Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song at Washington College for the course of “Introduction to Comparative Religion: Eastern.”

The four stages of the development of Daoism can be summarized as follows:

Firstly, it starts as a seriously dissenting voice among the so-called hundred schools of thought in the period of Spring and Autumn and Warring States (770-221 B.C.E), with “dissent” here mainly understood as being against, or simply different from the emphasis of Ruism (Confucianism) on education, ritualization, social activism and ethical governance.

The gist of the dissent of Daoism from Ruism in their classical period can be briefly described as follows:

In face of the rampant social turmoil and interstate wars created by the collapse of the late Zhou Dynasty, Confucius diagnosed the origin of the social disease as the “under-civilization,” or “under-humanization” of each human individual. Therefore, in order to recover the social order and regain the so-called “peace under the heavens” as elaborated by the text of Great Learning, Confucius’s ambition was to build an independent school to provide people with a more universal access to education, and furthermore, to cultivate students’ virtues and knowledge via a broad learning process of the fruits of ancient civilizations. Ultimately, Confucius intended his students to become a noble-minded, exemplary human, the so-called Junzi, and hence, get hired by governments to serve the society as ethical and competent civil leaders. For Confucius, this process of education and self-cultivation of a junzi is the ultimate path for the society to recover the delicate ritual system that once functioned well in early Zhou Dynasty, and hence, to realize the sustainable development of the civilization.

However, for the Daoist philosophers, such as Laozi and Zhuangzi, they have different understanding of the situation. They thought the cause of social turmoil is not the “under-civilization” of human individuals. It is actually the “over-civilization” of human individuals when their innocent, naturally flourishing human life gets complicated by the increase of human knowledge, the artificiality of human intelligence, the unrestrained social competition and the advancement of technology. In other words, for Daoist thinkers, education leads to the over-development of human intelligence, and if individuals rely upon this advanced development of human intelligence to compete for limited social resource, chaos will follow and government will fall apart. Therefore, rather than calling for more education and social engagement of the so-called noble-minded, exemplary individuals, Daoist thinkers advocate less education and less social engagement of human beings in general. Ultimately, a primitive natural state of society, where each individual enjoys their life alone with little use of technology and sociality, will be the ideal society human beings could ever have.

Of course, this is a rather very sketchy account of the contrast between Daoism and Ruism, and I intend the value of this account to be more heuristic than prescriptive. However, an important angle to understand the origin of Daoism, similar to the case of Buddhism versus Vedic and Upanishadic Hinduism, is indeed to grasp how different and similar it is in comparison to the Ru school which Confucius helped to transmit and strengthen. This is also the reason why it is appropriate to teach the Daoist tradition after Ruism in our course.

Secondly, everything we just talked of transpired in the pre-Qin period of ancient China. After Qin Dynasty reunified the Warring States and was shortly replaced by another unifying dynasty, Han Dynasty, Daoism, mainly in the form of the so-called Huang-Lao thought, played a very prominent role of statecraft and governance in early Han Dynasty, largely from 202-130s B.C.E. The major sociological reason for such a prominent role is that the Daoist political philosophy, as indicated by the above account, largely takes a “laissez-faire” approach which precludes the substantial interference and proactive coordination of governments with local people’s economic and social activities. This mentality fit very well with the need of early Han Dynasty to recover itself from the devastating wars and turmoil caused by the dynastic change between Qin and Han. In this period of its history, Daoist thought also incorporated a cluster of thoughts and practices that flourished here and there in the vast Han territory, and developed features such as the practice of sorcery, divination, shamanistic rituals, longevity, medicine, and the cosmological speculation over the all-pervasive correlation of everything in the universe via the theory of yin/yang and five phases.

Thirdly, however, under the reign of the Emperor Wu (156-87 B. C.E), the central government of Han Dynasty intended more ideological unity of its political system. In front of the Emperor Wu, there were mainly three options for him to achieve this: firstly, Legalism, which emphasizes strengthening the central authority of an empire through a strict law system of reward and punishment. This school of thought was once adopted by the prior Qin dynasty. It helped Qin to win over enemies on the battlefield and thus reunify the territory, but it failed Qin in the later peaceful time since Qin’s harsh punishments upon its subjects engendered uncontrollable resentments and rebellions. Qin accordingly became one of the most short-lived dynasties in ancient Chinese history. In light of Qin’s failure, Legalism seemed not quite a choice for Emperor Wu.

