Taoism

◦ A philosophical system which strongly emphasizes man’s

place in nature. It is concerned with society, except as
something to move away.

◦ Finally, it functioned as a magical system with

incantations for healing disease, countering death, and
warding off evil spirits.
 Lao Tzu
◦ He taught that Tao is most fully revealed tranquillity, not through action nor righteous
living. Virtue is attained by quiet submission to the power of Tao . The Tao cannot be
defined. As the first line from Tao Te Ching says: “The Way (tao) that can be walked
is not the true and unchanging way. The name that can be named is not true and
unchanging name.”
Chuang Tzu
Emphasized in a memorable manner the superiority of conforming to the Tao
and of avoiding all strife.
◦ If Confucianism stresses man’s role as master of nature, Taoism
stresses man’s passive role in nature. Founded on the experience of
the dynamic force immanent in the universe which gives order and life
and meaning to the totality of reality, it shared with Confucianism the
Chinese vision of man’s harmony with nature. It might be mentioned
parentically that Filipino thought is also characterized as conformity to
nature especially among the rural folk and hence it was considered
wrong to deviate from the ways of nature.
BUDDHISM
◦ Originates from the experience of the misery of life.
◦ Life for Buddhist, is caught in a labyrinth of changes, so much
so that there is no peace to be found in this world. There is an
endless cycle of change, of birth and death and therefore, the
only way for man to attain peace is to cross the sea of
humanity and become something totally other into the state of
“nirvana”, or the fading out of suffering. Thus, Buddhism has a
morality that is characterized as egocentric and individualistic
and gives very little positive value to society.
 Gautama the buddha
-is the personal founder of the religion known to be the second to
Christianity in its number of following. Buddhism teaches the Four Noble Truths:
1. The noble truth of suffering.
2. The noble truth of the cause of suffering.
3. The noble truth of the cessation of suffering.
4. The noble truth of the path that leads to the cessation of the suffering; that is the
Holy Eightfold Path:
Right Views, Right Aspirations, Right speech, Right Conduct, Right Livelihood,
Right Endeavour, Right Mindfulness, and Right Meditation.
Five precepts:
1.Not to kill
2.Not to steal
3.Not to lie
4.Not to commit adultery
5.Not to drink intoxicating Liquors
Brahmanism
◦ It is founded on the experience of the divine being who is the one beyond
all multiplicity. The supreme being for the Hindu, the material self and
individual self (Atman) are simply deceptions. The only real, non-conscious
and beyond good and evil is Brahman or the Great Self. The chief
contribution of Hinduism is the philosophy of the self.

GRANTH SAHIB
The holy book of brahmanism
While the experience of the Semitic race is of a
transcendent, personal God who reveals himself in the
history of a particular people and revealing the ultimate
cause or “end” for which everything has been created,
the oriental experience is of an immanent principle of
Being (Brahman), present in the whole creation and in
the heart of every man as the Atman, the self. This inner
Spirit, Isvara, reveals itself finally as a personal God, the
Lord of what is and will be.
 In the Hindu tradition, the Spirit, immanent in nature as Brahman and
immanent in man as Atman, is revealed as the “unborn, eternal God” in
whom both man and nature find their fulfillment (ef. Suetas Vatara
Upanishad 2.15)

The hindu conception of “advaita” or of non-duality is a basic mark of

Brahmanism.

