This book examines the interface between Buddhism and the caste system in India. It discusses how Buddhism in different stages, from its early period to contemporary forms-Theravāda, Mahāyāna, Tantrayāna and Navayāna-dealt with the question of caste. It also traces the intersections between the problem of caste with those of class and gender. The volume reflects on the interaction between Hinduism and Buddhism: it looks at critiques of caste in the classical Buddhist tradition while simultaneously drawing attention to (...) the radical challenge posed by Dr B. R. Ambedkar's Navayāna Buddhism or neo-Buddhism. The essays in the book further compare approaches to varṇa and caste developed by modern thinkers such as M. K. Gandhi and S. Radhakrishnan with Ambedkar's criticisms and his departures from mainstream appraisals. With its interdisciplinary methodology, combining insights from literature, philosophy, political science and sociology, the volume explores contemporary critiques of caste from the perspective of Buddhism and its historical context. By analyzing religion through the lens of caste and gender, it also forays into the complex relationship between religion and politics, while offering a rigorous study of the textual tradition of Buddhism in India. This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of Indian philosophy, Buddhist studies, Indology, literature, exclusion and discrimination studies, history, political studies, women studies, sociology, and South Asian studies. (shrink)

Nanda's irresponsible book carelessly prescribes for the U.S a return to Cold-War science politics; and for India, nothing less than a cultural revolution which would install science as the arbiter. She sees this as smashing the backwards looking metaphysics of Hindu thought. I argue that her iconoclasm carries with it a purist fetishism deriving from science's denied metaphysics. The metaphysics embedded in Nanda's secularist critique is no more innocent than that she wishes to smash, yet being denied is more tricky (...) to deal with. I claim Nanda's book is irresponsible both in the context of India's contesting social imaginaries, but also in the USA where she seeks to intervene in the so-called science wars. Taking seriously the neo-Buddhist Dalit resistance waged by those occupying the lowest rungs of the Hindu caste system, as Nanda prescribes, requires a refusal of metaphysics and positivist thought generally. Being unaware of the metaphysical ladeness of her critique, the ontological move that is necessary to achieve a shift to generative mode of thought that characterises Dalit Buddhism is invisible to Nanda. (shrink)

Journal of Chinese Philosophy, EarlyView.

In his critical examination of the most interesting and significant case, As the title shows, Of ideological 'love and hate' in the whole history of chinese philosophy and religion, The author first points out the mahayana influences on the formation of neo-Confucian philosophy. He then shows the neo-Confucian vehement attacks upon mahayana buddhism, Based on the three confucian principles inseparable and complementary to one another. After a philosophical clarification of mahayana thought against the neo-Confucian attacks, He concludes that, Despite (...) their lack of understanding buddhism in terms of the middle way, The neo-Confucianists' ethico-Social criticism is very hard-Hitting and requires a mature philosophical reflection on the part of mahayana buddhists themselves. (shrink)

One of the problems religious men and philosophers often face is how to convey enlightenment or wisdom to others so that sentient beings can be enlightened or awakened from dogmatic views. This problem is also the question of how truth is made known to men. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the problem of communicating truth in Ch'an Buddhism.

The primary aim of Jeong Do-jeon’s criticism of Buddhism is, like Mencius, to promote both political and moral actions based on the virtues of Confucianism. In a similar way to Mencius’ denouncement of heretical discourses, Jeong Do-jeon thinks that the disapproval of Buddhism is indispensable for accomplishing the ways of Sages-that is, for effectuating the virtues of Confucianism. Rather than an intellectual debate against Buddhism, Jeong Do-jeon’s criticism of Buddhism is done in the context of political (...) movement, to incorporate Neo-Confucianism as a national ideology. His disapproval, followed and enhanced the discourses of former Confucianists - Zhang Zai, Cheng Brothers, and Zhu Xi - displays both distinctive criticism of Buddhism and better understanding of Neo-Confucianism than other relevant Neo-Confucianists of the Joseon Dynasty. In his book Bulsi-japbyeon 佛氏雜辨, Jeong underlines that Neo-Confucianism, which is based on the concrete facts unlike Buddhism, has realistic practicality, and maintains that the ontological foundation of human morality exists by showing the distinction between the nature(性) and the mind(心). Jeong’s argument has two implications: first, it sheds light on the living moral agent even in fluctuating political conditions; second, it shows that Jeong did not simply reiterate Zhu Xi’s criticism of Buddhism but, based on his particular systematic understanding of overall aspects of Neo-Confucianism, Jeong did criticize Buddhism in his own way. From this point of view, it could be understood that Jeong Do-jeon’s disapproval of Buddhism focuses on the realistic value of the virtues of Confucianism and its actual practice, unlike his predecessors of the Song dynasty who focused on human nature, mind and self-cultivation. (shrink)