The second choice was Daoism, which, as stated, was favored by the Han emperors prior to Wu for quite a length of time. However, the “laissez-faire” approach of statecraft might be good for a time of recovery from devastating wars, but not equally fit for the sustainable development of a country, since the growth of local economic and political powers needs coordination, and the unity of the central government needs to be supported by a strong ideology.

So, eventually, propelled by Ru scholars’ persuading efforts such as Dong Zhongshu (179-104 B.C.E), the Emperor Wu chose Ruism, one lineage of thought that cherishes the values of ancient civilization, emphasizes unity within diversity, and favors a soft approach via education, family-nurturing, and ritualized public life to regain the desired unity. In other words, in the eyes of the Emperor Wu, the Ru tradition incorporates the good sides, avoids the bad sides from other schools of thought, and more importantly, can serve the diverse needs of social classes while still being able to unify the entire country as a whole. This decisive policy-move by the Emperor Wu was named by later Historians as “taking down a hundred schools of thought, while venerating the Ru statecraft alone.”

Then, we got to the fourth stage of the development of the Daoist religion in ancient China. The impact of the edict of the Emperor Wu in Han Dynasty to elevate the status of Ruism turned out to be extremely profound and long-lasting for the entire history of imperial China until early 20th century. Ruism became a state ideology, and its vast knowledge about ethics, statecraft and ancient civilizations constitutes the major criteria by which varying dynasties and imperial courts select governmental-officials among young and ambitious literati via the system of civil-examination. In other words, Ruism became the intellectual and spiritual foundation of the social elite of ancient China. This drove Daoism and its devoted affiliates and sympathizers, who were once very powerful in the court of early Han Dynasty, to find alternative social spaces to survive and evolve. In this regard, the establishment of the theocratic regime Tian Shi Dao (The Way of Heavenly Master) by Zhang Daoling (34-156 C.E) in the remote southwestern areas and in a time of rampant peasant rebellions in late Han Dynasty was a milestone event. This was the first time Daoism got established as an organized religion, and such a Daoist religion also started to construct its pantheon of deities, compile its canon, build its monastery, officialize its rules of rituals and ceremonies, and hence get intertwined with families and communities of its surrounding local areas.

However, despite that Tian Shi Dao being the first organized Daoist religion in ancient China, there were various Daoist religions created in the later history, which had no organizational relationship with Tian Shi Dao. On the other hand, although the Daoist thought lost its favor in the imperial court under the reign of the Emperor Wu in Han Dynasty, it never completely disappeared from politics. Rather, certain reigns of emperors in some dynasties actually were quite fond of the Daoist religion, and saw themselves as a loyal devotee of those Daoist deities. For the everyday life of local commoners and folks, we also witnessed a ceaseless process of intermingling and mutual-generating of practices and thoughts among the Daoist, Buddhist, Western, folk religions and the dominant Ruist social ethics. For instance, you’ll find strong traces of the Buddhist breathing technique in the Daoist method of “inner-alchemy”; you’ll find Daoist groups sometimes quite fervently advocated the Ru ethic of filiality to parents, loyalty to rulers and humaneness to all beings; you can even find the Catholic idea of “purgatory” to be overtly taught in some of the Daoist canon. In other words, in the fourth stage of the development of Daoist religion, it constantly meanders, metamorphizes, and proliferates into a loosely recognizable body of the so-called Daoist religion which includes a vast array of deviance, devolution, and diversity.

Because of this, I believe you must feel somewhat confused if you decide to learn Daoism starting from the most recent form of a Daoist religious order in the contemporary world (just as the assigned video indicates), since it would lie at one very end of a history which has evolved for almost three thousand years, and thus, was itself predominantly featured by diversity rather than unity.

