Not refute, psychoanalyze: sick, self-hate• Original sin, natural man as enemy of God• And powerless—self-designed cage• Christianity lies—self deception

God sin heaven and soul Deceptive hatred of life/self

Culprit Greco-Roman St. Paul (Socrates)• Hatred of “flesh” v Christ the evangel• Last Christian died on cross

No god, heaven or soul• Suffering v sin

Honest about renounce life and seek nothing• Nihilism—value nothing

So not powerless—we can achieve our goal• Promises Nothing(ness) & delivers

V Christianity

Tricks of grammar and manufacture realities

Can’t get rid of God b/c still believe in grammar• Ontological argument and Parmenides

“being” Creating a “real world” Denigrate apparent one

• Descartes and “self” (soul)

Rationalism structure: real apparent• Reason v feeling, mind/body, eternal soul

Experience as a dream, illusion, phenomenon Buddhism as heresy in Hinduism

• Rejects ego and tied up with nirvana mystery Some kind of extinction

4 noble truths—Nietzsche take—honest • Decadent—renunciation of life, power, desire• But does have a plan—with a twist—paradox

Quiz on paradox of desire

No more rebirths = no more suffering• Escape from samsara—cycle of lives

Grow with political support•Chosen for self-sacrifice and altruism

Typical results of orthodoxy•Schisms, councils, declarations of heresy

Major schism•Mahayana and Theravada (Hinayana)

Hinayana—small vehicle v great vehicle 乘•How many can be saved? •Represented as deeper insightBuddha story: impurity or everyone

Metaphysical issue•Boddhisattva v arhat ideal•Historical Buddha and Buddha nature 如來

Only Mahayana succeed Exciting new ideas and concepts

•Puzzling and "foreign" Timing at the end of the Han dynasty Boredom with Han superstitious cosmology Neo-Daoism, Yi-ching, and what? (like today?)玄學 Dark learning, metaphysics, 清談 pure conversation about non-being/nirvana

Serious handicap in Buddha story•Consider Confucian reaction

Prediction at divine birth—father wants political fulfillment

Discovers suffering, abandons political/familial responsibility•Seeks his own release from sufferingEgoistic! (If Nietzsche likes it, how could Confucius?)

•Enlightened and still needs moral persuasion to share the insight?

Motivates the bodhisattva ideal Desire for nirvana prevents entry

into nirvana•Last desire to be conquered•No one worthy would ever choose to enter nirvana

Returns to help others achieve•Zen wrinkle—Why make it the last?Reject real/apparent world (Nirvana/samsara)

Changes accomplishment another way•Desires to insight•Some realization, point of view, insight that accounts for achievement

•Intellectualizes Buddhism Yogacara and Madyamika

Idealist—negative• Only illusions, no reality

If self is an illusion, the only global enlightenment has any significance

Time slices of world consciousness Karmic role of desires

• Desire for this perception (the ego) to continue to next moment

• Explains coherence of ideas 唯 心 (Consciousness only) to 華 嚴 (Hua

Yen)

More popular in China: contradiction and silence•Paradox and Daoism•Spread as part of 玄學 (Dark learning)

•Buddha nature neither exists 有nor does not exist 無 , nor both, nor neither, nor Daoist puzzles about 有 無

"Being" school. Flip side of Yogacara

Only Buddha nature is real•Everything else is an illusion/unreal If there are illusions, they are real (Buddha consciousness)

There are no illusions Early tendencies to Chan

•Even untouchables can be saved

Hui Neng 慧能 and the Platform Sutra 六 祖壇 經

Illiterate woodcutter becomes 6th patriarch• No words and easy enlightenment Southern barbarian(?)

Poem story: no dust to wipe from the mirror• No illusions to dispel• Kyoto Stories

Pounds rice, carries wood Enlightened before he went to the

temple Leaves monastery to return to

Gwangdong mountains! •Throws away the robe signifying status

Cultural revolution against Buddhism•Foreign, too intellectualized v practical native philosophies

•Egalitarian tendencies Southern movement

•Internal reform of Buddhism along Daoist lines

•Shift of center of Chinese intellectual culture

Shen Hui the real influence•Vanquished Shen Xiu and Northern 禪 Chan

Sudden v. gradual enlightenment•Cultivation to some goal v•Give up the goal!

Exile and triumphant return Story-telling skills Politics and money Authorship of the sutra

• Daoist Wang Wei hypothesis