 Not
refute, psychoanalyze: sick, self-hate
• Original sin, natural man as enemy of God
• And powerless—self-designed cage
• Christianity lies—self deception
 God sin heaven and soul
 Deceptive hatred of life/self
 Culprit
Greco-Roman St. Paul (Socrates)
• Hatred of “flesh” v Christ the evangel
• Last Christian died on cross
 No
god, heaven or soul
• Suffering v sin
 Honest
about renounce life and seek
nothing
• Nihilism—value nothing
 So
not powerless—we can achieve our
goal
• Promises Nothing(ness) & delivers
 V Christianity
 Tricks
of grammar and manufacture
realities
 Can’t get rid of God b/c still believe in
grammar
• Ontological argument and Parmenides “being”
 Creating a “real world”
 Denigrate apparent one
• Descartes and “self” (soul)
 Rationalism
structure: real apparent
• Reason v feeling, mind/body, eternal soul
 Experience as a dream, illusion, phenomenon
 Buddhism
as heresy in Hinduism
• Rejects ego and tied up with nirvana mystery
 Some kind of extinction
4
noble truths—Nietzsche take—honest
• Decadent—renunciation of life, power, desire
• But does have a plan—with a twist—paradox
Quiz on paradox of desire
 No
more rebirths = no more suffering
• Escape from samsara—cycle of lives
Grow
with political support
• Chosen for self-sacrifice and altruism
Typical
results of orthodoxy
• Schisms, councils, declarations of
heresy
Major
schism
• Mahayana and Theravada (Hinayana)
Hinayana—small
vehicle 乘
vehicle v great
• How many can be saved?
• Represented as deeper insight
 Buddha story: impurity or everyone
Metaphysical
issue
• Boddhisattva v arhat ideal
• Historical Buddha and Buddha
nature 如來
Only Mahayana succeed
 Exciting new ideas and concepts
• Puzzling and "foreign"
 Timing at the end of the Han dynasty
 Boredom with Han superstitious cosmology
 Neo-Daoism, Yi-ching, and what? (like today?)
 玄學 Dark learning, metaphysics,
 清談 pure conversation about non-being/nirvana
Serious
handicap in Buddha story
• Consider Confucian reaction
Prediction
at divine birth—father
wants political fulfillment
Discovers suffering, abandons
political/familial responsibility
• Seeks his own release from suffering
 Egoistic! (If Nietzsche likes it, how could
Confucius?)
• Enlightened and still needs moral
persuasion to share the insight?
Motivates
the bodhisattva ideal
Desire for nirvana prevents entry into
nirvana
• Last desire to be conquered
• No one worthy would ever choose to enter
nirvana
Returns
to help others achieve
• Zen wrinkle—Why make it the last?
 Reject real/apparent world (Nirvana/samsara)
Changes
accomplishment
another way
• Desires to insight
• Some realization, point of view,
insight that accounts for
achievement
• Intellectualizes Buddhism
Yogacara
and Madyamika
 Idealist—negative
• Only illusions, no reality
 If
self is an illusion, the only global
enlightenment has any significance
 Time slices of world consciousness
 Karmic role of desires
• Desire for this perception (the ego) to continue to
next moment
• Explains coherence of ideas
唯
心 (Consciousness only) to 華 嚴 (Hua Yen)
More
popular in China:
contradiction and silence
• Paradox and Daoism
• Spread as part of 玄學 (Dark learning)
• Buddha nature neither exists 有nor
does not exist 無, nor both, nor neither,
nor
 Daoist puzzles about 有 無
"Being"
school. Flip side of Yogacara
Only Buddha nature is real
• Everything else is an illusion/unreal
 If there are illusions, they are real (Buddha
consciousness)
 There are no illusions
Early
tendencies to Chan
• Even untouchables can be saved
 Hui
Neng 慧能and the Platform Sutra
六 祖壇 經
 Illiterate woodcutter becomes 6th
patriarch
• No words and easy enlightenment
 Southern barbarian(?)
 Poem
story: no dust to wipe from the
mirror
• No illusions to dispel
• Kyoto Stories
Pounds
rice, carries wood
Enlightened before he went to the
temple
Leaves monastery to return to
Gwangdong mountains!
• Throws away the robe signifying status

Cultural revolution against Buddhism
• Foreign, too intellectualized v practical
native philosophies
• Egalitarian tendencies
Southern
movement
• Internal reform of Buddhism along
Daoist lines
• Shift of center of Chinese intellectual
culture
Shen
Hui the real influence
• Vanquished Shen Xiu and Northern 禪
Chan
Sudden
v. gradual enlightenment
• Cultivation to some goal v
• Give up the goal!
 Exile
and triumphant return
 Story-telling skills
 Politics and money
 Authorship of the sutra
• Daoist Wang Wei hypothesis