Nevertheless, all trees, no matter how much ramified and widespread they seem, have their roots. By the same token, no matter how diverse Daoist orders can be from each other, they almost all read Laozi and Zhuangzi, the earliest Daoist texts in the initial stage of Daoist religion. Therefore, for our introductory course on Eastern Religion, we’ll spend some considerable time to read these two texts as well. I hope via this approach of being introduced to Daoism, we can be equipped with basic intellectual tools to understand the later, more colorful development of Daoist religions.

Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song at Washington College!

In this unit, let’s continue to talk about David Hume, not about his empiricist epistemology, but his so-called moral sentimentalism.

As discussed in last unit, Hume can be considered as a rare dissenting voice among modern thinkers, since he thinks it is “custom and habit” which plays the most dominant role in human knowledge about the objective natural world. His general attitude towards natural science, because of his emphasis upon custom and habit, remains modest since according to his theory, all human reasoning about cause and effect is based upon what we today call “induction,” and this implies that all scientific conclusions about causality are by no means certain and fixed once for all. Instead, they always succumb to testing, falsification and perfection, which is quite in line what we have discussed about Karl Popper’s thought on the distinction between science and pseudo-science, although Popper’s understanding of scientific methodology is somewhat different from Hume. In an era when the reputation of natural science was skyrocketing because of its unprecedented power of accurate prediction and technological transformation, we have to admire Hume’s modesty and reservation about how limited human knowledge can be.

However, in comparison with Hume’s ethics, I think the salient nature of Hume’s thought in epistemology will even pale. This is because Hume’s evaluation on the role of reason in morality is not even “modest;” it is actually a downright denial. In other words, Hume thinks in evaluating a character trait of human beings or their action as good or bad, virtuous or vice, morally right or wrong, “reason” does not play any role whatsoever. Therefore, contrary to the normal moral teaching (which we may hear too much during our daily conversations with each other) that urges human beings to listen to their reason rather than passion, Hume claims that reason, no matter how accurate and “true” it may sound, cannot play any role in motivating humans’ actions, and thus, it is actually passions, emotions, feelings, and in a word, sentiments which ultimately constitute the human judgement on moral virtues and vices.

Hume’s argument for this seemingly very counter-intuitive view is relatively easy to understand. He says “reason,” just as what he has mused in his epistemology, can only achieve two things: it is either about the relationship of “ideas” following the law of non-contradiction, or about cause and effect in matters of fact. The reasoning about the relationship between ideas can never motivate humans to act in their moral affairs because as explained in his epistemology, “ideas” are vague copies of “impressions”; they lack the vivacity and intensity of impressions such as the raw sentiments of pleasure and pain, and therefore, a mere contemplation of the ideas can never directly indicate the values of outside objects to human life, and hence, motivate human beings to react to these values. This is the reason why the presentation of data, statistics or mathematical reasoning in general rarely, if not never, motivates us to act morally towards a certain direction.

If reasoning is about cause and effect in matters of fact, considered by itself, this sort of reasoning is just to represent what happens objectively outside of human mind. Since it comprises of representations, this sort of reasoning would be like putting a screen between human mind and the outside world. In other words, since a mere representation of the outside world does not cause any direct perception of the good or bad of outside objects, reasoning in matters of fact cannot motivate our moral actions either.

Instead, Hume thinks that in order for any process of reasoning to have those possessive power to eventually grasp the attention of humans, and thus, motivate humans to react to circumstances, it needs to be conjoined with another fundamental component of human consciousness, that is the sentiment of pleasure or pain, as well as the triggered passions such as pride and shame, love and hatred. Understood in this way, the role played by reasoning in morality is merely twofold: firstly, if the awareness towards certain objects does cause the feeling of pleasure or pain, reason can help to check whether such objects exist or not, since one function of reason would be to represent the objects in the outside world. Secondly, the reasoning of cause and effect on matters of fact can help humans to find the means to fulfill their desires which are ultimately caused by the sentiment of pleasure or pain in the first hand. In other words, by all counts, it is the sentiment of pleasure or pain which helps humans to judge whether any outside object, such as a character trait of humans or any action, is morally good or bad, virtuous or vicious. Reason, using Hume’s own words, is just “the slave of passions,” and it can by no means be contrary to passions, since reason alone cannot motivate humans to act. What the normal moral teaching of listening to one’s reason rather than passions really conveys, according to Hume, is actually to use one passion to counteract another. This is because only passions can motivate humans’ moral judgment and behaviors, whereas reason merely comes afterwards to serve the actions out of passions as an instrument.