Neo-Confucianism is a philosophically sophisticated tradition weaving classical Confucianism together with themes from Buddhism and Daoism. It began in China around the eleventh century CE, played a leading role in East Asian cultures over the last millennium, and has had a profound influence on modern Chinese society. -/- Based on the latest scholarship but presented in accessible language, Neo-Confucianism: A Philosophical Introduction is organized around themes that are central in Neo-Confucian philosophy, including the structure of the cosmos, human nature, (...) ways of knowing, personal cultivation, and approaches to governance. The authors thus accomplish two things at once: they present the Neo-Confucians in their own, distinctive terms; and they enable contemporary readers to grasp what is at stake in the great Neo-Confucian debates. (shrink)

Sengzhao (c.374–414) was a Chinese Neo-Daoist who converted to Mahāyāna Buddhism, and few people doubt his influence on Chinese Buddhist philosophy. In this article, provided his Neo-Daoism (xuanxue) and Madhyamaka Buddhism, I will present how Sengzhao featured a symbolic meaning of ‘void’ (śūnya) as rooted originally in Daoism. The Daoist contradictions, in particular between ‘being’ (you) and ‘nothing [non-being]’ (wu), are essential to the development of his doctrine of ‘no ultimate void’ (不真空論, Buzhenkonglun). To understand what Sengzhao meant (...) by ‘void’, which is in denial about the ultimate reality, I broach a notion of nihil (‘nothing’ but also ‘no value’) that bears on his discursive practice. In this light, I formulate a Daoist argument for contradictions and ECN (ex contradictione nihil—nothing follows from contradictions) from Laozi’s Daodejing. Furthermore, I elaborate on Sengzhao’s defence of ECN in his Buzhenkonglun. Reconstructing his negative approach to contradictions within the scope of the four-valued expressions (catuṣkoṭi) in the Madhyamaka tradition from Nāgārjuna, I consider a likely objection that a fifth value such as the ineffable may be inferred as void. Instead of subsuming the ineffable value under his discourse, I finally endorse Sengzhao’s purpose of linguistic and conventional approximation to the ultimate reality as silence. As such, I conclude the significance of void in Sengzhao’s denials via contradictions (ECN), i.e. an early philosophical peak of Chinese Buddhism from Daoism. (shrink)

Zhu Xi is arguably the most important Chinese philosopher of the past millennium, both in terms of his legacy and for the sophistication of his systematic philosophy. The Buddhist Roots of Zhu Xi's Philosophical Thought combines two major areas of Chinese philosophy that are rarely tackled together: Chinese Buddhist philosophy and Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucian philosophy.

Buddhism became established as a state religion in Korea during the sixth century, and was able to maintain that status with relatively little opposition throughout the Unified Silla and Koryô periods. However, at the end of the Koryô, the Buddhist establishment ended up in a serious confrontation with a rising Korean Neo Confucian polemical movement, a confrontation in which it would end up being the clear loser. The nature of the developing Neo Confucian polemic was twofold. The first aspect (...) was an outcry against the economic privileges and excessive government influence of the Buddhist church. The second was a philosophical/religious opposition to Buddhist doctrine and practice, which had developed out of the writings of the Sung Neo Confucian architects, most important of whom were the two Ch'eng brothers and Chu Hsi. (shrink)

When the question is posed as to when Chinese thought influenced Western philosophy, people often turn to the philosophy of the German rationalist Christian Wolff, whose 1721 speech on the virtues of Confucianism led to his academic indictment and eventual ousting from the University of Halle in 1723. In his speech, Wolff lauds the Chinese for attaining virtues by natural revelation rather than appealing to Christian revelation, which made their accomplishments all the more impressive in his eyes (Fuchs 2006). According (...) to Kanamori (1997), the audience of Wolff’s speech “criticized it as the product of atheistic thoughts because they thought that the speaker valued Chinese morality as highly as Christian morals, which were formulated by divine revelation” (p. 299). The worry, in other words, was that Wolff was corrupted by Chinese thought since the atheism of Confucianism may have influenced Wolff’s own views. Almost invariably, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz’s name is involved in conversations that question the Chinese influence on Western philosophy, but it is typically tempered by the standard scholarly interpretation of the Leibniz-China connection, which is that Leibniz respected Chinese thought but was not influenced by it. I will argue against this standard scholarly interpretation by showing how Leibniz could have been influenced by Chinese thought. In particular, I propose that Leibniz’s conception of monads, which is something that we only see after his engagement with Chinese thought, may have been influenced by the Huayan Buddhist concept of li, which creeps into the Neo-Confucianism with which Leibniz had exposure. Should my argument be persuasive, this means that Chinese thought influenced the Western world sooner than has been previously believed. (shrink)

