What's the "Start with the Greeks" equivalent for Eastern philosophy?
I've tried reading some Western interpretations of Oriental philosophy but they were all vacuous and reminded me of stoner armchair philosophy, so I thought I'd better go to the original source.
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Greece is in the East, so start with the Greeks still applies for eastern philosophy.
Interestingly Western and Eastern philosophy began at around the same time (500 BC). I think while the Greeks were getting started, it was the Chinese who were making the first efforts in the Orient.
Start with the Buddha
dude if you think about it east and west are all just relative to where you are
Mozi
Confucius (especially anything in Imperial Exams later)
Zhuang Zhi
Gongsun Longzi
Guanzi
there's a lot of other ones. consult sima qian's history book. it's the section on the hundred schools, but if you google hundred schools you might get the maoist purge tactic instead of the historian.
Is Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching not a good start? It's one of the earliest and most well-known scriptures and apparently influences Confucious and the rest of the Hundred Schools...
Woah...
Start with feng youlan history of chinese philosophy and read the original texts of the major authors quoted in it.
it's a good start but you might also think it's stoner philosophy.
The Indians and the Chinese
What do people think of the likes of Alan Watts and Robert Pirsig?
I listened to lots of Alan Watts and now I want to read into Zen properly, although i'm not sure who to read/where to start. From what I gathered Watts is a very fun introduction but on many levels does get things a bit off. Not saying he's bad but he's more of a spiritual entertainer than an actual teacher, he is an excellent orator though.
White people preaching Eastern philosophy is the most cringe worthy psued posturing that can ever happen in the West. They can never appreciate the nuances of what it means to truly practice the ideas when they live in a culture so far removed from those value systems so instead they give you these empty platitudes and "mystical" ideas when in fact Eastern philosophy is incredibly practical and based in the real world.
Agree with this. Schopenhauer is dope though.
OP, read 'Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines" by Guenon, it doubles as an intro to eastern thought generally
are you an easterner? could you give a specific example or two of eastern ideas that a westerner would be unable to fully appreciate or grasp?
is it just that westerners can't understand the eastern ways or is it that most westerners have never been exposed to the real deal so they're more easily duped by hucksters who dress up their fraudulent ideas in the less familiar terms of the East?
Let me tell you the reason White people preaching Eastern philosophy sounds cringe worthy.
You see, Eastern philosophy is essentially very simple ideas dressed up in poetic aphorisms relating to nature. Instead of saying something like "do things in moderation", like Aristotle would say, they'll come out with some bullshit metaphor like
>Water always flows to the centre
>Be like water, and essence of the water shall be in your spirit
So when a White person takes this, and tries to rephrase it in a way Westerners can understand, well, there isn't really any way of paraphrasing this without sounding like a ponce.
There are literally no complex ideas in Eastern philosophy because it is quintessentially ascetic, much like the Greek Stoics and Ascetics, except the Greeks had much more tangible, useful messages in their texts.
Years of cultural immersion until you develop an Eastern perspective. The only reason you can start with the Greeks is that you were raised in a Western Culture so the ideas should already somewhat fit within your mental framework and even then this board is filled with people who don't get Homer bitching about his characters and boats.
>you were raised in a Western Culture
People today grew up with japanese TV shows, anime, manga, light novels, visual novels and JRPGs.
Does this stuff really count as Western Culture?
>I do yoga and talk about good/bad karma because it falls in line with my cultural Christianity
>Eastern philosophy is incredibly practical and based in the real world.
Bruh it's the complete opposite of that. Refer to Nietzsche -
You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power—how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live—is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"—how could you do DIFFERENTLY?
Maybe you should try reading Eastern philosophy before trying to denounce it
I did. It's not practical. It's full of mysticism and borders on supernatural. It's more religion than philosophy.
Those are things, culture is how people interpret those things.
This user is a /pol/ expat is easy to tell. They have a unreasonable bent agaisnt anything Eastern due to inferiority complexes.
This post is boiled down to a angry neckbeard going “asians never wrote anything of value”
Yet when people on Veeky Forums praise Asian culture for anything they are angry neckbeard weaboos.
Your pathetic attempt at insulting me failed hard.