What is particularly interesting about Hume’s thought on the significance of sentiments in morality is that he thought while moral judgement is based upon the sentiment of pleasure or pain, it is not purely out of self-interest that humans evaluate certain deeds as virtuous or vicious. For instance, we can estimate certain character traits of our enemies, such as diligence, loyalty, or wisdom, as virtuous even if these virtues are contrary to our self-interest. Therefore, in order to have “sentiments” play the central role in moral judgment, Hume also thinks our moral consideration needs to be conducted from “a general point of view,” rather than from a merely selfish perspective. In other words, if we think certain character traits as being able to bring pleasure and joy to a certain human fellow or others, then, they can be judged as virtuous. This also brings us to another very important aspect of Hume’s ethical thought: sympathy. According to Hume, It is out of sympathy with the sentiments of human fellows that we ultimately deliver our moral judgment about virtue and vice regarding any potential moral event in human society.

When almost every named philosopher eulogized the triumphant role of reason in the modern era of Enlightenment, Hume’s skeptical voice towards reason using such a rigorous argument is really freshing, if not utterly convincing. It points out the limited role of reason in moral affairs, and most importantly, in order to live a good human life, individuals should pay more attention to cultivating their virtues, which are intimately interconnected with their moral sentiments, than acquiring advanced calculative power of human intelligence. Unfortunately, I do not think even today, human fellows have carefully listened to Hume’s advice. For instance, the educational system, from pre-K to higher education, is still dominated by a mentality of what I may call “intelligence first, and character second.” In other words, the cultivation of sentiments, emotions and feelings has not yet occupied a central role in the curriculum of modern educational institution. In this respect, I think philosophers and educators today really need to revive Hume’s thought for the sake of the general well-being of human fellows in modern society.

However, although Hume’s thought is indeed extremely valuable for reminding us of the significance of sentiments and passions for the good human life, his view that reason does not play any significant role in morality is also a little bit overstated, since he gives such a narrow definition of “reasoning” to make it exclusively address the relationship of lifeless ideas and represent objectively matters of fact. Defined as such, reason indeed has very little power to motivate moral thought and action. However, reasoning can also be about “values,” rather than just about ideas and facts. Per Hume’s analysis, the value of things ultimately derives from the sentiments they cause to human beings. However, just as indicated by his analysis of the role of “sympathy” in triggering our moral sentiments, “pleasure” has its different kinds, intensity and endurability. Accordingly, values of things to human life based upon such different pleasures can also be varying. In this sense, we can compare the values of things, character traits, actions, or even lifestyles and worldviews so as to “reason” about them in order to guide our moral reaction to things in the world. In other words, when things in the outside world affect us, our perceptions of them are normally entangled with our value judgments of them, and these value-laden judgments in turn can trigger a certain kind of emotions, which eventually motivate us to act. Actually, this identified sequence of stimuli – value-laden perceptions – emotions – behaviors is a major tool for today’s therapists to envision the significance of philosophy for mental health, since a philosophical understanding of certain aspects of human life can directly shape our perceptions of the outside world, which in turn will rectify certain kinds of self-defeating emotions such as stress, anxiety or depression due to our misperceptions of the value of things in the world.

Of course, my critique towards Hume is not a major one in comparison to his enormous contribution to the discussion about what really matters in morality among modern thinkers. In a certain sense, this critique can also be made compatible with Hume’s thought since moral sentiments are indeed a major source for our judgment of values of things in the world. In a word, if we include “values” as a major target of human reasoning, we can still claim “reason” plays a significant role in morality, and we indeed need to rely upon the cultivation of a specific kind of sentiments, which can be aided by our moral reasoning, to live a fulfilled good human life.

Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song at Washington College.