Classical presentations of the Buddhist path prescribe the cultivation of various good qualities that are necessary for spiritual progress, from mindfulness and loving-kindness to faith and wisdom. Examining the way in which such qualities are described and classified in early Buddhism—with special reference to their treatment in the Visuddhimagga by the fifth-century Buddhist thinker Buddhaghosa—the present article employs a comparative method in order to identify the Buddhist catalog of virtues. The first part sketches the characteristics of virtue as analyzed (...) by neo-Aristotelian theories. Relying on these accounts, the second part considers three lists from early Buddhism as possible catalogs of virtue: the components of ethical conduct, the 37 factors that contribute to awakening, and the wholesome or beautiful mental factors. I then raise the question of why the Buddhist tradition developed several classifications of virtue, whereas the Western tradition of virtue ethics used a single category. Appealing to the connection between the virtues and living well in the eudaimonistic version of virtue ethics, I propose that one of the reasons why Buddhism developed multiple lists of virtues is its pluralistic acceptance of different modalities of living well and associated practices, in MacIntyre’s sense of the term. These modalities and practices are not equal, but are ordered hierarchically. Accordingly, I conclude that Buddhist ethics ought to be seen as a pluralist-gradualist system rather than a universalist theory. (shrink)

Arthur Danto argues that all Eastern philosophies – except Confucianism – fail to accept necessary conditions on genuine morality: a robust notion of agency and that actions are praiseworthy only if performed voluntarily, in accordance with rules, and from motives based on the moral worth and well-being of others. But Danto’s arguments fail: Neo-Taoism and Mohism satisfy these allegedly necessary constraints and Taoism and Buddhism both posit moral reasons that fall outside the scope of Danto’s allegedly necessary conditions on (...) genuine morality. Thus, our initial reaction, that these Eastern philosophies offer genuine moral reasons for action, is sustained rather than overturned. (shrink)

This paper reviews the history of Korean Neo-Confucian thought from its introduction in the late fourteenth century until the end of the Joseon dynasty in the early twentieth century. With the founding of Joseon in 1392 the Neo-Confucian synthesis that had swept China was adopted in Korea, replacing the Buddhist establishment of the previous dynasty. The introductory section discusses the major figures in this transition and their grasp of the new metaphysical framework and ascetical theory which now supplemented the traditional (...) Confucian ethical core. The new teaching took deep root in the fifteenth century, but it did so in the context of succession problems leading to a series of “literati purges” of Confucians serving in government. The sixteenth century marked the coming to full intellectual maturity of the Neo-Confucian thought of the Cheng-Zhu school on the Korean peninsula. Toegye and Yulgok, the most famous names in Korean Neo-Confucian thought, represented opposing sides in the celebrated Four Seven Debate concerning the origination of feelings in the mind-and-heart. As the Mongols established the new Qing dynasty in China in the seventeenth century, Korean Neo-Confucians felt they had become the sole heritors and defenders of true civilization, leading to a period of intense and conflicted conservative orthodox orientation towards the Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucian school. In the intense factional struggles of the time the Yulgok followers of a faction led by Song Siyeol rose to dominance, and in the early eighteenth century the second most celebrated controversy, the Horak Debate, broke out within the ranks of this single intellectual lineage. The debate is best known for the question of whether and how humans and all other creatures share the same “original nature,” but it also inquired deeply into the accessibility of the original nature in techniques of meditative self-cultivation. The latter part of the eighteenth century is known for the emergence of a broad, loosely coordinated movement away from philosophical questions towards “practical learning,” or “Silhak” as twentieth century historians have named it. Philosophical inquiry continued to have a lively life well into the nineteenth century, however, with a deepening and radicalization of lines of thought established in the earlier debates, as well as some creative crossing and merging of the boundaries that separated the intellectual lineages of Toegye and Yulgok. (shrink)

