Lately I wished to discover a captivating passage of the Daoist founder Zhuangzi, the place the textual content recommends “sitting in oblivion” or “sitting and forgetting” (zuòwàng 坐忘). That passage bears putting similarities to mystical practices and experiences from across the globe.
To assist determine it out, I turned to Sitting in Oblivion by the Daoism scholar Livia Kohn, which exhibits how “sitting and forgetting” was developed as a apply and brought up at nice size by later Daoist thinkers. One passage of Kohn’s significantly struck me:
A very powerful facets of the fairly intensive Buddhist imports into Daoism for sitting in oblivion embody the organizational setting of meditation apply in monastic establishments, the formalized moral requirement within the taking of precepts and refuge within the Three Treasures, the doctrines of karma and retribution, the 5 paths of rebirth, and the assorted layers of hell, in addition to the imaginative and prescient of the body-mind when it comes to a number of facets, defilements, hindrances, and purification. (107)
“Quite intensive” certainly! I knew that East Asian Buddhists had drawn an ideal deal from Daoism – I’ve generally uncharitably described Chan/Zen as “Daoists cosplaying as Buddhists” – however I hadn’t realized how a lot the affect went within the different route. Karma, rebirth, meditation, monastic establishments, taking precepts, taking refuge? At that time you positive sound rather a lot like Buddhists with out the title!
The purpose acquired me realizing simply how extremely intensive Buddhist thought got here to be all through Asia – at the very least the elements of the world we now sometimes consult with as “Asia”, which generally exclude the westernmost elements of the bodily continent. Clearly Buddhism correct had a massively intensive affect throughout the considering of the continent, from Mongolia within the north to Borobudur within the south, from Japan within the east all the best way to Kalmykia – up to now west that it’s often thought-about part of Europe. That a lot wasn’t information to me. However what Kohn acquired me enthusiastic about is how a lot Buddhism set the philosophical agenda even for Asians who weren’t Buddhist.
As a result of it wasn’t simply the Daoists. Whereas Neo-Confucians like Zhu Xi criticized Buddhism at size, there was nonetheless an intensive Buddhist affect on their thought as nicely. In that respect, China mirrored India: whereas Buddhism finally died out in many of the Indian subcontinent, Buddhist concepts had been taken up intimately by the Indian colleges that nominally opposed it. Presumably probably the most influential non-Buddhist thinker in India was Śaṅkara, who devoted quite a lot of power to attacking Buddhism – but his philosophy wound up being so near Buddhism anyway that different opponents referred to as him a “secret Buddhist” (pracchanna bauddha).
Which all brings me to at present’s title. One of many extra well-known makes an attempt to summarize the Western philosophical custom is that this quote from Alfred North Whitehead:
The most secure normal characterization of the European philosophical custom is that it consists of a collection of footnotes to Plato. I don’t imply the systematic scheme of thought which students have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of normal concepts scattered by way of them. His private endowments, his vast alternatives for expertise at an ideal interval of civilization, his inheritance of an mental custom not but stiffened by extreme systematization, have made his writing an inexhaustible mine of suggestion. (Course of and Actuality 53)
If Western philosophical custom (which is not solely European) might be thought-about a “collection of footnotes to Plato”, then might we not equally take into account Asian philosophical custom as a collection of footnotes to the Buddha? Such a declare could be much less daring than a declare I’ve heard attributed to Charles Hallisey, specifically that what defines Asia itself is Buddhism. It will additionally name into query a declare I made a few years in the past, that South and East Asian philosophy are so completely different from one another that talking of “Asian philosophy” is merely a matter of political comfort.
However is that declare truly proper? Is Asian philosophy only a collection of footnotes to the Buddha? The declare does appear suspect given what number of main Asian philosophies and philosophers – Confucius, the early Upaniṣads, and Zhuangzi himself, to call simply a few of the most outstanding – predate the Buddha, or at the very least any potential contact with him and his thought.
The factor is, that very same criticism may be utilized to Whitehead’s authentic quote concerning the West. No one significantly considers Plato to be the first Western thinker. (Nicholas Tampio as soon as made such a declare however didn’t attempt to justify it and was roundly criticized for it, so I don’t take into account that declare critical.) Plato acknowledged his personal debt to Socrates, and each of them thought-about themselves a part of a lineage of philosophers going again to Thales. And earlier than Thales, Moses and the early Hebrew prophets had been independently questioning the world round them in a manner that may fairly be referred to as philosophical, similar to Confucius and the sages of the Upaniṣads.
So the declare that Western philosophy is footnotes to Plato is itself not wholly true. It’s a broad and shrewd generalization concerning the later scope and improvement of Western philosophy, the best way Western philosophy after Plato has usually been carried out in his shadow, even when it rejects him. However in that sense – to the restricted extent that we can say Western philosophy is footnotes to Plato – I think that we are able to certainly make the identical generalization about Asian philosophy, that it’s footnotes to the Buddha. In each South Asia and East Asia, as soon as philosophy encountered the ideas attributed to the Buddha, none of it might be the identical once more.