A couple of weeks ago, when we discussed the Hindu concept of Moksha, students in the class asked a series of good questions: How can we achieve Moksha? Who can judge one has already achieved Moksha? What shall we do if we do achieve Moksha? As we know, “Moksha” is the religious goal of ancient Hinduism, a goal of final release from the suffering cycle of reincarnation into another divine realm of being, which is thought of by the Upanishads as being achievable via one’s ascetic practice in the forest, and by the Bhagavad Gita as being achievable via fulfilling one’s social duty in an inner state of pure equanimity. In tandem, these texts also give us many beautiful descriptions about how one feels when “Moksha” is achieved. Words such as non-duality, union, equanimity, peace, joy, non-attachment are all used for the descriptions. Using these descriptions, together with some guidance from one’s spiritual mentor such as those Hindu gurus, one can confirm whether and to what extent one has achieved Moksha. Nevertheless, among all the asked questions, we cannot find a clear and easy answer from the texts to the last one: what shall we do if we can safely claim we do achieve Moksha (at least to a certain extent) ?

Interestingly, you can actually replace “Moksha” with any other religious goal envisioned by other religious traditions, ask the same questions, and then, you will find the asked questions actually have addressed a common and crucial aspect of human religious life across virtually all traditions.

For instance, if we replace “Moksha” with “Salvation,” we will find a Christian may be struggled with how she can make sure she will achieve salvation, at least to a certain extent, in this or afterlife, and what she should do if she does make sure of achieving it. The same can be said to the Buddhist goal of “nirvana,” the Ruist/Confucian goal of “obtaining one’s conscientious awareness,” and the Daoist goal of “achieving immortality,” etc. In a word, all major traditions are struggling with understanding a cluster of questions surrounding the tension of “ideal” vs “reality” that is so tangible to one’s spiritual life on a daily basis.

To indicate my general view on this issue, let’s use the two competitive poems written respectively by the founders of the Northern and Southern schools of the Chinese Chan Buddhism, Shen Xiu (606-706 C.E.) and Hui Neng (638-713 C.E.), as an illuminating example.

Shen Xiu was a very educated monk, who was versed in ancient Chinese and Buddhist texts from a very young age, and he was therefore acclaimed by his peers as the most probable person to become the Sixth Patriarch of the Chan school. To prove he had achieved the Buddhist enlightenment and thus compete for the recognition of the Fifth Patriarch as the legitimate heir, Shen Xiu writes:

The body is the bodhi tree
The mind is like a bright mirror’s stand.
At all times we must strive to polish it
and must not let dust collect.

In contrast, Hui Neng was illiterate and could not write any single word when he was put into a position by the Fifth Patriarch to grind rice in the monastery. Hearing what Shen Xiu wrote, Hui Neng responded that:

Bodhi originally has no tree.
The bright mirror also has no stand.
Fundamentally there is not a single thing.
Where could dust arise?

According to the legend recorded by the Platform Sutra, one canonical text of Chinese Chan Buddhism, Hui Neng was confirmed as the really enlightened human being, and he thus inherited the lineage of Chan and became the sixth Patriarch.

So, let’s ask the aforementioned three questions to these two poets, and see which one answers each of them well.

For Shen Xiu, one reaches enlightenment, which is the Buddhist religious goal of being aware of the true reality called “sunyata” (emptiness), through the so-called “gradual realization”: you need to do all sorts of daily practices and disciplines to rid of all dusts on your originally bright Buddha nature; if you continually do so, one day, you will eventually get there. However, for Hui Neng, the spiritual state of being aware of Sunyata is all encompassing. Since Sunyata refers to the interconnection of all beings in the universe, it has its potential “infinite” quality as well. Understood as such, no matter how hard we discipline ourselves according to the method suggested by Shen Xiu, the accumulation of finite means cannot lead to an infinite enlightenment. Therefore, Hui Neng’s poem essentially tells us that all means, though alleged as being able to lead to enlightenment, are by no means the condition of the enlightenment. They are best thought of as a certain kind of “trigger” or “stimulus,” rather than “premise,” and the genuine foundation for one to achieve enlightenment is that our bright Buddha nature is originally and already there. As Hui Neng’s poem says, there is originally no single thing to be attached to, and no dust can blur the original Buddha nature. Therefore, in reliance upon the so-called “sudden” enlightenment, one can achieve her religious goal in any place at any time while getting triggered by any circumstance.

So, for the first question, how can one achieve enlightenment, Hui Neng seems to have given a better answer.