This essay is a case study concerning the problem of rethinking the relationship between Neo-Confucian (Cheng-Zhu school) and Chan schools of thought. The study builds a comparative perspective on two representative texts assembled during the Song dynasty that concern methods of self-cultivation. My theoretical framework is hermeneutical and involves a twofold articulation of correlatives: “inward-outward” and “procedural morality-substantive morality.” By presenting a comparative interpretation of ideas developed in these texts, this analysis highlights the following two components: first, the existence of (...) explicit confluences between major ideas of the influential Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucian school, which most virulently criticizes the Buddhist tradition, and Chan’s practical methods of self-cultivation; second, it calls attention to the presence of Chan influences in the Neo-Confucian text. Through comparative analysis, this essay intends not only to bring to light Chan influences insightfully integrated by Neo-Confucians within their own discourse on self-cultivation, but also to understand the multidimensional relation between Song-dynasty Neo-Confucian and Chan practices. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 151-155 [Access article in PDF] Buddhism and Christianity: A Multicultural History of their Dialogue. By Whalen Lai and Michael von Bruck. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2001. xiv + 265 pp. This book is an abridged translation of Buddhismus und Christentum: Geschichte, Konfrontation, Dialog, first published in 1997 by Verlag C. H. Beck in Munich. I do not know how much has been lost in the (...) abridgement, but this English version remains a treasure trove that deserves to be read and digested by everyone engaged in Buddhist-Christian dialogue.From the English title, I expected a somewhat dry work of intellectual history, summarizing dated doctrinal debates. This book provides much more than that. Most valuable is its emphasis on the historical and cultural context of Buddhist-Christian encounters, especially the poisonous legacy of Western colonialism (which still survives today as economic neocolonialism). These quite varied contexts have usually been decisive for the success or failure of the encounter, and as this nuanced but frank study shows, the failures have been at least as notable as the successes. Here, too, we must remember the past if we want to do more than keep repeating it. As well as identifying specific problems, there is a perceptive analysis of the obstacles to openness and dialogue in each case.The penultimate chapter includes a discussion of our Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies, its conferences, and this journal. As a relative newcomer to the conversations, I found this particular example of contextualizing fascinating. In just the few conferences I have been able to attend, there have been so many facets to the dialogue that it has been difficult to gain a sense of the whole, to understand how the main threads have developed and interwoven. How well do we remember what has already been discussed, and often agreed upon? It is important that we do not just keep repeating ourselves, and I know of no other book that conveys the historical dimension of the dialogue so well. The silent, contemplative aspects of the encounter are also addressed: cross-cultural meditation groups, Christian Zen teachers, and visits to each other's monastic centers.A useful foreword by Hans Kung reviews his own contributions, including his [End Page 151] paradigm analysis of six different "general constellations" found in the Christian tradition (the original Jewish-apocalyptic paradigm, the ancient ecumenical-Hellenistic paradigm, the medieval Roman Catholic paradigm, the Reformation Protestant-evangelical paradigm, the modernist progress-oriented paradigm, and now the postmodern ecumenical paradigm) and six other constellations in the Buddhist tradition (Gautama's original paradigm, the Theravada- sravakayana paradigm, the Mahayana paradigm, the tantric Vajrayana paradigm, a defensive modernist paradigm, and most recently an emerging postmodernist paradigm), with the implication that we need to be careful to clarify which of the paradigms we are comparing.Inevitably, the focus is limited: India and Sri Lanka are discussed at length, but not southeast Asia; China and Japan, but not Korea; Germany, but not the rest of Europe. The Indian chapter is mostly about Tibetans in exile. I was intrigued by the generation gap between older, conservative Tibetan monks and more freethinking younger ones. Otherwise, the Indian dialogue seems not to have been as intensive as many other places in Asia, which makes sense since there are relatively few Buddhists in India today. Given the mass conversions of Dalits, the social context has usually been the emancipation of disadvantaged social groups, and is further complicated now by the increasing influence of neo-Hindu political movements, which makes all interreligious exchange more sensitive.The Sri Lankan dialogue, perhaps more than any other, has been preoccupied with the heritage of colonialism. Sinhalese take pride in being citizens of the only country to have shaken off colonial rule with a successful Buddhist revolution, which reversed the power relationship between the two religions. Evidently most Sinhala Buddhists, including much of the sangha, accept the need to defend Buddhism and Buddhist culture militarily, if necessary. The ruling political class that succeeded the British, a largely Buddhist- and Marxist-inspired elite, opted for constructing a national identity... (shrink)

In The Bodhisattva’s Brain: Buddhism Naturalized, Owen Flanagan undertakes a project of what he calls ‘cosmopolitan philosophy’, with an aim to develop and interrogate a naturalized Buddhism. A project of naturalization requires a conception of naturalism that can serve as a hermeneutic and philosophical standard against which certain things may be judged naturalistically acceptable or unacceptable. On Flanagan’s account, Buddhism ‘naturalized’ is primarily a Buddhism, “without the mind-numbing and wishful hocus-pocus.” Instead, he sets out to sketch (...) a version of Buddhism (or a new view inspired by it) that is consistent with neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory and scientific materialism, including ‘neurophysicalism’ or the view that “mental events are brain events.” However, classical Buddhist philosophers rejected materialism on philosophical, not merely dogmatic, grounds. In contemporary terms, Buddhist philosophers saw that phenomenal consciousness, intentionality, and mental causation present serious problems for materialism. So, rather than dismissing Buddhist anti-materialist accounts of mind as simply ‘hocus-pocus’, in this chapter takes up the question of whether and how these views might inform a naturalistic Buddhist philosophy. The question, then, is whether a naturalistic Buddhism requires some form of neurophysicalism. It is argued that it does not, by way of examining two distinct versions of naturalistic, but non-physicalist accounts of consciousness reconstructed from the Indian Buddhist tradition. The first, drawing on the work of Dharmakīrti, is a form of trope dualism. The second, drawing on the work of Śāntarakṣita, is a form of pragmatic pluralism that gives a central place to consciousness. And while these two accounts are distinct, and in some important respects incompatible, what they have in common is the idea that consciousness is both non-physical and fully natural. (shrink)

