Everyone talks about Plato, Kant, and Descartes, but what are baby's first eastern philosophers? Where does one start?
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Worth while eastern philosophers?
Everyone talks about Plato, Kant, and Descartes, but what are baby's first eastern philosophers? Where does one start?
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I think Zhuangzi is the only accessible text
I feel like the rest need too deep of an understanding of Chinese civilisation to appreciate fully
>Zhuangzi
Based.
My favorite part of his writings is his (or should I say, unironically, the people he chronicled) beef with Confucius. Dude seriously did NOT frick with him at all.
Nagarjuna is the greatest. Ignore everyone else.
Buddhists and Buddhism
>Nāgārjuna
>Vasubandhu
>Saṃghabhadra
>Dignāga
>Dharmakīrti
Confucians and Confucianism
>Confucius
>Mencius
He's not a Buddhist. He created his own religion
Why would you even want to bother with eastern philosophy? Plato took the best of it and synthesized with the western philosophy of discipline and boundary. He tamed the east and fed the west.
Genealogy. There are many parallels between Orphic cult ritual, Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle and the Upaniṣads, Nāgārjuna, and Vasubandhu. The dualism of form and matter (and of good and evil in Gnosticism and Neoplatonism) and the metempsychosis of Orphic cult ritual almost certainly originates from India.
>metempsychosis of Orphic cult ritual almost certainly originates from India.
Nah. You're reaching. The first time we actually can be certain that greeks met buddhists was after Alexander's conquest, hence the questions of King Milinda
India, not Buddhists. Orphic cult ritual and Buddhism are cousins who share the grandfather of India.
Only the student of India, Orphic cult ritual, and Pythagoras can understand Plato.
hoowee
>china
Lao Tzu
Wang Bi
Zhuangzi
>japan
The kokugaku school
>India
Laws of Manu
Ram Swarup
Also ignore the Nagarjuna recommendations, he's garbage and contradicts himself constantly. Two truths doctrine doesn't fix it either.
>the critic of Nāgārjuna omits Confucius from Chinese philosophy
I'm disappointed, but not surprised.
Confucius is just not interesting. If you want to deeper insight into chinese culture then read him, but if you like philosophy for deeper truths then he's a waste of time.
Uneducated Westerners think Confucianism is a non-metaphysical practical philosophy whereas that's just not true. It's fundamentally constructed around its own metaphysics.
Did I say otherwise? Having a metaphysics doesn't automatically make a philosopher worth reading.
Nāgārjuna is garbage and Confucius is not interesting, but Taoism is interesting. Any other bold opinions you would like to offer, enlightened one?
The tetralemma refers to beliefs people actual held. Existence refers to believers in an Atman, non-existence refers to materialists, existence and non-existence refers to Jains, neither existence nor non-existence refers to sceptics.
>existence and non-existence refers to Jains
what do you mean by this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekantavada
Basically, Jains believe any statement about ultimate reality is true with qualification
>Worth while eastern philosophers
None. The West is the superior culture and has produced so much knowledge there's no time or reason to read what a bunch of chang-poos wrote.
Tsongkhapa
try dogen zenji
>just heckin go with the flow, harmony n shiet
>hory shiet dis iz so wise….
There is a reason there was never an Alexander the Great or Napoleon that came out of the east (save for Genghis Khan). Their philosophy and religions are crafted to make their people a passive hivemind.
The famously passive Japanese (Buddhist-Confucian) empire
I don’t mean passive as in pacifist, I mean passive as in the people just lick the balls eternally of whoever has the “mandate of heaven”, so to speak, and don’t think for themselves.
The idea of the mandate of heaven is FUNDAMENTALLY a justification for rebellion.
If Buddhism were an entirely reliable ally of despotism it wouldn't have died out in India or been persecuted various times in China, Korea, and Japan, and the Muslims would have found a way to declare them people of the book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Asian_northern_desert
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalayas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Ocean
Some reading for your edification.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_Dalai_Lama
>(save for Genghis Khan)
Thanks for the laugh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drog%C3%B6n_Ch%C3%B6gyal_Phagpa
Ibn Arabi
Most of them are pretty worthwhile, although, I won't claim to be an expert. The ones I've read though...the East is incredibly wise. They've got more experience in these matters compared to the dawdling West, and it shows.
lit wiki has a nice chart for Indian Phil sources:
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/IQfylit/images/2/27/Indian_lit.png/revision/latest?cb=20240405120520
Shankara is the the final red-pill of all eastern and western thought
The Buddha is the the final red-pill of all eastern and western thought
Mostly, they suck. It's not really worth it.
>tfw only needing the tao, gospel of thomas and pic related to get it
in all honesty, anon, you don't need to read tomes to comprehend, appreciate and apply eastern wisdom. I feel terribly sorry for these people, what a colossal waste of time. zhuang zi is a good recommendation tho.
Just listen to mooji and eckhart and meditate bro
All I know is that it's autistic about authority, like, Chinese philosophy. I'm uncertain about the rest.