Secondly, who can tell whether one has achieved enlightenment? In the legend, it was the Fifth Patriarch, Hong Ren, who discerned the more enlightened state of Hui Neng from the different poems, and this tells us that only enlightened humans can discern enlightened ones. However, the poems themselves do not address this question, and we can use our best to judge that Shen Xiu’s and Hui Neng’s poems get a tie under this question. The discernment provided by the Fifth Patriarch also speaks to one notable characteristic of Chan Buddhism: the state of enlightenment is deeply experiential, and ultimately beyond any human language can describe. Therefore, the handing-over of Buddhist teaching among generations will mainly rely upon a method called the heart-to-heart transmission, which at least contains two components: a practitioner needs to “get” the Buddhist teaching into her heart by herself at first; and then, she can seek convenient and practical means to inspire other practitioners also to “get” there by themselves. What gets transmitted eventually is not any reified form of Buddhist teachings in any material evidence such as words. Instead, it is the experience of the genuine reality of the world in reliance upon the rediscovery of one’s originally bright Buddha nature.

Finally, what shall we do once we achieve the enlightenment? I have to say, in my view, Shen Xiu’s poem is much better than Hui Neng’s to answer this question. If we more realistically evaluate the everyday condition of human living, we would find that even if we can claim to reach that enlightened state of experiencing something that is infinite, we cannot be so confident to aver that there is a possibility for ordinary human beings to stay in the same state forever. Human life is deeply ambiguous and changing: one enlightened state at one moment may be conducive to ignorance and obscurity at the next, and one seeming setback may be just a sign of another triumph. So, it may be true that we can achieve our religious goal, at least to a certain extent, at a certain moment of our life as it is triggered by a variety of factors, but we still need to diligently do something to maintain that enlightened state. Hui Neng’s poem tells us very little about how to maintain it, while Sheng Xiu’s says that in order to keep our awareness of our originally bright Buddha nature, we need to “strive to polish it and must not let dust collect,” which, in my view, makes a lot of sense.

Therefore, since Shen Xiu and Hui Neng are eventually on a tie regarding their competitive answers to the three important questions, if I am the Fifth Patriarch, I would not just simply appoint Hui Neng as my heir. I may need to wait for some time to see whether they, or a third person, can write a better poem to incorporate the insights from both sides.

In general, my own view on the tension of ideal vs reality in religious matters can be summarized as follows: In order to live a good spiritual human life, we need to balance the two aspects of ideal vs reality in any adopted spiritual lifestyle. On the one hand, we need a goal that can be so sublime that no real human situation can ever fully capture it. In this way, the goal will continually motivate ourselves to better ourselves so that our life never lacks its momentum to move forward. However, the so-envisioned spiritual goal cannot be so high and ethereal that no actual human effort can capture it in any substantial way. In other words, we need some methods, such as meditation, ritual performance, daily human interaction, etc., to taste the sweetness of the spiritual goal to a certain extent in real moments of human life. In this way, the spiritual goal would not have been made completely out of human reach, because otherwise, what is the point for us to practice religion or spirituality at all? However, given the first condition about the sublimity of a spiritual goal, whenever we feel we get there and hence have good reasons to believe that we enjoy the realization of the goal to a certain extent, we also need to constantly remind ourselves that this is a just partial and momentary realization, which is by no means the full manifestation of the ideal in reality. So, eventually, the spiritual state of a human being who has reached the desirable balance would be like this: she would constantly discipline herself to realize her spiritual goal in real life; however, whenever she reaches it, she would tell herself: yes, I realize you, at least to a certain extent, but I just want more.

(A more elaborated discussion of mine on this topic of religious goal vs realities can be checked via my essay on “perfectionism.”)

Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song at Washington College.

For a general introduction of the Hindu history of Buddhist religion, we can see the biography of the historical Buddha as Buddhism 1.0, Nikaya Buddhism as Buddhism 2.0, and Mahayana Buddhism as Buddhism 3.0. These were three stages of the development of the Buddhist religion in the ancient Hindu world before it migrated to other parts of Asia, such as to China, Korea, Japan, the area of Tibet and other areas of South and South Eastern Asia.