This chapter sheds new light on the interaction between Chinese Buddhism and Confucianism by exploring and comparing the thoughts of the ninth century Huayan-Chan Buddhist Zongmi 宗密 and the twentieth century Neo-Confucian Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. It reveals the structural parallel between their opposing theories: both hold a doctrine of true mind as the central component, and both are influenced by the tathāgatagarbha 如來藏 doctrine of The Awakening of Faith. The former uses them to synthesize Huayan and Chan Buddhist soteriology; (...) the latter assimilates them into his framework of Neo-Confucian moral metaphysics. Seen as a response to Zongmi’s criticism of Confucian metaphysics in general, and the shortcomings of the mandate of heaven and the lack of causal theory in particular, Mou stresses the universality of the Confucian Dao, which is supported by the Song Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi’s unified ontological principle. Rather than appealing to the mandate of heaven, Mou makes clear in following Wang Yangming that the Confucian Dao can be manifested by the sage through his infinite intellectual mind, which is immanent in every human being, so as to solve the problem of the highest good without postulating a transcendent god nor appealing to the karmic causality. Mou’s response, supplemented by other Neo-Confucian theories such as Xiong Shili’s and Tang Junyi’s, is a prominent example of how Confucian tradition meets the challenge of Chinese Buddhism while absorbing Buddhist influence. However, the author also points out that Mou’s Neo-Confucian philosophy provides a possibility of defending Chinese Buddhism in face of the critique raised by Critical Buddhism. (shrink)

The Origin of Human Nature offers an original and fertile way to integrate spiritual and scientific views of human evolution. It offers a new and refreshing alternative to the way we think about our origins - random mutation (mechanistic neo-Darwinism), Genesis (God did it all personally), and Intelligent Design (God personally does what we can't otherwise account for). The result is an invigorating perspective on how our best qualities - our capacity for love, our appreciation of beauty, our altruistic capability, (...) our creativity and our intelligence - have come into being and evolved. By showing evolution as a creative and intelligent process with its own inherent logic, The Origin of Human Nature resolves the dilemma of how to have both truth and ethics at the same time. Instead of starting in an imagined remote and uncertain past and moving to the present, this book starts at the certain and immediate present and works back. That consciousness, creativity, and intelligence exist is certain. The question is, how can these have evolved? Dr. Albert Low has made a study of human nature throughout his life. In writing this book, he draws on his prolonged meditations on creativity and the human condition, his years of providing psychological and spiritual counseling, and a wide-ranging knowledge of Western psychology, philosophy, and science. He takes issue with Richard Dawkins' published texts, and provides a point-by-point rebuttal of the neo-Darwinist argument. (shrink)

This essay explores the sudden emergence of Neo-Confucianism as an independent intellectual and professional calling, and its adoption by both scholars and political leaders as the dominant intellectual and epistemological discourse in early modern Japan (1600-1868). I shall do this by examining two of the mostimportant early Neo-Confucian converts from Zen Buddhism, Fujiwara Seika and Hayashi Razan during the late 16th and the early 17th centuries. Their conversions were initially separate events, each prompted by personal circumstances and choices. But (...) these converts later sparked the appearance of other exclusive Neo-Confucianists, and eventually to the new intellectual mainstream of a Neo-Confucianism independent of Buddhism, during the Tokugawa period. Previous scholars have approached the issue of these converts from Zen to Neo-Confucianism through the lens of a philosophical shift. However, this is a hasty conclusion which ignores socio-intellectual factors surrounding these converts’ life and situation. My preliminary research reveals that Neo-Confucianconversion was not the result of philosophical change; rather, it was propelled by practical and utilitarian motivation. They abandoned Buddhism to locate themselves as ‘professional’ Neo-Confucianists, and this strategy successfully served their purpose. (shrink)

The publication presents for the first time the B. Baradin’s theses to A. Dorzhiev’s lecture that was supposed to be delivered at the international Buddhist exhibition in Leningrad in 1927. A. Dorzhiev was a famous Buryat lama who received the academic title of Geshe (the highest philosophical academic degree in the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Buddhism) upon completion of his philosophical education in the monasteries of Mongolia and Tibet. After 1918, he was involved in organizational issues of the Buddhist (...) Sangha in Russia. B. Baradin was an academic scientist and public figure, a professor at St. Petersburg University, and the author of studies on the history and teachings of Tibetan Buddhism. After the revolution of 1917, he began working in Buryatia in various administrative positions, focusing on the organization of the scientific and cultural life of the Republic. Their main idea is that the modern world consists of the two equal parts - East and West, unification of which is possible and even necessary for the further development of humanity. The system-forming teaching of the East is Buddhism; and the lecture hold on those aspects of Buddhist philosophy that could be compared with the teachings of the West. Four points are highlighted: 1) Buddhism is comparable to Darwin’s theory in that both consider humans in the context of all living beings in an evolutionary manner; 2) Buddhism, like science, accepts the determinism principle; 3) the Buddhist concept of shunya is similar to the relativistic principles of physics; and 4) the system of Buddhist psychotechniques is similar to the theory of reflexology. B. Baradin concludes that Indo-Buddhist culture and European culture are complementary and their rapprochement will bring us closer to a truly universal culture. The theses mentioned here are, apparently, the first systematic exposition of the views of neo-Buddhists-renewalists on the points of convergence between Buddhist and Western cultures. (shrink)

The author examines some Confucian-trained Tokugawa Japanese scholars who were concerned about the deleterious impact of Buddhism on native Shinto thought and practice. Several leading Confucian-trained scholars appealed to Zhu Xi’s thought in various ways to reinforce and preserve Shintoism and its original spirit.

