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Introduction to Eastern Philosophy

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Title: Introduction to Eastern Philosophy


1
Introduction to Eastern Philosophy
2
Asking the Right Questions
  • Philosophy is so interesting precisely because it
    is not about the right answers, but about the
    right questions.

3
The Love of Wisdom
  • Philosophy literally means the love of wisdom.
    I define wisdom as knowledge that is
    transformational, the original meaning of the
    Greek word gnosis.

4
The Great Questions
  • You study philosophy so that you can explore some
    of the great questions of life. Perhaps the first
    philosophical question is to ask yourself why
    there is anything at all? Instead of nothing, why
    is there something called a universe, a cosmos?

5
More Questions
  • Next, you might ask What does it mean to be a
    human being, to have life? Do we serve any
    purpose in this great scheme of things? Is there
    any meaning to life?

6
Socrates
  • Socrates said that the unexamined life is not
    worth living. What does it mean to live an
    examined life?

7
Twoness in Nature
  • When we can see and accept the twoness in nature,
    then rather than duality, we can have polarity.

8
The Indestructible Question
  • When philosophy becomes the search for meaning,
    it is facilitating the indestructible question.

9
A Worldview
  • Wise people from around the world state that it
    is necessary to have a philosophy of life, a
    worldview. In fact, we already have one and it
    dictates how we live and the choices we make. The
    study of philosophy is to help encourage us to
    make this philosophy conscious.

10
A World in Crisis
  • Any college educated person needs to be aware of
    the issues facing our world and our country. And
    to face this crisis students need an integral
    wisdom, a wisdom that is universal and inclusive.
    Hopefully this class will be one step in the
    right direction.

11
Pure Awareness
  • Just pure awareness is pure openness.

12
What the Oracle Said
  • The oracle in ancient Greece at Delphi said
    Know thyself!

13
Movement Outward and Movement Inward
  • Amazingly enough, there can be a movement outward
    and a movement inward, both at the same time.

14
The Path of PhilosophyKyoto, Japan
  • The sacred is that which allows us to bear these
    two movements within us.

15
Soren Kierkegaard1813-1855
  • The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard wrote life
    was not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to
    be lived.

16
Seek Wisdom
  • Philosophy asks us to seek wisdom right there in
    the midst of the contradiction of all our fears
    and yearnings.

17
Religion or Philosophy?
  • Religion and philosophy have been separated in
    the Western world, but they are more united in
    the Eastern world.

18
Both the Yin and the Yang
  • A great symbol of this reconciling force is the
    Tao, which contains both the yin and the yang
    together at once. Could this be sacred?

19
Integral Philosophy
  • An integral approach understands the necessity of
    combining East and West in ones view of the
    world. We live in what is called the global
    economy, a global village. We have access for the
    first time to the wisdom of the whole world.

20
The Need for Critical Thinking
  • Openness is necessary, but so is a critical mind.
    You want to open your mind, but not so far that
    your brains fall out! A critical mind is not a
    mind that needs to judge and ridicule, but it is
    a mind that ask questions and looks for fallacies.

21
The Axial Age
  • What is this Axial Age? It is a virtual
    explosion of mental and cultural consciousness,
    infinitely richer and more sophisticated than any
    of its predecessors.

22
The Sacred
  • All people who are originally interested in
    religious and philosophical thought are concerned
    with the nature of ultimate reality. But they
    call it by different names such as Brahman, Tao,
    Ground of Being, the Ultimate, the Holy. In the
    Western world we most often use the word God.

23
God
  • When the word God is used to define ultimate
    reality it often has a personal taste to it. That
    is God is seen as a Cosmic Person-a divine being
    with will and intelligence who is just and
    compassionate and infinite in virtues. Some
    eastern philosophy considers God personal and
    some impersonal.

24
The Impersonal God
  • The impersonal God is the recognition that God is
    beyond all ordinary definition. The infinite
    cannot be understood by the finite mind. God is
    said to be pure spirit, not definable in words.

25
An Integral Approach
  • An integral approach will embrace it all and seek
    to understand it as a vast and amazing drama, a
    mystery drama, the mystery of mysteries.

26
Something Else is Going On
  • The other broad answeris that something else is
    going on behind the happenstance drama is a
    deeper or higher or wider pattern, or order, or
    intelligence.

27
A Different Question
  • Who created the world is a different question
    than How did the world begin?

28
Lack of Understanding
  • If you dont understand the immune system, then
    how do you explain why some people get sick and
    some do not during an epidemic?

29
No Turning Back
  • Once people started to look for laws that even
    the gods had to obey, there was no turning back,
    try as so many would.

30
A Belief
  • Philosophy begins with a belief that the world is
    intelligible.

31
Origins of Philosophy
  • The story of philosophy is the story of human
    reflection on life. The two principal sources of
    philosophy are curiosity about self and the world
    and a desire to overcome all kinds of suffering
    (John Koller).

32
Ultimate Questions
  • Ultimate, universal questions were being asked,
    and answers were being sought from a new quarter
    - the human minds critical analysis of material
    phenomena.

33
Natural Elements
  • The significant thing was that it was no longer
    the gods that were being spoken of but natural
    elements.

34
An Intelligible Whole
  • The early philosophers held that the universe is
    an intelligible whole. In other words, they
    presumed that a single order underlies the chaos
    of our perceptions and, furthermore, that we are
    able to comprehend that order.
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