Texts of Mahayana Buddhism call itself as a “great vehicle” to help sufferers to reach the ultimate goal of the painless state of Nirvana, while calling its predecessor, the Nikaya form of Buddhism as “Hinayana,” viz., small vehicle, which, literally, is not great enough to reach the ultimate goal. Although today’s Buddhist learners do not need to buy into this apparently very sectarian nomenclature, it is indeed of significance to comprehend how Buddhism evolved before its migration to the non-Hindu world.

We once termed Nikaya Buddhism as a conservative sort of Buddhism in our previous lectures mainly because the following several reasons. Firstly, its philosophy still holds on to, quite strictly, the teaching of Four Noble Truths as the first sermon given by Gautama after his enlightenment, and tries to use organized arguments to reaffirm the sermon’s key concepts such as “no-self,” “co-dependent origination,” “suffering,” etc. In other words, Nikaya Buddhism still sees Buddhist teaching as somewhat a “thing,” and if one wants to reach enlightenment, she must seek this thing of Buddhist teaching at first, which means to read, meditate and practice the “thing,” and then, she can get what she aspires. Secondly, sociologically, this would imply the rigid boundary between religious professionals, viz., those monks and nuns in varying monasteries and religious orders, and lay people. According to the thought of Nikaya Buddhism, the enlightenment of lay people relies upon their rapport with the elite circle of Buddhist monks and nuns. Thirdly, since Buddhist teaching, as it was passed down in varying texts and other material evidences, were treated as a solid thing by Nikaya Buddhism, there was not too much a need for anyone to deify the Buddha so as to evoke his divine aid for the sake of reaching enlightenment. In this stage of Buddhist practice, if one wants to be a Buddhist, either, she needs to support a monastery to seek guidance; or she needs to become a nun herself to be trained of reading Buddhist texts and venerating the historical Buddha as her supreme teacher.

However, if one religion is organized as such, we can anticipate possibilities of new development from within it, since the power of human creativity on religious matters never ceases. To all the three mentioned aspects of Nikaya Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism made significant renovations, and once the renovations done, we would find the potentiality of Buddhism to metamorphose to other forms almost becomes infinite. Starting from around the common era until its migration into the non-Indian world, unique characteristics of Mahayana Buddhism can be summarized as follows.

Firstly, if the teaching of Sunyata (emptiness) based upon the nature of “no-self” (anatman) of things is thought of consistently, there is no reason not to employ it to the Buddhist teaching itself. If Buddhist teaching has no independent self either, then, there is really no legitimacy to prioritize any material evidence (which may include oral and written records of Buddha’s teaching, later commentaries on that, statues, relics, temples, ritual performances, etc.) so as to claim any absolutely necessary means to the Buddhist enlightenment. In other words, any means can be equally adequate to help individuals step on the path of enlightenment, which path to choose would all depends upon how individuals utilize these means for a convenient and practical sake. Therefore, in the most chanted Mahayana text, the Heart Sutra, it says: “There is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance, up to and including no aging and death and no distinction of aging and death. In the same way, there is no suffering, no source of suffering, no cessation of suffering, no path, no exalted wisdom, no attainment, and also no non-attainment.” (assigned reading, p. 127) Read carefully, this text would mean that there is no “four noble truths,” since there is no such a selfed-thing called “four noble truths”; however, there is no “non-four noble truths” either, since the opposite of “four noble truths” has no self too. Hence, whether to take “four noble truths” as one’s target of learning and path of enlightenment will become a secondary and dependent question. According to the Heart Sutra, by merely chanting the mantra of the “perfection of wisdom” – Om gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhir svaha, one would maintain to be in the state of great spiritual fulfillment, and “thoroughly pacifies all suffering.” By the same token, the same word can be said virtually to any other chosen path as long as it works.