The author examines some Confucian-trained Tokugawa Japanese scholars who were concerned about the deleterious impact of Buddhism on native Shinto thought and practice. Several leading Confucian-tr...

ABSTRACTIn this study, I examine the Confucian influence upon An Inquiry into the Good, the first publication of Nishida Kitarō. Nishida’s student Kōsaka Masaaki depicts his mentor’s conception of the good in terms of realising the 'Mandate of Heaven'. Taking this to be indicative of the importance of Confucianism for Nishida’s early thought, I compare his philosophy of pure experience and ethical project of ‘self-realisation’ with corresponding ideas found in the Confucian corpus. I especially focus on the Great Learning and (...) Doctrine of the Mean as interpreted by the Neo-Confucian Wang Yang-Ming. This study builds upon the pioneering work of Michel Dalissier, Dermott Walsh and David Williams on the Kyoto School and Confucianism. My portrayal of Confucianism is indebted to the ‘philosophical’ translations of Roger Ames, David Hall and Henry Rosemont, Jr., which bring into relief the tradition’s ‘relational ontology’ that Graham Parkes teaches is shared by the Kyoto School. (shrink)

J.N. Findlay was a South African philosopher who published from the late 1940s into the 1980s. He had a prestigious international academic career, holding many academic posts around the world. This article uses a textual comparative approach and focuses on Findlay’s Gifford Lecture at St Andrews University between 1965 and 1970. The objective of the article is to highlight the extent to which Findlay’s philosophical writings were influenced by Mahāyāna Buddhism. Although predominantly a Platonist, Findlay drew influence from Asian (...) philosophy and religion, particularly Mahāyāna Buddhism. In these lectures, he applies the metaphor of the Platonic Cave to investigate Hegelian and Husserlian approaches to knowledge. Though he was a leading Hegel and Husserl scholar, his reading of these two philosophers is strongly influenced by Mahāyāna Buddhism, resulting in a unique mystical interpretation of these two philosophers. Revisiting Findlay’s writings is significant for two reasons; firstly, he investigated Buddhism prior to the Asian religions being included in Religious Studies departments’ purview in South African universities, and secondly, his interpretation of two prominent Western philosophers along Buddhist lines provides an early attempt at decolonising the predominance of Western philosophical views of knowledge.Contribution: This contribution forms part of a larger collection of essays investigating philosophical works that have had a significant impact on the study of religion. This contribution investigates the Buddhist influence on J.N. Findlay’s philosophical readings of Husserl and Hegel. (shrink)

This highly accessible book provides a comprehensive unpacking and interpretation, suitable for students and scholars in all fields, of towering philosopher Mou ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 151-165 [Access article in PDF] Santayana and Buddhism: The Choice between the Cross and the Bo Tree Paul Grimley KuntzEmory UniversitySantayana honors Gotama Buddha as a profound religious genius as well as an original philosopher. Gotama's way is genuine spiritual wisdom, and constantly compared with Christian mysticism as a way of enlightenment. It is therefore understandable that a Spaniard, who learned his catechism in (...) Ávila, and who was educated in the New England of Emerson and other Transcendentalists who honored Oriental wisdom, should have so much to say about the Buddha and Buddhism.The effort of this paper is to gather many of the isolated passages to give a coherent picture of Santayana and Buddhism. One difficulty to be overcome is that the philosopher rarely quotes his sources (the exception is a single quotation from Dasgupta). Although Santayana has numerous opinions, he does not reveal on which translations he has relied. Nor does he contrast different traditions of Buddhists. To overcome the vagueness of scholarship, I have used the volumes found in Widener Library: the sorts of books known to Santayana's dissertation director, Josiah Royce, and those of a sympathetic sort that had led Santayana as early as the writing of his dissertation on Rudolf Hermann Lotze to reject the latter's defiantly Christian and Western contempt for oriental "superstition." The sympathy can be expressed as similar to that of Schopenhauer in reading the Upanishads or Wilhelm von Humboldt in studying the Bhagavadgita. Santayana's study makes him aware of his Catholicism but he is unlike the Jesuit Dahlmann who attacks Buddhism as Nihilism. Santayana is more like his contemporaries who worked in psychology and philosophy of religion. Although Friedrich Heiler's work 1 and writings of James Bissett Pratt 2 were a bit too late to have influenced Santayana, comparison serves to illuminate and strengthen Santayana's conclusions. Perhaps Heiler is even more appropriate because Buddhistic insights remind him of those of St. Theresa. Santayana would support Pratt's view that Nirvana is not the annihilation of all desire but the extinguishing of evil passions. What Santayana finds congenial in Christian Neo-Platonism and in Spinoza, as well as in Buddhism, is the achievement of freedom of the spirit. 3 It has become a commonplace of world history that the two greatest founders of religion whose ways of salvation triumphed in Europe and in Asia respectively are the Christ and the Buddha. Philosophers of religion like Heiler accept both as saviors with a universal message, one, Jesus "the master of prayer" ("der Meister des Gebets"), the [End Page 151] other, Gotama "the master of contemplation" ("der Meister der Versenking"). Santayana is not concerned with the fact of the success of their missions, for there are indeed other triumphs such as Mohammed's Islam, and if it be classified as a religion, Marx's Communism. Santayana is hardly offering his services as a philosophic mediator, as Whitehead tries to do in Religion in the Making, to bring the two communities of faith to a closer approximation of a truly universal religion. 4Santayana reveals great personal depth as he ponders the contrast between the Gospel and the Fourfold Noble Truth. What is the appeal of Christ on the Cross dying "to save us?" What is the appeal of "the serene Buddha, lifting the finger of meditation and profound counsel?" 5 These questions are asked in a meditation in Soliloquies in England in the sympathetic way of those American philosophers who like Pratt have the option of remaining Christian or converting to Buddhism. William James might well have patted Santayana on the back for struggling with the alternatives, for wrestling with a live option. Probably because of Buddha's message of truth, Santayana has shifted from religion as poetry, which James considered "rotten," to how "a general truth about existence and experience" is symbolized poetically, which James would consider healthy.In answering the question "What does the cross signify?" Santayana strips away the "various analogies, legal, sentimental, or chivalrous," and he... (shrink)