The people calling others weebos for reading eastern lit or philosophy in Veeky Forums are /pol/ expats. There’s literally no reason to have such violent reactions to it unless you’re driven by ideological convictions.
start with the chinks
>anything I don't like is /pol/
Great. I'm apolitical by the way, don't give a fuck about current affairs, race, or any of your shit.
This post exemplifies why westerners often struggle to understand eastern metaphysics, a concept that is as subtle and with as many applications as Dharma will go right over their head because they try to define through western conceptions or frame their mental response in terms of what certain western thinkers thought about it.
In order to understand eastern thought you have to study each teaching in the context of the overall tradition they belong to and what those traditions teach about that doctrine.
Just read tao te ching and listen to some alan watts and you'll have explored all that's of any worth regarding eastern philosophy.
obviously. still, you can try to understand something and read books about it written by people who are knowledgeable. of course, the language gap is always there, but i read greeks withouth speaking old greek
Indian thought and Chinese thought are two different schools with little convergence outside of some synthetic Buddhist traditions
you have obviously no idea. for a start, try reading François Jullien before you spill your bullshit
It reads like a Terrence McKenna rambly lecture.
lmao
>there are actually people this dumb
>There are literally no complex ideas in Eastern philosophy because it is quintessentially ascetic
>he has never read Zhuangzi
>Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan's Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy
The Indians' writings are the oldest, and their ideas will influence China (plus Tibet, Japan, and Korea), so it makes sense to start there. This is a great book because it has an incredibly wide range but doesn't belabor anyone too deeply. The writings themselves can be obtuse, but the commentary is thorough and simple. It's dated in one or two areas, but I still think this is one of the best intros.
I haven't read but it seems like a nice next step.
If you're interested in Confucianism, go Analects > Mencius > Great Learning > Doctrine of the Mean. The former two aren't too difficult with thorough footnotes on the historical references. The latter two are both short and concise but incredibly obtuse.
the Indians writings are not the oldest the I Ching might be upwards of 2-3 thousand years old and its the basis for the Daodejing and the later Zhuangzi and Lietzi
The Vedas were were being passed down orally thousands of years before any of the great chinese texts
fuck
Real talk
Which languages can you speak and read fluently from the east?
not him but the chinese did not have less of a tradition building over thousands of years before they started using writing. the divination that led to the i ching is based on a good deal of time of development.
Japanese, not fluently enough to be considered native, but good enough to probably be able to study at a Japanese university.
I haven't read any Japanese philosophy though.
>no Nichiren
REeeeeee
Related, so I don't want to make separate thread. I'm fascinated with the history of mystical/esoteric/magical/whatever you want to use as a catch-all term thought. Scouring through archives combined with things I already knew helped me find important works about western schools of thought, but barely anything on eastern. Any suggestions?
a lot of those are modern inventions, even the western based western ones
www.youtube.com/watch?v=M56-6XA3h2M
shit like whether to venerate dorje shugden even within the eastern traditions of eastern traditions too is also recent manufactured controversy
www.veoh.com/watch/v87604301kdft8Sn9
My sister says that buddhism is a system of philosophic thought and not really an organized religion. To what extent is she right or wrong? I know nothing about buddhism.
I think that everyone interested in the subject knows that Wicca is throughly modern system with neopagan dressing.
buddhism tries to forget right and wrong at times so you've probably already lost. send us pictures of her feet though.
The wiccans tend not to
You can also read the whole thing in about 10 minutes
They are wiccans, so clearly they are not interested enough in the subject.
Fair point, well made.
if you want to understand about 5% of it maybe. it would take a few days to understand the background, the context, and the meaning that is lost in translations, as well as all the metaphors.
Right. I’ve heard that tai chi temple style has been practiced for over 4000 years.
She's wrong on both counts. Buddhism is not 'a system' but many systems.
But one thing all Buddhism has in common is that it's (supposedly) designed to help people achieve spiritual realization. It has laity and it has clergy (the sangha). It's had thousands of years of scholarship and metaphysical discourse. It's not simply a set of rules for virtuous living (although it certainly has those), it requires active practice and faith in seemingly unprovable teachings. Sounds a lot like a religion to me
Damn, I don't have a reaction image saved for how retarded you sound.
Yeah, not like Buddhism came to China from India and then shaped Chinese philosophy for centuries.
You typed out 13 words without actually saying anything. Where did you learn this wizardry?
