/lit/ - Literature

>>18801417
I don’t know about Confucianism, but Taoism (the religious variant found in Asia, not the purely philosophical variant found in the West) has definitely been very influenced by Buddhism and vice versa.

>>18801417
Travel significant enough to alter culture did not transmit through the jungles of southern asia, so Buddhism actually had to go the long way through Sogdia and Tocharia, thankfully delaying the transmission of Indian ideas for hundreds of years. As such most Chinese texts from before 400 AD or so are free from Buddhism. After that Buddhism is everywhere.

It depends what you mean by Taoism and Confucianism. The earliest things we generally mean by both of those terms, in the late Eastern Zhou period (the flourishing of the so-called Hundred Schools of philosophy) came too early in China for substantial influence from across the Himalayas and Tibetan plateau to be very plausible. But those early periods are also the murkiest and most fragmentary thanks to the Burning of the Books and Scholars during the subsequent Qin period, and the usual neglect of history. We really rely on chroniclers and commentators contemporary with the late Qin and early Han periods for most of our information on late Zhou thought. Add to that the excessively formalistic, scholastic, and historically credulous style (more concerned with "standard" narratives and chronologies than true reconstruction) with which it was treated for most of Chinese history, and to some extent still is, and it can be damn hard to reconstruct what "original" Confucianism and especially Taoism even were.

Modern Confucianism is the product of Neo-Confucianism, a revival and renaissance in the centuries around 1000 AD by thinkers like Zhu Xi. A large part of why it needed a "revival" in its own native China is because Buddhism had become extremely influential in China (and eventually everywhere else too, like Japan) in the intervening centuries. So, as in India where the renaissance in Vedanta and Brahmanism among thinkers like Gaudapada, Shankara, and Ramanuja is only understandable as a reaction to and assimilation of centuries of Buddhist thought and institutions (like organised and state-supported monasticism), it is impossible to understand Neo-Confucianism and modern Confucianism without the parallel context in China.

Taoism is even more diffuse because it's not unfair to say that there is no one "Taoism," whereas at least the Confucians had a sort of self-conscious core of orthodoxy in the Analects and Mencius. Especially for the Eastern Zhou period, Taoism is a reconstructive term for a variety of practices and ideas. Later Taoism blends considerably with folk doctrines and especially with Buddhism. It's sort of like trying to define "tantra" as a single thing distinct from influences and admixtures.

I have seen some interesting suggestions of even earlier syncretism too. Beckwith went as far as to suggest that the original Buddhist movement was a kind of phenomenological-ascetic sceptical movement and Laozi himself was part of it. I've seen both legendary suggestions that Laozi was the Buddha, or taught the Buddha, or the reverse, that an Indo-Aryan Buddha was Laozi or Laozi's teacher. These are fringe as fuck though.

>>18801500
Also, I forgot to add, the Chinese importation of Buddhism into China is one of the most fascinating and concerted efforts in human history. They sent emissaries to learn everything they could of Buddhist texts and ideas, and then even sent monks just to see what "the country that produced the Buddha" was like, to better understand Buddhism as a whole. Chinese sources are some of our earliest good sources on Buddhism because they were so precise and careful in their translations etc.

>>18801500
>>18801508
Informative stuff, thank you for the effortpost, effortanon. So to summarise, Confucianism and Taoism in their original forms have been lost, and by the time these traditions were revived, Buddhism has already been integrated into Chinese culture, so it's only natural that its influence persisted even in a "rebellious" school like Neo-Confucianism, right?

>>18801500
>So, as in India where the renaissance in Vedanta and Brahmanism among thinkers like Gaudapada, Shankara, and Ramanuja is only understandable as a reaction to and assimilation of centuries of Buddhist thought and institutions

That is sad. Just like the OP, I would love to find an insular philosopher or school of thinking.

>>18801614
I definitely wouldn't say lost, except in the sense that recovering the pristine core of whatever became Confucianism/Taoism, in the hindsight of writers like Sima Tan and Sima Qian, is probably impossible. As impossible as recovering the discourse of early Buddhism from underneath centuries of councils and wider movements and syncretism. To use Buddhism itself as an example here, Beckwith, the guy I mentioned, has a radical thesis that Buddhism was originally something like asceticism, more stoic or at least more secular "zen" than out and out mystical, combined with Pyrrhonian scepticism, arising out of a Indo-Iranian, more or less Zoroastrian worldview. And surprisingly Beckwith hasn't been dismissed as a crank as he might have been once, because even the experts of more mainstream and established views on Buddhism and its origins now are well aware that you can play around with the chronologies and sources to get at least plausible narratives like this. Most are more cautious than him, but what he claims is at least plausible prima facie.