A contribution to the sixth installment of the Common Knowledge symposium “Apology for Quietism,” this article addresses a) the extent to which the familiar term “Buddhist quietism” is legitimate, b) the use of the term by Jesuit missionaries in Asia at the time that Catholic quietism was briefly flourishing in Europe, and c) the use of the term in the European philosophical controversy over Spinozism. Faure argues that, in most cases, the European critique of Buddhism was aimed at European (...) enemies. Chan Buddhism in China and Zen in Japan came to be associated with nihilism as well as quietism, and the association proved resilient down into the twentieth century, but the Jesuit critique has a peculiar provenance. The Jesuits in China borrowed arguments against Buddhism from neo-Confucianist allies, yet the Confucian critique of Buddhism was itself indebted to arguments that had been directed by Buddhist schools against one another. Certain Chan schools had accused other Chan schools of quietism and nihilism, and Western scholars even in the later twentieth century have taken sides in these disputes as well. However, Faure argues, the “no-thought” of Chan is not the “blank slate” of Christian quietism, on which God engraves his will and blessings. Nor does Buddhist quietism lead to the extasis of mystical union. Moreover, Buddhism was perceived by East Asian rulers mainly as an ideological weapon and only secondarily as a soteriological doctrine. Indeed “warrior monks” in Japan formed bands that attacked all who threatened their interests, and the country could not be unified under Tokugawa rule until this activist Buddhism was quelled. The article concludes with an expression of admiration for quietism and a wish that there might be more of it in Buddhism now. (shrink)