Have a bump
no they weren’t at all they were created probably 600-1000 years before they were codified in India and that’s a generous estimate, they don’t have the age that people think they do at all
The 4 books and five classics, especially the 4 books.
Dhammapada, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Tao te Ching
the Dhammapada is soft skulled peasant wisdom, you need to read the Pali Canon and the Mahayana sutras or you are not grasping the philosophy behind the sayings. Its not the same thing as the Bible, and you will not understand the Upanishads if you don’t read the Vedas and Puranas
> daoist-virgin_vs_chad-confucian.jpg
Reading the four books (Great Learning, Doctrine of the Mean, Analects, Mencius) will give you a much better idea of Chinese philosophy as it was actually taught and practiced over the centuries than the Daodejing. They're also less full of metaphysics and woolly thinking.
If you must read the Daodejing, Want Bi's commentary is pretty much indispensable, which means you need the Lynn translation.
>
>the Dhammapada is soft skulled peasant wisdom, you need to read the Pali Canon and the Mahayana sutras or you are not grasping the philosophy behind the sayings.
Either one of those by itself is way more than one human can read in a lifetime.
The Confucianism at least have a digestible canon. Indic thought may be good too, but there's too much of it to engage properly.
>They're also less full of metaphysics and woolly thinking
Zhuangzi > Confucius
Real Chinese hardly read Zhuangzi. They read the shit out of Confucius.
> Inapplicable Neechee quote.
No, friend, that wasn't what he was saying. Western philosophy revolves around metaphysics. Chinese philosophy revolves around ethics and politics. Thus "more practical and down to earth." There is nothing about living "according to nature." That's a GREEK delusion.
What did you read?
>you will not understand the Upanishads if you don’t read the Vedas and Puranas
This, but the Puranas are not needed in their entirety.
>but there's too much of it to engage properly.
Eh not really. If you know Sanskrit and the basics of Hindu philosophy, it's nothing difficult.
I'll take your word on Hindu thought, but the fact remains that no single person has ever read the entire Pali Canon, let alone the Mahayana sutras.
This is the best translation
Tao Te Ching _ Annotated & Explained - Derek Lin
And we all know modern Chinese are wellsprings of wisdom and clarity.
duuuude
I don't just mean modern Chinese, I mean Chinese throughout the ages. Anyway, OP asked for stuff that isn't "stoner armchair philosophy" like say the Zhuangzi.
Why is it the best?
i liked this. annotations are what make it better than most versions
>Zhuangzi
>stoner armchair philosophy
“When the heart is right, "for" and "against" are forgotten.”
― Zhuangzi, The way of Chuang Tzu
35 likes Like
“A frog in a well cannot discuss the ocean, because he is limited by the size of his well. A summer insect cannot discuss ice, because it knows only its own season. A narrow-minded scholar cannot discuss the Tao, because he is constrained by his teachings. Now you have come out of your banks and seen the Great Ocean. You now know your own inferiority, so it is now possible to discuss great principles with you.
井蛙不可以語於海者,拘於虛也;夏蟲不可以語於冰者,篤於時也;曲士不可以語於道者,束於教也。今爾出於崖涘,觀於大海,乃知爾醜,爾將可與語大理矣。”
― Zhuangzi, The Way of Chuang Tzu
if you go north long enough you'll start going south. if you go east you'll always go east.
>stoner armchair philosophy
''A frog in a well cannot discuss the ocean, because he is limited by the size of his well. A summer insect cannot discuss ice, because it knows only its own season. A narrow-minded scholar cannot discuss the Tao, because he is constrained by his teachings. Now you have come out of your banks and seen the Great Ocean. You now know your own inferiority, so it is now possible to discuss great principles with you.
井蛙不可以語於海者,拘於虛也;夏蟲不可以語於冰者,篤於時也;曲士不可以語於道者,束於教也。今爾出於崖涘,觀於大海,乃知爾醜,爾將可與語大理矣。”
― Zhuangzi, The Way of Chuang Tzu
The emperor of the Southern Sea was Lickety, the emperor of
the Northern Sea was Split, and the emperor of the Center was
Wonton. Lickety and Split often met each other in the land of
Wonton, and Wonton treated them very well. Wanting to repay
Wonton's kindness, Lickety and Split said, "All people have seven
holes for seeing, hearing, eating, and breathing. Wonton alone
lacks them. Let's try boring some holes for him." So every day
they bored one hole, and on the seventh day Wonton died.
