan Age (350-150)- Empires
-India, the modern nation, was born on August 15, 1947 but it has a much older history
- Land of contrasts: 80% of Indians live in small, farming villages with no electricity or running water
- Cities are economically vibrant
- India has the world’s sixth largest GDP with an average growth of 6.5% since 1991 economic reforms
- Overlapping cultures and centuries
- The first humans arrived in India from Africa about 70,000 years ago
- Probably the first major migration in human history
- Hunter-gatherers who lived on the beaches of the Arabian Sea
- Remarkably fertile land filled with animals
- Civilization began when they began farming with stone tools
- After the migration from the Indus Valley to the Ganges the people spoke Sanskrit
- Sanskrit is probably a fusion of their original language and various Aryan dialects
- It’s the root of languages spoken by a billion people today but people do not speak it today outside of religious ceremonies (similar to Latin in its usage)
- Sanskrit has been passed down perfectly through the Brahman priesthood which developed in the Vedic Age (1700-800)
- Hinduism
- Polytheistic religion that descended from Brahmanism (following the Brahman priests)
- Hinduism is sometimes called the world’s oldest religion because it became an organized theology passed down from beliefs in the first migration
- No leader or founder and practiced in many different ways
- A Hindu priest would struggle to define major concepts but would explain it (examples not definitions)
Four goals of a human to develop or discover
1- Dharma- responsibility (a moral code that will liberate you from pain and reincarnation)
2- Artha- purpose of life (connection of your immortal soul to the universe)
3- Karma- desire (guide to your dharma)
4- Moksha- ultimate liberation
-Dharma and karma are interconnected
- The Wheel of Dharma binds nature and that is why it is in the center of the Indian flag and on the Ashoka capital
- Major Texts are the Four Vedas
- It is not possible to under Hinduism through one sacred texts
- Meant to be heard, not read
- Criteria for historical fact: Multiple sources, embarrassment (something followers would likely not have invented), rejection (no other contemporary sources rejected it, FROM OTHER PEOPLE, did anyone at the time say it didn’t happen?), coherence (does not directly contradict other historical facts- FROM OTHER FACTS, does it with disagree with any other facts?)
1 - Rig Veda (1600-1100)- “Song of the God”
- The Vedic Age (1600-1100 B.C.) is called that because the chief theological text was the Rig Veda
- The Rig Veda is 1,000 hymns but it tells a story
- Some ideas must predate the migration because it mentions geography and (now non-existent rivers) in the Indus Valley
- Formally composed between 1500 and 900 B.C.
- Addressed to various gods (though Indra is the most common)
- Goal is to teach people how to behave like a Hindu
- Climax is when a disciple was about to kill his family members in a battle
- Is told by the god Krishna to do it because he is doing the will of the gods
- Brahman priests have memorized the rig veda and can chant it
- The chant takes fifty hours
- It was written while the poets drank soma which heightens the senses as it has high amounts of ephedrine
- Soma is native to the Indus area
- The fact that it was brought to the Ganges area shows its liturgical importance (Ganges is sacred to Hindus)
- The Rig Veda tells of tribes migrating eastward looking for good land (led by the god of fire)
- They fought amongst themselves
- The Aryans intermingled with the first Indians (people from the Indus Valley)
- The Aryans were migrating down from Russia around 1,500 B.C.
- By 1,000 B.C. they had settled Northern India
2- The creation of the world and eastward migration is told in the longest poem ever written (written around 800 B.C.) the Mahabharata
- It tells of rival families and gods fighting each other
- Indians look at as the end of creation mythology and the beginning of history
- It is seven times longer than the Homeric epics and is set in 3100 B.C.
- It’s climax is based on a battle fought near Delhi (north central India)
- In this mythical battle there are kings from as far as Greece and China (impressive geographic knowledge)
- Five brothers survive with the aid of the god Krishna
- They establish peace before entering the City of the Gods in the Himalayas
- A major theme of it is justice
3 - The other great epic of the age was the Ramayana (600 B.C.)
- This is believed to be written by a single author, Valmiki, and is much shorter
- It takes place in southeast India and Sri Lanka and the main character is Rama
- It reflects a society which was growing increasingly more complex as India was being settled
- Both the Ramayana and Mahabharata were changed by priests over the next 1,000 years
- Indo-Aryan theology evolved into Hinduism around this time
- Vedas were passed down through the spoken word (very little literacy) for hundreds of years before being written
- Brahman priests passed it down to their sons
- The gods resembled human beings and were generally benevolent
- They existed but interaction was done through sacrifice and education by the Brahman priesthood
- The importance of a perfect sacrifice lead to a priesthood
- Like Catholics, the blessing of the priests was important (required?) at every major stage in life
- The increase in Aryan theology mirrors the increase in the society
4- Bhagavad Gita (500 B.C.)