The same is true for "original" Taoism, and even for Confucianism, although less so. Many traditional claims for original Confucianism, for instance that it was not a metaphysical system but an ethical one (whatever this is taken to mean), have to be read with one eye focused on our lack of contemporary sources, and on the motivations behind the simplifying definition when it was first formulated (probably centuries later). The ethics over metaphysics stereotype is both a Neo-Confucian self-definition and a modern way of defining Neo-Confucianism. And then you get into interesting issues like, if they felt the need to self-define as explicitly not X, clearly X was pretty prominent.

By the time you feel qualified to have hunches and preferences for what is and isn't essential, what is a later accretion etc., you probably have an idiosyncratic view of your own that falls more or less close to various camps and various figures like Beckwith who have blazed your preferred trails.

The traditions never died but they definitely underwent periods of stagnation and syncretism, from certain perspectives. It's a fairly typical/popular narrative of Chinese history that Buddhism flourished during the post-Han Six Dynasties, then especially during the Sui and Tang period, and then after the Tang fragmentation the Neo-Confucian scholars of the Song represent a breaking point of nativist resentment of the importation of "foreign" ideas. But Neo-Confucianism was markedly Buddhist/Taoist syncretic, because it had to absorb and answer to those intervening centuries of discussion along Buddhist/Taoist/Confucian lines, when there was less concern for keeping the lines distinct. Very similar to the situation in India. Even if we did know what the Buddha said or what Laozi said, looking at that tangle and saying, "this part is Buddhist, this part is Taoism" is difficult if not conceptually impossible.

>>18801417
asceticism predates buddhism by a lot and covered the whole region, so no, you're not going to find eastern philosophy that's very free of general buddhist flavor.

>>18801830
You can still study it, we do have some very old texts that are really fun to read. It's just that issues of translation and interpretation become really important when you no longer take the traditional divisions (like Legalist, Confucian, Moist, Taoist) for granted, and just read it as a text.

Sort of like how the Greeks had their traditional stories about who was whose student, like the traditional view that Parmenides was the student of Xenophanes, a claim which has involved thousands of years of tortured and reverse engineered explanations to make sense of, but today we know enough about the sources of these claims to realise many have no reason to be taken as authoritative. A lot of traditional claims about the coherence of the Hellenic "schools" (Eleatic/Milesian especially) just dissolve into mush when you press on them, and are mostly maintained as simplifying narratives, or because it's good to at least know what the ancients said and thought of them since it influenced their assessments.

A really good example is how Empedocles has both epiphenomenalist (all things, including organisms, are the coming together of the basic elements) and reincarnationist (the soul is an integral thing that passes from organism to organism somehow) views and nobody has ever succeeded in reconciling them, so there are multiple possible explanations: one or the other view wasn't Empedocles', Empedocles changed his mind, or we are missing how to reconcile the two views (maybe missing key fragments). All of this really comes back to: we have no fucking idea who Empedocles was except for a few stories told by people who were themselves passing on traditional stories. Very similar for Chinese stuff.

>>18801508
>Also, I forgot to add, the Chinese importation of Buddhism into China is one of the most fascinating and concerted efforts in human history. They sent emissaries to learn everything they could of Buddhist texts and ideas, and then even sent monks just to see what "the country that produced the Buddha" was like, to better understand Buddhism as a whole.
but why?

They had their own more then enough, if Buddha was a boom like Jesus why did he not take off in his own civilization?

>>18801500
>I've seen both legendary suggestions that Laozi was the Buddha, or taught the Buddha, or the reverse, that an Indo-Aryan Buddha was Laozi or Laozi's teacher.
These are specific to historical sectarian debates in China between Taoists and Buddhists. Some Taoists basically wanted to frame Buddhism as an inferior barbarian version of Taoism that was taught to the Indians, thus China's indigenous Taoism is superior. Buddhist could of course claim the opposite. Kenneth Chen's Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey, covers this.

>>18801890
>>18801943
Once again, great stuff, thanks.
Hmmmm. With all of these added dimensions of complexity, it seems like studying Taoism or Confucianism even in passing might require a keen awareness of Chinese history from that era. What would you recommend I could start with? I already have a basic outline for where to start with studying these two schools, but I'll admit, looking into their surrounding historical context to this extent did not occur to me as a necessity.

>>18801943
I know, but I really wanted something pure and isolated. To see if something completely detached from others found a truth no one else did and/or reached the same conclusion following a different way.

>>18801417
No, in the form we know, they all experienced mutual influences. Buddhism came to China shortly after Confucianism gained access to power, although there is more material for reconstruction. Taoism generally took shape under the influence of Buddhists (and the Buddhists themselves were at first viewed as an exotic type of Taoist). Most likely in Taoism to combine several completely dissimilar mystical-religious-religious and philosophical teachings of the late Zhou. That is, they were connected more than what they were not, than what they were. My friend (a professional philosopher, a real one) argued to me that Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu were thinkers of completely different directions and to combine them into one school is rather a historical misunderstanding. All the more so to add common folk mysticism to them.