>old greek
They wouldn't necessarily have to be recognizable 2000-3000 years ago for it to be true that they were around. I'm not sure if that sentence makes sense I'm fighting a dope nod right now.
Sun Zu, Art of war
First off, learn to read classical chinese, it takes time but within a year or two of constant study you can pretty much fluently most texts.
You CANNOT expect to get into eastern philosophy by only relying on translations, most translators are retarded when it comes to nuance.
You have two options really, either start with the traditional method of educating yourself with chinese lit, the first three books every budding scholar typically read were:
>Three Character Classic, 三字经
>Hundred Family Surnames, 百家姓
>Thousand Character Classic, 千字文
From here, you can probably jump straight to comparatively simple texts like
>Confucian Analects, 论语 (translated name is retarded I know)
>Sunzi's Art of War, 孙子兵法
expect to take a LOT of time on these, at least a week to a month just copying hanzi and trying to fit your mind to classical chinese prose.
After this, you can maybe try to tackle
>Dao De Jing (Classic of Way and Virtue),道德经
Sidenote here: This book reads like Laozi was on fucking crack, his esoteric prose is where many of the memes about chinese lit comes from, like
Much of it does not make sense at first, I find it entertaining because it's kinda like a puzzle, seeing how the hanzi fit into a philosophy, and seeing how you can apply it in your life, but many people understandably get pissed off, additionally like half of the hanzi used are not really used anymore, character variants that stopped being relevant two thousand years ago, so vocab won't be improved by much for reading this, except maybe other daoist texts.
1/?
Continuing on, you should also check out:
>Mozi, 墨子
Admittedly I haven't read it yet (kys myself), but I've read excerpts from it, I believe there were parallels between the white horse anecdote and greek philosophy, but it's not my speciality.
Let's get into poetry now, first off, you shouldn't expect to exclusively study classical chinese and perfectly understand vernacular, that idea is doubly true with studying chinese poetry, much of the vocabulary is obtuse/outdated/no longer in use, and often there are entire genres of poetry dedicated to using the most obtuse and obscure hanzi possible, but anyhow:
>Shijing, 诗经
imo very very good, poetry form is very different from english though, you'll notice that they often make poems from minor alterations of single lines, for example from a poem I memorized from the Shijing (Xi You Changchu, 隰有苌)
隰有苌楚 猗傩其枝
夭之沃沃 乐子之无知
隰有苌楚 猗傩其华
夭之沃沃 乐子之无家
隰有苌楚 猗傩其实
夭之沃沃 乐子之无室
>In the swamp lies the Changchu (Carambola), Oh how rich are it's branches!
>Young and fertile, happy is he without knowledge
>In the swamp lies the Changchu (Carambola), Oh how rich are it's flowers!
>Young and fertile, happy is he without family
>In the swamp lies the Changchu (Carambola), Oh how rich are it's fruits!
>Young and fertile, happy is he without home
You can see what I was saying about poetry structure from that excerpt, honestly it's quite different from english poetry, and I often incorporate forms like these or imagery from ancient poems into my own work, I rather like it.
Personally, I think this poem takes on more of a daoist theme, comparing a (presumably) lonely tree in a swamp, who has still managed to appear great, to the ideal man who can exist without others and still achieve great things for himself (or perhaps that man benefits without society)
Anyhow, most poems within the shijing vary from praising emperors, talking about ideal politics to just simple family life, it's pretty cool
2/?
Redpines translation is also good. download these two or a few other translations and compare them with each other on the chapters you have trouble on.
Why arent translations good enough if you dont want to study chinese for 2 years?
Is chinese philosophy better than greek or hindu philosophy?
Some things and concepts just aren't as easily expressed in translations.
Additionally, texts often have particular prose or nuances that also convey significant meaning, that translators just don't pick up on, getting into chinese philosophy isn't going to be easy mate, it's gonna take a LONG ass time.
There's a reason scholars were so highly valued in Chinese society, being well-read on the Confucian classics could take years of practice (although to be fear, that did include memorization).
You can say that about many languages though. Many works are considered untranslatable in various languages.
fuckin fire
i love this picture so much
that was some flowers from Algernon Charlie before his surgery dumb post, nigga