carterk

DejaVudew:

Whether one likes Confucianism, Taoism or Buddhism or not they have a special lure for skeptics and atheists because you do not HAVE TO believe in a god for them to work. Of course many people across Asia do believe in god(s) and one or more of the other philosophies as well.

My personal non-academic belief (after living in Thailand) is that one reason belief, religion and philosophy is so different over there is that there was no Dark Ages or Inquisition to really root out the animism and old beliefs. So many people's worldview is by our standards pretty strange and inclusive of lots of beliefs.

For example one day I came home from a weeklong trip and my Thai host family was having this big New Years party with multiple Buddhist monks doing some purification ritual that kept the (animist) evil spirits out of the family compound and everyone's kwam (souls, everyone has about 15) in their bodies.

This kind of thing is totally typical. My host family was affluent and very well educated (pa was the provincial head of the Ministry of Forestry, two of the kids were studying in University).

Another example, Thai animist belief says that it is easy to disrespect or scare your kwam out of your body, which leads to illness. So people have all thesekwam respecting customs that everyone practices VERY SERIOUSLY. Next time you see a southeast asian with a white string around their wrist, that is a blessed string to help keep their kwam in.

To get back to my original point, many Thai will do all of this and set up an altar to their ancestors, which is pretty confucian. they may also go see a traditional chinese medicine practicioner when they are sick, and MUCH of that is based of Taoist beliefs.

From a western point of view this is all mixed up, and we are raised not to do that. Either this god is true OR that one, not both! the side effect which many atheists also find salutary is that they are less likely to be fanatic fundamentalist types about their belief systems.

I love Asian culture! It is so interesting!

Eudaimonist

I guess that is similar to the way non-theists can also find allure in secular Western philosophies, such as Ayn Rand's Objectivism and ancient Greek eudaimonisms (e.g. Stoicism). Objectivism is atheistic, but the ancient eudaimonistic philosophies did tend to assume the existence of the Greek gods, though belief in them wasn't required to practice the philosophy.

[ November 11, 2001: Message edited by: Eudaimonia ]

DejaVudew

awww...you guys missed the most important part of my post.

Where would you suggest I begin to start learning about Eastern philosophy/religion? Any good books, ect? I mean, I'm going to take that class, but that's a year from now(it's only offered in the Fall) and I'd like to go ahead and get started.

Eudaimonist

For Zen Buddhism I recommend Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki.

Boshko

read the Tao Te Ching

kctan

"Zhong Guo Zhong Jiao Tong Si" (2 volumes) great book on the religions of China beginning from the dawn of time to the republic era of the 1950s. One thing to note is that it is in chinese.



Another is to post questions here & hope that it get answered. Or you could check out the previous posts here which I've made a link to some sites featuring religions & philosophy subjects on China.

Edited for spelling...

[ November 12, 2001: Message edited by: kctan ]

carterk

I found Sources of the Chinese Tradition very helpful. It is a collection of good translations of important works. They have volumes for Japan and India, too. You can also see if there are any "interfaith understanding" type lectures put on by Buddhist communities in your area. My buddhist friend does those all the time so westerners can "get it." ALso, at the college I went to the Religion dept was always doing these little intradepartment talks or brown bag lunches on interesting topics.

Go talk to the professor who offers the class in the Fall. Ask her for copy of the reading list early and (if you want to insure an A in the class) ask her for copies of anything she has published on the topic. After that, she will probably even be willing to meet with you for an hour or so each month to answer questions... This kind of thing is the professor equivalent of giving your cat a slice of mouse, catnip and tunafish pie.

boneyard bill

F.S.C. Northrop's The Meeting of East and West is a very good book but it is not a casual read. You would need to study it. Peter Harvey's An Introduction to Buddism is a very good general history. It's quite readable and not terribly long. For Zen and mahayana Buddhism, any of the books of D.T. Suzuki are good although Suzuki is biased in favor of Rinai Zen rather than Soto Zen. Avoid all of the books by Christmas Humphreys. He's a theosophist and this taints his view of Eastern religion and philosophy.

copernicus

Dejavudew, you can learn a lot from source materials and adherents of both creeds, but I think that the best description might come from an outsider--someone who is a religious skeptic. One of my favorite authors is Gerald A. Larue, an emeritus professor of Biblical History and Archeology at ACLU. Ancient Myth and Modern Life is a fascinating history of the development of Abrahamic mythology, but Freethought Across the Centuries contains a very nice comparative study of the evolution of religions and their freethinking critics. Chapter 14 on China compares Confucianism and Taoism, as well as other Chinese religious movements. On these two, Larue wrote (p.332):
It was only in the 2nd century AD that Taoism began to imitate the Buddhist religion that was sweeping China. At that time, Taoist writings were canonized, and Lao-tze and some associates took on the aura of divine personages. In the 11th century, the religion took on a notion of heaven and hell, as well as some folkloric Chinese gods. Nowadays, Taoism is considered defunct, although people who are prone to mysticism still believe in some of its magical rituals.

[ November 25, 2001: Message edited by: copernicus ]

Vorkosigan

Confucianism, as Kong Zi intended it, was a human-centered political and social philosophy. It was atheist to the core. In Medieval times it got mixed up with Legalism, a facist philosophy that advocated the police be so nasty that citizens would fear them more than invading soldiers, and the result was the authoritarian, control-oriented political philosophy we all know today.

Confucians emphasized logic and rationality, but were uninterested in the world outside human beings. Taoists, by contrast, were empirical but distrusted reason and rationality. The Taoists were also really into sex in both a practical and mystical way, and until the 4th or 5th century AD had training centers in their temples for newly-weds. Repressed Confucians and Buddhists put a stop to that.

The second volume of Needham's Science and Civilization in China contains a thorough introduction to the major philosophical/religious views of the Chinese.

Michael