-Guide that establishes the caste system and is more based on the modern world
- Four hereditary groups or castes
1- Brahman (priests and more commonly scholars who kept the Gods alive through sacrifice and taught the texts orally as a form of education)
2- Kshatriya (rulers and land owners)
3- Vaishya (merchant, business owners)
4- Shudra (servants, farm worker)
- Those outside the caste system became untouchables (Panchana)
- Panchana literally means fifth category
- Untouchables were not full members of society
- They were not allowed in schools or temples (more temples than schools in India)
- Indian government trying to help untouchables but gets resistance still from conservative Hindus
- They were probably dark skinned, forest dwelling aboriginals which the Aryans enslaved
- The Hindus created the caste system based on the Aryan divisions
- Eventually marriage and even food preparation was limited to a caste
- Castes developed a dress code
- No caste mobility but in reality a member of a lower class can gain more money and power in modern India
- While individual freedom was not valued the caste system did create unification and a division of labor
- Women were in the caste of their father
- The Buddha
- 400 million Buddhist today on every inhabitable continent
- In some places it has leadership (Dalai Lama in Tibet) but it is intensely interior
- Designed to be relevant to all people because all people have minds
- No God but following the teaching of one human who attained Enlightenment
- His life story is impossible to know because of countless legends over millennia
- No canonical gospels, like Jesus, which were written within a century of his death
- The first written Buddhist narrative came 500 years after his death
- Like Jesus, the details of his life become intertwined with his teaching
- “He who sees the teaching sees me”
- Legend is Siddhartha Gautama was born 563 B.C. in Lumbini
- Would have been known as Gautama but Siddhartha means “one who achieves his aim”
- Lumbini is on the border of what is now Nepal and India (probably Nepal but point of contention)
- The area was very divided by tribes
- His father, Suddhodana, was the chief of a small tribe and a great warrior
- He had been elected chief because of his skill in battle
- He continued his wars and annexed more places
- Siddhartha was in the warrior (second highest) caste
- Would have been raised in obedience to the Brahman priesthood of Hinduism
- Suddhodana had married a princess named Maya
- Mother, Queen Maya (May-uh), had a dream that a beautiful white elephant with six white tusks offered her a lotus flower
- She was taken up to the Himalayas and perfumed
- While being prepared she was told she would give birth to the Buddha
- The elephant then entered the side of her body
- She asked eight Brahman priests to explain what this meant
- They told her that her son would either be a king who would conquer the world or “the Enlightened One” (The Buddha)
- She gave birth ten months after the dream under a tree on the way to her father’s kingdom
- She died a week after giving birth and Suddhodana remarried
- Palace priests noticed thirty-two birthmarks on him, particularly a wheel on his foot
- Does that mean he will conquer the world (war) or discover his place in it (religion)?
- The question of what his aim was consumed Suddhodana
- Suddhodana decided to shield him suffering
- “The world is full of pain and sorrow but I have found a serenity that you can find to” the Buddha said later
- Suffering and death are one of the few things that every human can understand
- Don’t try to avoid those things but find a way to accept those things
- A glass can be beautiful and useful
- If you know that it will someday be broken then you appreciate it more and treasure every moment with it
- The Buddha’s role is to be a teacher
- Anyone can obtain the Enlightenment that he found
- Siddhartha Gautama was raised in a palace with every luxury to shield him from his tragic birth
- He was a good wrestler (training for war) but not interested in military theory
- His father wanted him to conquer the sixteen different kingdoms of India and become the most powerful man in the world
- His father was afraid if Prince Siddhartha knew there was suffering in the world he would seek the holy path and not the war path
- At the age of nine he finally left the palace to go a festival
- He saw a farmer going through grueling farm work in the midst of the joy
- Suffering and joy all at once
- The farmer plowed the earth, exposed a worm and a bird ate the worm
- Everything is connected
- His father worked even harder to shield him
- With the finest food, clothing and women at his whim he never considered leaving
- His father married him to his cousin, Yasodhara, when he was sixteen
- Ten year long honeymoon
- At the age of twenty-nine he sees suffering for the first time
- His father tried to clear away the sick and dying like a Hollywood set
- He took four trips out of the palace and sees all the things deliberately hidden from him
- Sees an old man, a sick man, a dead man and a spiritual seeker