Secondly, using the same logic, the religious goal of Buddhism, nirvana, cannot be treated as a selfed-thing either. In other words, there is really no such an enlightened place with such an enlightened state of mind, which can be separated from the everyday moments of the mundane world, the world of samsara. Therefore, the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna (first or second century C.E ?) used a logic of tetralemma to deny four possibilities of characterizing Nirvana: Nirvana is not a thing; Nirvana is not a non-thing; Nirvana is not both a thing and a non-thing; Nirvana is not neither a thing nor a non-thing. Why so? This is because since Nirvana is not a thing according to the consistent logic of the original Buddhist idea of Anatman, every other possibility of the tetralemma cannot be seen as a selfed thing either, since they all depend upon the first statement “nirvana is not a thing.” The conclusion reached by Nagarjuna is that “There is no distinction whatsoever between nirvana and samsara.” (p.130) In other words, one can achieve nirvana at any time and in any place of one’s mundane life as long as she chooses the right path fit for her situation. Together with the first renovation we explained above, this non-solidification of both the nirvana and the Buddhist teaching about nirvana, so-to-speak, makes the boundary between religious professionals and lay people completely unnecessary. In other words, lay people have no less chance than those professionals of reaching nirvana, and they can indeed achieve nirvana in any fashion conceivable to their own unique situations.

After this upgrade of Buddhist thought from its original 1.0 and 2.0 versions to this very radical 3.0 version, two major trends can be discerned before Buddhism’s migration:

Firstly, intellectuals, who like to engage Buddhist teaching in a more sophisticated way, would like to manifest the more intricate conceptual tendency of Mahayana Buddhism in a variety of ways. For instance, the school of “consciousness only” which was initiated by the philosopher Vasabandhu (320-400) developed a very sophisticated theory of human consciousness to serve their needs of Buddhist enlightenment. According to this theory, beyond the normal modes of human consciousness: vision, sound, odor, taste, touch, and the underlying perception of all of them, there is the seventh consciousness called manas which would attach the idea of “self” to both the perceiver and the perceived. Eventually, all these perceptions will be stored as seeds in the eighth consciousness called alayna, or granary consciousness, which will be furthermore reincarnated into the form of individual consciousness in one’s next life. Understood as such, this Buddhist theory of “consciousness only” furnishes an understanding of reincarnation more consistent with the Buddhist commitment to no-self, since what is reincarnated is not any individual self, but a stream of consciousness which contains seeds of perceptions of one’s previous life. For intellectuals who practice this type of consciousness-only Buddhism, the goal of nirvana is reached in the form of realizing the pure form of alayna consciousness which is not affected by any other mode of consciousness contaminated by the seventh one of manas, and this also means that they can eventually abandon the consciousness of self.

However, obviously, people with a favor towards intellectual sophistication merely belong to the minority of humanity. In tandem with this intellectual development of Mahayana Buddhism, we witness a very robust Buddhist movement similar to the development of devotional Hinduism out of its previous ascetic tradition. Namely, lay people believed they can choose their own forms of incarnated Buddha as deities to worship, and hence, to almost seamlessly embed their Buddhist practices with varying mundane concerns of their everyday life. For instance, in order to have a child, a lay person can go to a temple, pray to a Buddha who took charge, and wait for a good result in her household. To get a good afterlife, people can repeat the name of Amida Buddha for ten times with their sincere faith so as to be eventually transferred to a Buddhist paradise called the Pure Land where everything is so perfectly arranged, and no one would be reborn into suffered beings. At the same time, the image of Bodhisattvas became increasingly popular because a Bodhisattvas is an enlightened being who can achieve Buddhahood; however, in order to save other beings from suffering, the Bodhisattvas would simply delay his or her enlightenment, and re-dedicate his or her energy into the mundane world so as to save more and more people from suffering. In comparison, the image of accomplished monks and nuns in Nikaya Buddhism was perceived by this new Buddhist movement as an inferior arhat, who merely selfishly focused upon her own enlightenment without regard to the suffering of ordinary people.

Before concluding this lecture of early Mahayana Buddhism, I hope that you now get a better understanding on why later Buddhism, when it migrated to other parts of the world, can become so diverse and colorful. Since every individual is allowed to choose their own path to get rid of suffering and achieve nirvana, and not any path is prioritized over another, then, you can imagine the growing and diversifying potential of Buddhist thought. In next meeting, we’ll start to discuss the Chinese Chan and Japanese Zen Buddhism, where you will find an abundance of unexpected, “unorthodox,” and indescribable ways of Buddhist enlightenment.