Additional comments on Chinese and Japanese traditions

After reviewing assignments or getting certain questions I often send out messages through Nicenet dealing with points that have come up.  For each section I am going to include some of these past messages and occasionally add to them.


DISTINGUISHING RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

In studying the Chinese material in the two chapters of the text, you'll see the focus (expected for the course) is on what is specifically religious.  However, as you have already seen with both Hinduism and Buddhism, we also have the same kind of basic questions about how we know what is true, how we recognize what is real, and how we decide what is good that are found in Western philosophy. 

In Indian philosophy, unlike what we have in the tradition we have inherited from the Greeks, there is an assumption that we arrive at the answers through an intense process of meditation leading to some type of personal enlightenment.  Chinese philosophy is more like Western thought in that there is not such a reliance on what otherwise can be called mystical experience.  Confucian philosophy in particular asks us to draw just on our experience of being human, although this is an experience shaped by specific cultural factors (the role of the family, for instance).  Daoist philosophy is more complex in that there is the political emphasis we have in the Dao De Jing as well as the personal advice of someone like Zhuang Zi.

Philosophy in India developed in a specifically religious context, but this is not true of Confucian or Daoist philosophy.  There is a Confucian religious tradition as well as a Daoist one, but specifically philosophical issues seem remote from both.  In the West we certainly have seen efforts to approach Hindu and Buddhist philosophy in a non-religious manner (as in the Vedanta Society or in the various places offering guidance in Zen meditation), but this is not really true for Chinese philosophy apart from some fascinating adaptations of Daoist thought (as in the book The Tao of Pooh).

In a past assignment  I have asked  whether we should see the religious background of Daoism as just superstition, even though we might want to adopt a Daoist philosophical outlook.  Another way of looking at this, which we will explore more in the second semester, is how much of the "mythos" of a tradition do we need in order to live within its value system.  For instance, does it make sense to follow a Buddhist or a Hindu approach to life if we do not accept reincarnation as a reality?  For what we are doing now does the Daoist mythology with all its talk of the immortals help someone to live Daoist ideals of harmony with nature--or is just extra baggage that we are better off leaving behind?