- Shocked and horrified he learned that everybody will become old, sick and die
- He knew about illness and death but he now he understood that HE would
- He admires the spiritual seeker whose life is so different from his but has trouble understanding why anyone would give up the physical pleasures of life
- He returns to learn that his wife has given him a beautiful son
- He names him Rahula (best translated as a chain)
- He realized that the palace and his family there had imprisoned him
- He never held Rahula because he knew the pain would make it impossible for him to leave
- He rides out of the palace
- Abandoning his family was a terrible sacrilege in the Hindu faith
- Mara appeared and told him to go back and return to become a great king
- Siddhartha realized to gain everything you must lose everything first
- Mara is not Satan
- Satan exists as a supernatural figure opposed to God
- Mara is the desire for excess pleasure inside all of us
- Similar to Freud’s id
- He cut off his hair, vowed celibacy, put on the clothes of a beggar and wandered south to the Ganges
- There were thousands of people (mostly men) doing this at the time
- Begging was admired in the culture of the day
- Brahman priests were threatened by the austerity of the beggars
- Like the bishops and the mendicants of Medieval Europe
- Siddhartha believed that priesthood should not be passed down but held by those who live it best
- Rejecting the idea of sacrifice Siddhartha would not see the point of a priesthood
- They practiced many schools of yoga and meditation
- Yoga is harnessing the physical energy of the body to tame the mind which can be thought of like a lake
- A lake can be calm or violent but air (breathing) decides that
- By concentrating on a single idea you can transport the mind
- Living off charity and sleeping on the ground of the forest
- He realized that enjoying the world had wounded him
- He was cleansing himself through poverty
- The predominant religion was the Vedic-Hindu but he did not appreciate its elaborate ceremony
- He felt their ceremonies were more important than the Gods to whom they were directed
- Siddhartha, and the guru under whom he studied, believed that it was far more important to look inwards than upwards
- The reason was reincarnation
- Reincarnation was a widespread belief in India
- Suffering is part of every life and if everyone is reborn than suffering must be eternal
- He saw the only escape or defeat of suffering as becoming enlightened
- Siddhartha believed that the purpose of reincarnation was to move towards enlightenment
- Stubbornly clinging to the pleasures of the world keeps one trapped in billions of uncompleted lives
- If a life not moving towards enlightenment physically ended at death but spiritually caused reincarnation
- Siddhartha became an expert yogi
- He was frustrated that the great states of consciousness which he reached were temporary
- It was like getting drunk to escape a problem
- He wanted a permanent answer and direct knowledge as to why humans suffer and if there is any escape
- He tried extreme renunciation (the opposite of his first three decades) to try to gain enlightenment
- The idea was that this is suffering (and maybe even dying) on your own terms
- By not wanting anything, and therefore not needing anything, you would be totally free of the world
- He punished himself for six years
- He ate one leaf or grain of rice a day, drank his own urine, slept on nails, held breaths until they passed out and stood on one foot for hours in all the elements
- He was dying and realized he was no closer to an answer about suffering
- He remembered as a child looking at a river with his father on a spring day and that the beauty of the world came to him
- He went and sat under an apple tree in a meditation position
- He found joy in being part of a broken world
- A girl stopped and gave him some rice porridge
- He was touched by her compassion and generosity
- Extreme deprivation or luxury will not accomplish anything
- He sought the Middle Way (capitalized because it is centered around certain practices)
- To obtain enlightenment he decided he needed to trust himself
- He bathed, took off his rags and began to meditate
- He sat under a fig tree, ficus religiosa, or the Bodhi Tree in Bodh Gaya, India
- “I will not move from this spot until I have obtained the supreme and final wisdom”
- He sat there for forty-nine days
- Mara appeared with an army of demons, then three beautiful women
- Siddhartha did not fight back (the warrior)
- He was totally aware
- He saw himself like the peak of a Himalayan mountain
- Winds and storms rage on it but it does not move
- Siddhartha believed he was not facing Mara but his own destructive capacity
- The destructive, pleasure loving capacity that all humans possess
- Mara asked who would testify that Siddhartha was worthy of obtaining ultimate wisdom
- Siddhartha reached down and touched the earth with his finger
- The ground shuddered and the demons fled
- “The earth is my witness”
- He did not mean that he owned the earth but that he was representing life which comes from the earth
- All his former lives passed before him that night