In recent years, scholars have become increasingly interested in reconstructing a Buddhist stance on the free will problem. Since then, Buddhism has been variously described as implicitly hard determinist, paleo-compatibilist, neo-compatibilist and libertarian. Some scholars, however, question the legitimacy of Buddhist free will theorizing, arguing that Buddhism does not share sufficiently many presuppositions required to articulate the problem. This paper argues that, though Buddhist and Western versions of the free will problem are not perfectly isomorphic, a problem analogous (...) to that expressed in Western philosophy emerges within the Buddhist framework. This analogous problem concerns the difficulty of explaining karmic responsibility in a world governed by dependent origination. This paper seeks to reconstruct an approach to free will consistent with Madhyamaka philosophy and, in so doing, to demonstrate that the mutual exclusivity of positions such as hard determinism and libertarianism is, from the Madhyamaka perspective, merely superficial. By building on the perspectivalist theory advanced by Daniel Breyer, it is clear that a Madhyamaka stance on free will demands the wholesale abandonment of perspectives, such that the idea of any one solution as definitive is disavowed. Taken to its logical conclusion, therefore, perspectivalism entails the relative truth of perspectivalism itself. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Duality and Non-Duality in Christian Practice:Reflections on the Benefits of Buddhist-Christian Dialogue for Constructive TheologyWendy FarleyThe question before us is the desirability of Buddhist-Christian dialogue in the work of (what Christians call) constructive theology. As a feminist theologian whose work is ever more deeply shaped by such a dialogue, my immediate answer is an unequivocal yes.1 This dialogue fits a general pattern over two thousand years in which theologians (...) have drawn from the wisdom of other traditions or cultures to better understand the mysteries of human experience. Without neo-Platonism and Aristotle there could hardly have been anything we recognize as Christian theology. Without pre-Christian Irish religion, there would be no Saint Brigit or Celtic Christianity. Without phenomenology, process, and Marxist philosophy the greatest works of twentieth-century Christian thought would not exist. Christianity, like all religions, is a moving river changed by time and culture and nearly as interiorly diverse as its members. The dialogue with Buddhism might be seen as a contemporary example of Christianity's openness to exchange with other ways of thinking that broadens and deepens its best insights. It is perhaps analogous to Origen's reliance on neo-Platonism or Thomas Aquinas's inspiration by the rediscovery of Aristotle.2The porous boundaries between Christianity and its culture open it to wisdom beyond itself but they also open it to cruelty and ignorance. Nothing protects religions from participating in the human condition and thus the prejudices and power structures that mutilate human society. Consumer culture and oppressions by class, ethnicity, and gender are seamlessly incorporated into Christian identity. The tacit synthesis of a culture's values with those of a religion neutralizes possible critique and can elevate a society's oppressions to a sacred duty. For this reason, too, dialogue with Buddhism is important to call Christianity back to its ethical moorings in the ideal of universal love and compassion.Religions are porous to the world around them, but they tend to conceal this from themselves and often imagine themselves to be not only untainted but also uniquely [End Page 135] qualified to mediate salvation. Religions provide human beings with language and practice through which dimensions of reality that cannot simply be read off of nature or experience are (in some sense) encountered. This is their great gift. The difficulty of religions is that tradition can become an end in itself. Because a tradition really does offer meaning and tools for transformation it is easy to slip into the existential posture of so idealizing a tradition that it seems in some direct and exclusive way to correlate to ultimate truth. The curvature of the ego onto itself, so attached to its own pain and pleasure that everything else seems a mere shadow, moves from the microcosm of the self to the macrocosm of religious tradition. The particular religion—or that element within it with which I identify—becomes identical with sacred reality. In the hostility to other religions characteristic of many Christians we see the illusion of egocentrism in its religious form. Paul Tillich described this tendency to absolutize itself as the demonic distortion of religion.3 Religious dialogue is a potent medicine against this overattachment to one's own tradition.These different senses in which a religion integrates into itself the wisdom and illusions of its time and place create enormous diversity within a religious tradition. Root concepts within Christianity concerning soteriology, divinity, and suffering do not have any agreed upon meaning. That is, there is no "Christian" view of salvation. Gregory of Nyssa's ideal of theosis, Luther's emphasis on salvation by grace through faith, an evangelical's experience of being born again, a liberal Protestant's commitment to social justice are so diverse that they seem to represent almost different religions.In light of the malleability and interior diversity of traditions, dialogue may not be between two self-sufficient religions but between participants who inhabit their tradition in a variety of ways.4 With this in mind, I would like to experiment with practice as a basis for some kinds of dialogue. Practice is concretely located in a religious tradition and yet reflects... (shrink)

This article (1) offers a relatively comprehensive survey of criticisms of Buddhism made by the influential Chinese philosopher Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130-1200) with translations of key passages, and (2) proposes that these criticisms are best understood as targeting the implicit presuppositions and practical implications of Buddhist teachings, not so much the explicit doctrines of the Buddhists. The article examines three sets of criticisms. The first has to do with Buddhist soteriology, the fundamental priority of Buddhist salvation, which Zhu takes (...) to be egoistic and a corruption of the more relationship-oriented nature of ethics itself. The second set of criticisms concerns Buddhist over-reliance on meditation as a form of mental discipline, which in Zhu’s view leaves Buddhists ill-equipped to take independent standards of right and wrong into account. He proposes instead that Confucian “reverential attention” (jing 敬) is the better means by which to reshape one’s intentions and emotions in light of objective standards. The final criticisms are of the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness. Here Zhu seems to be an uncharitable critic, suggesting that Buddhists treat all things as illusory and without a certain ethically significant relationship to the larger world. But a closer examination of the evidence shows that he was both aware of more defensible notions of Buddhist emptiness and, at the end of the day, unconvinced that Buddhist practices were conducive to realizing them. (shrink)

The Buddhist and Daoist influences on the origins of the Taijitu and their influences on T’oegye’s philosophy are discussed. The notion of ji (tranquillity) is taken as an example on which the Neo-Confucianism debate and the limits of verbal representations are shown. T'oegye adherence to Zhu Xi in relying to the doctrine of mindfulness is taken into consideration as one of the central ones in the Ten diagrams, in contrast to Zhou Dunyi's emphasis on tranquillity. He followed the Zhu Xi's (...) line in a direction of commenting the commentaries or a form. He strongly relayed on words, although as a supplement to the diagrams. By this hediminished the force of the cartography of spirit so central in Chinese Song Neo-Confucianism. In T’oegye is not calm and tranquillity per se, but a conscious and wakeful state of absolute mental quiescence - one of the polar conditions of consciousness. (shrink)

In recent years, the self-representational theory of consciousness emerged as a trend that moves beyond the debates between first-order and higher-order theorists, and the HOP (higher-order perception) versus HOT (higher-order thought) debates among higher-order theorists. This theory seems to offer us a model of consciousness that is closer to truth, but it also has limitations. My study will particularly address these limitations and attempt to overcome them by developing a theory of consciousness that is deeply rooted in the Buddhist epistemological (...) tradition. I will illustrate the dual-aspect structure of consciousness and criticize the self-representational theory for collapsing the distinction between these aspects. This study will lead to what I call a theory of the accumulation of aspects. (shrink)