Priest (P10) One, ‘Buddhist Philosophy II: China’, summary

 

by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary. All boldface, underlying and bracketed commentary are my own.]

 

Summary of

Graham Priest

One:
Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness

Preface

P.10 Buddhist Philosophy II: China

Brief Summary:

In China and Japan, Buddhism changes by means of the influence of other schools like Confucianism and Daoism and also by original contributions of Chinese and Japanese Buddhists, including Fazang and Dōgen.

 

Summary

 

Buddhist ideas in China diverged notably from their Indian origins (xxv).

They were influenced by Confucianism and Daoism. Confucianism comes from Confucius’ Lunyu (Analects), and Daoism from the Dao De Jing of Laozi and the Zhuangzi of Zhuangzi. Daoism had more influence on Buddhism than Confucianism did.

According to Daoism, there is a principle behind the flow of events, the Dao; and the Daoist sage is someone who does not cling, but “goes with the flow” of the Dao. (xxvi)

In China, Buddhism was misunderstood until good translations became available around the 4th century AD. What came to prominence were Chinese forms of Mahāyāna Buddhism. (xxvi)

Of these schools, the most philosophically sophisticated was the Huayan school, which provided a view of the world as made of interpenetrated and co-encoding phenomenal objects.

Philosophically the most sophisticated was Huayan (Skt: Avataṃsaka; Eng: Flower Garland), named after the sūtra which it took to be most important. The founder of the school is traditionally taken to be Tuxun | (557–640 AD), but philosophically more important is Fazang (643–712 AD), who parlayed the Indian notion of emptiness into a picture of the world in which all phenomenal objects interpenetrate and mutually encode each other.
(xxvi-xxvii)

In the 9th century AD, the Huayan school fades out and is absorbed into the Chan school, which was interested in practical more than theoretical matters.

A distinctive feature of the school is that enlightenment can be sudden, and occurs with a conceptually unmediated, and therefore indescribable, encounter with ultimate reality (Buddha nature).
(xxvii)

 

In the eight century Buddhist ideas enter Japan.

Perhaps the most important period in Japanese Buddhism was the thirteenth century AD, when thinkers such as Dōgen (1200– 1253 AD) imported Chan, or Zen, as it is called there. When it entered Japan, Buddhism encountered the indigenous animistic view, Shinto. Shinto certainly coloured Japanese Buddhism, but it did not have a profound impact in the way in which the indigenous Chinese ideas had done, the general perception being that Shinto and Buddhism are quite compatible.
(xvii)

 

 

Priest, Graham. One: Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness. Oxford: Oxford University, 2014.

Priest (P9) One, ‘Buddhist Philosophy I: India’, summary

 

by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary. All boldface, underlying and bracketed commentary are my own.]

 

Summary of

Graham Priest

One:
Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness

Preface

P.9 Buddhist Philosophy I: India

Brief Summary:

Buddhist philosophy saw most of its development between 500 BC and 1200 AD primarily in India but spreading to other parts of Asia. One of its principle concepts is emptiness, understood either (or both) as emptiness of self-existence or of mind-independence.

 

Summary

 

The final part of the book deal with Buddhist philosophy, so here in the preface Priest will provide some background to prepare us for that section.

Priest first tells us a bit of the history and the basic principles of Buddhist philosophy. Indian thinker Siddhārtha Gautama, the historical Buddha (circa 563 to 483 BC) created the Four Noble Truths for contending with the difficulties of the human condition. Later a cannon of Buddhist writings emerged, called the Tripitaka. It contains the sūtras, the discourses of the historical Buddha. Among its principle ideas in the Tripitaka is that we are collections of changing parts.

The foundations of Buddhist philosophy were laid by the historical Buddha, the Indian thinker Siddhārtha Gautama. (The word ‘Buddha’ itself is an honorific, like ‘Christ’, and simply means ‘the awakened one’.) His exact dates are uncertain, but a traditional chronology gives them as 563 to 483 BC. He enunciated principles often called the Four Noble Truths. These diagnose what one might call the human condition: an unhappiness-causing attachment to things in a world of impermanence (anitya) and interdependence (pratītyasamutpāda); they then give a recipe for what to do about it. Buddhist thought developed for the next several hundred years, until a canon of writings emerged: the Tripitaka (Three Baskets). One of these comprised the sūtra: discourses featuring the historical Buddha. Another was the vinaya, the rules for monastic living. The third was the abhidharma (higher teachings). A principal concern of this was to provide a taxonomy of things in the world and their parts. Thus, a person is just a collection of changing and interacting, mental and physical, parts (skandhas). Most objects of experience are of a similar kind, though this is not the way in which things appear. That is conventional reality (saṃvṛti-satya), as opposed to the ultimate reality (aramārtha satya) of the way that things actually are. Naturally, a number of different schools of Buddhist thought developed in this period. Only one of these now survives: Theravāda (Doctrine of the Elders).
(xxiv)

Then around the turn from BC to AD, a new sort of sūtra emerged called the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras, which were concerned with being ethical to all sentient creatures.

Around the turn of the Common Era, a new class of sūtras started to appear: the Prajñāpāramitā (Perfection of Wisdom) Sūtras. (These include the most famous, short and cryptic, Heart Sūtra.) They initiated a new kind of Buddhism: Mahāyāna (the Greater Vehicle). The new Buddhism differed from the old in ways both ethical and metaphysical. The older Buddhism was concerned with individuals liberating themselves from the human condition. Someone on this path was an arhat (worthy one). By contrast, according to Mahāyāna, the ethical path was to help all sentient creatures liberate themselves. People who had dedicated themselves to do this were said to be on the Bodhisattva (enlightened being) Path. In Mahāyāna, compassion (karunā) therefore became the central virtue.
(xxiv)

The central metaphysical concept of Buddhism is emptiness. there are two schools of thought on this concept. One sees the emptiness as lacking self-existence, the other sees it as being empty of mind-independence. (xxv)

In India Buddhist philosophy continued to develop primarily at the university of Nālandā up through the first millennium. (xxv)

Theravāda Buddhism spread southeast to Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand, and Mahāyāna to Afghanistan, China, and Tibet. Moslem invasions wiped Buddhism out of India and Afghanistan, and consequently many Indian Buddhist texts were lost and exist only in translation. (xxv)

 

Priest, Graham. One: Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness. Oxford: Oxford University, 2014.

Priest (P4) One, ‘All is One’, summary

by Corry Shores
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[Central Entry Directory]
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[Graham Priest, entry directory]
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Summary of

Graham Priest

One:
Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness

Preface

P.4 All is One

Brief Summary:

The third and final part of the book deals with Buddhist philosophy, exploring such issues as emptiness, the relation of language and the world, and ethics. These discussions will help us grasp the notion of identity that is involved in the concept of oneness.

 

Summary

To understand the concept of oneness that we are using, we need to first grasp the notion of identity involved in it. In Chapter 11 Priest will do so by appealing to the Buddhist Huayan notion of interpenetration, which will further require a look at the Buddhist Madhyamak concept of emptiness. (xvii)

Chapter 12 will show why the doctrine of emptiness does not give rise to a vicious regress.

 

The following chapters will continue examining ideas in Buddhist philosophy. They will deal with issues concerning the relationship between language and the world, ineffability, and ethics. (xviii)

These chapters will demonstrate the philosophical usefulness of these Buddhist philosophical ideas. (xviii)

 

 

Priest, Graham. One: Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness. Oxford: Oxford University, 2014.