- He had been every gender, race and species in infinite lives
- From this he understood the process of birth, death and rebirth
- “My mind is at peace” he roared the next morning
- He had become the Buddha and achieved Enlightenment
- The awakened state he felt was nirvana
- The Buddha described nirvana as complete inner peace, free from all desires which bring harm to the self
- “At this moment, all beings and I awaken together” he said that dawn
- He believed he was part of everything that had ever existed
- Nirvana is the peace of accepting this and rejecting a self-centered view that you are separate
- Immoderate physical pleasure is a narcotic that keeps you in that view
- It’s not that he had entered a new state, he had returned to the state
- You are not trying to overcome the universe because you are part of the universe
- If every living thing ever is part of the universe than enlightenment is possible for everyone
- The ultimate living in the moment
- Pay attention to the moment, not striving for the afterlife or past
- No creation story or afterlife or god(s) who control those process
- There is no denial of their existence but they are not relevant
- He lived happily for weeks near the bodhi tree
- He realized the importance of compassion and the responsibility of teaching because the interconnectedness of everyone
- When you know someone you don’t want them to feel pain
- The Buddha took a step forward by saying that everyone is part of everyone and so everyone knows each other (all living things not just humans)
- You don’t put your hand in a fire because it is a part of you
- All living things are part of the universe
- Water evaporates and comes back as rain
- Plants become seeds and return to the earth
- Humans become angry and happy many times in their life
- Egotism is rejecting being part of the universe
- He crossed the Ganges into the more populated parts of India
- He came across his old companions from aestheticism in a deer park at Benares
- Because of its closeness to the Ganges, Benares was already a religious center
- People came there to die and have their ashes spread in the Ganges
- The Buddha taught them the Wheel of Dharma
- Dharma is a Sanskrit word that can best be translated as “law”
- The dharma is not a dogma but was his experience and what he had learned
- The theme was moderation between aestheticism and hedonism
- His first analogy was of a sitar string that must be tuned perfectly (not too tight or lax)
- Truths are on page 72
- First noble truth: There is dissatisfaction in the world.
- Some translate it as suffering but it is more restlessness and suffering is not finding eternal satisfaction
- Second noble truth: Dissatisfaction has a cause.
- Third noble truth: You can be freed from dissatisfaction.
- Fourth noble truth: The way to free yourself is the eight-fold path.
- The eight-fold path can be thought of as a manual towards liberation, each is called “right”
- He only spoke to his friends for a short time before they decided to join him
- He eventually attracted hundreds in forty-five years of teaching
- They came from all walks of life and from both sexes
- He went back to the Lumbini palace and was forgiven by his family
- He took his stepmother and Rahula back with him
- His stepmother became the first Buddhist nun and Rahula a monk
- This celibacy meant that Buddha’s line would die with Rahula (no grandchildren)
- What was most controversial was his rejection of the caste system
- Eventually a vibrant monastery (sangha) was built on the Ganges
- He wanted people to obtain enlightenment (become a Buddha) in a much easier process than he did
- In the sangha he taught that the best way to deal with anxiety is to recognize it is there (not avoid it) and accept it like he did with Mara’s temptation
- Meditate through your problems, not around them
- The key to the sangha was compassion because everyone is connected
- “When this is, that is”
- Debate with, not devotion to, him was encouraged
- He sent his monks out to teach “for the happiness of the world”
- There were wars all over northeastern India during this time
- Kings soughts his advice but he could give none
- He taught that violence simply begot more violence
- Unfortunately there will always be violence because some powerful people will not be able to stop the violence in their minds
- Even his old kingdom, Lumbini, was defeated and hundreds of people pushed into pits where they were trampled by elephants
- He received the news in silence
- He did not want his sangha to be an island of happiness in an ocean of misery
- They preached for their food
- They spoke of eliminating the three poisons: greed, anger and ignorance
- To eliminate them is not to deny them but to invert them: generosity, compassion and wisdom
- The Buddha wanted to cultivate knowledge of the internal not the material
- It is more important to study what is inside the skull than the skull itself
- The Buddha lived to be eighty before dying of food poisoning in 483 in Kushinigar
- He was asked to be laid on his side in front of his weeping disciples
- “All things change. Whatever is born is subject to decay.”