>>18801500
Dangerous-quality post.
I am almost disappointed in writing posts longer than 4 lines - who will read them?
I read your posts inside and out. And I'm quite satisfied.

>>18802062
>pure and isolated
Doesn't seem to exist even in theoretical physics. Maybe in math?

>>18802635
>argued to me that Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu were thinkers of completely different directions and to combine them into one school is rather a historical misunderstanding
More on this please?

>>18802062
You could read the Chinese Buddhist and Daoist texts yourself, and then go read the records of the disputes between the two. The disputes are recorded in 弘明集 and 広弘明集.
As far as I know, in the earliest days of the importation of Buddhism into China, which begins in the later Han period (25-220), Buddhism was interpreted in the light of Daoism and Confucianism. They call this 格義佛教 (see http://www.buddhism-dict.net/cgi-bin/xpr-ddb.pl?68.xml+id(%27b683c-7fa9%27) but make sure to type "guest" so you can view the page). In the fourth century, 道安 corrected these errors and set Buddhism on sounder footing. In later centuries, various disputes erupted between Confucians, Daoists, and Buddhists, which are recorded in texts like the ones I just mentioned.
Basically, to get what you want, you're going to have to learn the languages and do the work yourself. I think it really is out there, but you will never know, and you will never be satisfied, unless you've seen it for yourself.

>>18802717
Sorry anon, there will be no details. His arguments are too esoteric for me, a layman, to reproduce them.
First, you need to deeply study the relevant treatises. Naturally, I'm not talking about "translation". (I studied wenyang something I can read from history, but my knowledge is far-far from being able to read 道德). Well, and then forget everything that we know about Taoism over the past 2000 years. Then you can come to a different conclusion that is not in the textbook.

>>18801956
>if Buddha was a boom like Jesus why did he not take off in his own civilization?
he did

>>18801417
I see Chinese kids in Catholic schools here in the US. Can I send my white kids to Confucius school?? Is that a thing?

>>18803388
Sure, if you go to China.

>>18801417

Gautama, Siddhārtha. Dislike him. A cheap nihilist, insipid and foolhardy. A pied piper, pathological narcissist and a cloying moralist. Some of his modern disciples are extraordinarily amusing. Nobody takes his claims about remembering past lives seriously.
Majjhima Nikāya. His best work, though an obvious and shameless imitation of Yājñavalkya's "Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad"
Dīgha Nikāya. Dislike it intensely.
Dhammapada. Dislike it intensely. Ghastly rigmarole

>>>>There is a specific Naraka/Hell in Buddhism/Hinduism for men who have their wives swallow their cum

Brutal my man. Absolutely brutal.

>>18803608
Based Bṛhadāraṇyaka Chad

Anyone here read this? How about his other book, In The Shadows Of the Dao? Couple books on my reading list and unsure how to prioritize them. Also what about Xiong Shili's New Treatise? Purchased that but haven't read it yet, but am probably going to take a pass at the New Confucians because I heard Tiantai - my latest kick- figures in to their thought.

>>18801417
How boring is Shinto that none of you asianfags care about it?

>>18802042
Bump. Would very much appreciate help with this query.

>>18804430
There's a lot of interest in Shinto, it just doesn't appeal to certain types. For one, Shinto is incredibly empirical, bordering on anti-rational, so the kind of nerd who likes to argue about "Hindu influences on Confucianism" (lmfao) will find little material to quibble about. Most of it is locked away in moonrunes and even then it's not super accessible because it's mostly concerned with local topics.

>>18801500
>>18801500
>>18801890
Neo-Confucianism being an open and known reaction to, and even syncreticism to, Buddhism by the people doing the reacting cannot be ignored. The incredible monism of Neo-Confucians like Wang Yangming and Zhu Xi must be understood as these men saying that yes, the Buddhists were right, and weren't going far enough.

>>18801956
>but why?
Back in the day, the chinese were a civilisation interested in culture and the search for truth

>>18801668
It's true and notable hinduism scholars agree. Deal with it, Guenonfag.

Start with the Fung, you can't go wrong

>>18807238
Upanishads = Vedanta = predating Buddhism

>>18808025
Different Upanishads-based strands of Hinduism cannot agree on basic principles
Upanishads + Buddhism = Advaita Vedanta

>>18808025
guenonfag here to ruin another unrelated thread and get humiliated again?

>>18801417
I'm taking a massive mystical shit rn

bump

Top quality thread. Can it be said that Monism is the great divider between Eastern and Western thought? Even though admittedly Monism does exist in the West in some fringe esoteric schools of thought, its still nowhere near as prevalent in the West as in the East.

>>18804430
It’s extremely inaccessible.

This isnt lit related.

>>18810865
Holy fucking retarded kys. I hope you really believe that was worth posting faggot.

>>18810865
Top kek

Back to /co/, fiction kiddy