Hindu names:
Sat- Godhead being
Chit- knowledge
Ananda- bliss
 The basic experience of God, which is
revealed in the Upanishads and underlies all
Hindu religion, is the intuition of one, eternal,
infinite reality, the Brahman which cannot properly
be named or conceived and yet is the ground and
principle of all that exists.
The Brahman, when reflected in human
consciousness, is known as the Atman, the self, the
ground and principle of human existence and
consciousness. This experience of the self as one
with the Brahman, the principle of being, is expressed
in the “mahavakyas” the “great sayings” of the
Upanishads: I am Brahman; Thou Art That.
This experience of the oneness of the Brahman
and the Atman is one of absolute bliss-ananda.
Thus, the Hindu experience of God, of the
absolute, is expressed in the term Saccidanada,
which is the nearest approach to a name for the
ineffable.
According to the teachings of Sankara, who is
considered the greatest philosopher in Hinduism,
the Brahman and of the Atman can be
interpreted only in terms of advaita or non-
duality. He maintained that reality or Brahman is
one without any difference. All differences are
merely “superimpositions” on the one reality of
the Brahman.
 Unlike western philosophies, Brahmanism find no
difficulty in believing that God became man. On the
contrary, the Hindu believes in multitude of incarnations or
“Avataras”. “when righteousness declines and
unrighteousness prevails,” Krishna says in the Bhagavad
Gita, “then I take birth”.
The number of “incarnations” is usually reckoned as ten,
but it can be increased indefinitely. The difference here lies
in a difference of perspective. For the Hindu, as for oriental
in general, time is cyclical. Hence, the world is conceived as
“samsara”, as a continual cycle of birth and death and
rebirth. The avatara or descent of God takes place from
time to time to restore the “dharma”, that is the universal
law, but there is no finality in such “descents”. “Moksha” or
salvation consists in an escape from this cyclical wheel of
time.
Zen-buddhism
Zen moral philosophy arose out of the experience of the
original spontaneous activity of the mind aimed at keeping
the elemental and cultural life of man in the state of
elemental simplicity possessing the vigor of the
spontaneous and the instinctive. It stresses intuition (satori).
Wisdom is considered paradoxical and the only valid
approach to it is an approach that is anti-rational.
 Major ethical and social
contributions of Zen-Buddhism:
A. Essential Passitivity. The principle of “Wu-Wei” or
inaction.
This views man as essentially passive and comparable to that
inactivity of the bamboo that bends when there is a strong wind
but never gives up.
Judo is an Asian martial art that employs the principle and is
defined as the gentle art of throwing people.
B. Union of contradictories. What seems logically or
rationally incompatible ( e.g. subjectivity-objectivity, attack-
defense, passive-active) are resolved in the mind of satori.
Koan or zen problems are an exercise of resolving
disharmonies. For example, the sound of one hand
clapping; how to get a rooster into a narrow-mouthed bottle
without destroying the bottle or harming the rooster.
C. The ordinary. Zen-Buddhism emphasizes what is very
ordinary in our everyday life. For example, “where is the
Buddha-heart? It is found in the heart of every man.” What
is Buddha? Buddha is three kilos of sugar.
Zen Buddhism aroused at early Mahayana Sutras moving
under the influence of Chinese thought. Although the basic
ideas of Mahayana Buddhism were fully formulated in India,
the particular school of Zen meditation emerged in china. It
was in china, where Zen was deeply affected by the
Indigenous Taoism and from which it spread over all of
East- Korea, Japan, Vietnam and Tibet as well.
 In Japan, it witnessed a great flowering in the 12th century, attracting
the Japanese through its ideal of a disciplined life. The Japanese
genius is manifested more on the side of the art of living than on
philosophical plane.
Stressed the writer D.T Suzuki: “It seems to me that the Japanese
are great in changing philosophy into art, abstract reasoning into
life, transcendentalism into empirical immanetism.”
As Buddhism, Zen is seen as the way of liberation from an
inner disorder in man which Buddha calls “Dukha”. This
disorder is greater than any external misery like poverty,
sickness, or ignorance. It is far more serious. It is
unsatisfactoriness, fear and insecurity in the heart of every
man. What causes it is an untruly state of mind by which
man clings to objects and is enslaved by them.
A craving for what we do not yet have, or, having, fear to
lose. This attachment to objects is due to avidya or
ignorance mistaking the self-centered, separative,
assertive, phenominal self for our fundamental, authentic
self.