- He explained that his death and their sadness was natural
- They, as well as life and happiness, are all parts of life
- Dissatisfaction comes from not knowing when they occur
- Suffering is the fear of that unknown
- Living in the moment as part of the universe makes them irrelevant
- “All individual things pass away. Strive on untiringly.”- His last words
- The legend is that when he died the earth shook and the trees dropped their leaves
- He was cremated but the ashes preserved
- Legend is he described himself to a Brahman that he was “the one who woke up”
The Buddha (historical)
- Ancient Indians regarded history as not an understanding of events but of their meaning (not necessarily a literal retelling)
- In the nineteenth century there was a movement to see the Buddha as a collection of ideas of the time but not a real person
- The coherence of the ideas as recorded in the earliest time means that he almost certainly existed
- He should be seen more like Muhammad or Socrates as a thinker who sought solutions to universal problems of humanity
- Like those men, he eschewed a cult of personality and certainly never claimed divinity
- The first tales of him were likely compiled by monks who were traveling preachers
- They begged for food and preached in the eight months of the dry season
- During monsoons the roads would be impassable and they would gather together
- This means they were heavily influenced by the culture of the Bengal region (more inclined to monsoons than the Pali region where the Buddha lived)
- Would have lived during the Magadha Empire
- Bimbisara (544-492) and Ajatashatru (492-460)
- Traditional dates of 563-483 (might be able to push it up a generation)
- Jainism and renunciation popular in the Magadha Empire during this time
- Shakya Clan
- Ancient family
- Lumbini may have been an oligarchy or his father may have been elected the chief
- Doubtful he was a hereditary king
- A more egalitarian form of government lends itself better to Buddhism than a Hinduistic pantheon
- Lumbini was located right on the border of Nepal and India (India and Nepal both claim a location only 15 miles apart)
- Time of great religious explosion which threatened established Hinduism
- New religious thinkers were known as “sramana” or “one who toils for knowledge”
- Similar to the beginnings of Greek philosophy (relative contemporaries)
- Would have been impossible for a non-peasant not to have encountered them
- They were not rebelling against Hinduism but seeking to find truth in a different way (asceticism and skepticism rather than ritualism and faith)
-Earliest mentions of the Buddha’s life are dated around 335 B.C. and found in Afghanistan (wrong side of India and a century and a half after his death)
- This was the Second Pali Council (debate over whether the first one ever occurred)
- Early biographies come about one per century 100-500
- These can be considered history as other sources have miraculous events
- The histories depict him as a sramana and not an omniscient bodhisattva
- Still, historians generally accept that he did exist
- His name and the name of his parents are accepted (Gautama was a family name)
- Pregnant women were usually separated from the fathers (not on a mountaintop though)
- His birthday is celebrated as Vesak in different Buddhist countries but on different days
- Must be on a full moon (usually in May)
- Mother likely died in birth or a few days later
- Would have been named around this time
- “Siddhartha” “one who achieves his aim”
- Family would would have been Hindu
- Other techniques were not part of the establishment
- Brahmans predicting the future of a newborn prince would be common
- No historical texts give an account different from the religious first twenty-nine years
- In this period of warring states he likely would have had military training and would have needed a decently strong body for that
- One consistent physical description is blue eyes
- Plausible but likely had more female influences as a substitute for his mother in particular his mother’s sister, Mahapajapati
- Product of a sexist time, Buddhist texts are likely accurate that he was reluctant to have nuns
- The first nun is said to be his mother’s sister who raised him like a mother
- Texts have him obtaining enlightenment at age 35
- This can not be supported by history but it is certainly possible that he left and became a renunciant
- They were all over the Ganges Plain
- Began a sangha and taught for the next forty-five years
- Most sanghas were in the Pali Region (Rajasthan- northwest India near Pakistan)
- He would have had disciples who very well would have called him the Buddha “The Enlightened One” or “The Awakened One”
- Historians debate what his earliest teachings were but the eightfold path seems to be consistently described and would be an original but plausible manifestation of the period
- Grouping these ideas into the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path likely occurred much later
- His challenge (though probably more subtle) to the Hindu establishment is likely and what probably makes him historically resonant
- At the time the inevitability of suffering and the human response was a commonly debated theological question
- Sanskrit (language on Hinduism) was already extinct so he likely spoke and wrote in the Pali dialect
- Shrine is built at Kushinagar so it is plausible that he died there
- Most of his death story must be taken on faith
The legend is that he ate pig meat in his final meal which caused the poisoning
-There were many plants in the Pali region that had the word for pig in their name
- It may have been “pig food” rather than “pig flesh” which was the same word for “mushroom”
- His death date is dated from the crowning of Ashoka
- Some say 218 and some 116 (Indian and Chinese) which would make it 486 or 383
- Cremation is supported
- Common practice and if he were buried there would be a major shrine at his tomb
- The legend is that his ashes were divided amongst his followers
- Nearly every Asian country claims to have relics of the Buddha
- Whether he reached parinirvana and had no need for his body is a matter of faith
- A Buddhist council was held shortly after his death by a monk chosen from the others
- There is no evidence that this council ever took place
