# Eastern Philosophy — The Long Traditions Canonical URL: https://shipslides.com/d/catalog-philosophy-eastern Raw viewer URL: https://content.shipslides.com/d/catalog-philosophy-eastern/raw Category: Philosophy Slides: 13 Updated: 2026-05-17T20:55:50.792Z Tags: catalog, philosophy, eastern ## Summary Eastern Philosophy the long traditions Key sections include: Eastern Philosophy; Atman is Brahman; Act, but do not cling.; The Four Noble Truths; Eight steady disciplines; Schools of the Buddha; The rectified society; Is human nature good, or bad?; Wu-wei; The butterfly's dream. ## Slide Outline 1. Eastern Philosophy 2. Atman is Brahman 3. Act, but do not cling. 4. The Four Noble Truths 5. Eight steady disciplines 6. Schools of the Buddha 7. The rectified society 8. Is human nature good, or bad? 9. Wu-wei 10. The butterfly's dream 11. Buddhism + Daoism = Chan / Zen 12. Living traditions 13. Where to go from here ## Slide Transcript ### Slide 1: Eastern Philosophy - the long traditions ### Slide 2: Atman is Brahman - Two — Hindu Thought - The oldest living philosophical tradition. Texts spanning three millennia ask one question: what is the self, really? - Vedas — hymns, ritual, cosmic order - Upanishads — inward turn, the self examined - Atman = Brahman — the inner self is the universe - Karma — action and consequence across lives - Moksha — release; the dissolution of separateness ### Slide 3: Act, but do not cling. - Three — The Bhagavad Gita - You have a right to your action, never to its fruits. Let not the fruits of action be your motive — nor cling to inaction. - — KRISHNA TO ARJUNA, 2.47 - On a battlefield, the warrior Arjuna freezes. His charioteer Krishna teaches him a strange ethic: do your duty fully, but release the outcome. - It is the seed of a remarkable idea — that effort and detachment are not opposites. The doer must do, but quietly, without grasping. ### Slide 4: The Four Noble Truths - Four — The Buddha, ~500 BC - Dukkha — there is suffering - Samudaya — its cause is craving - Nirodha — there is a cessation - Magga — there is a path that leads to it - A diagnosis, an etiology, a prognosis, a treatment. The Buddha framed himself as a physician of the mind. ### Slide 5: Eight steady disciplines - Five — The Eightfold Path - Right view - Right intention - Right speech - Right action - Right livelihood - Right effort - Right mindfulness - Right concentration - The path is sometimes drawn as a wheel — eight spokes turning together. Each one is incomplete without the others. It is wisdom, ethics, and meditation, woven. ### Slide 6: Schools of the Buddha - Six — Many Vehicles - Theravada - "The way of the elders." Conservative, monastic, southern. Sri Lanka, Thailand, Burma. - Mahayana - "The great vehicle." The bodhisattva — one who delays nirvana to free all beings. China, Korea, Japan. - Vajrayana - "The diamond vehicle." Tantric ritual, mantra, the swift path. Tibet, Mongolia. - Chan / Zen - Direct seeing. The koan, the cushion, the snap of awakening. China, Japan. ### Slide 7: The rectified society - Seven — Confucius, ~500 BC - Born into a fragmenting feudal China, Confucius asked: how do we live together well? - Ren (仁) — benevolence; the humane impulse - Li (禮) — ritual, propriety, the choreography of respect - Xiao (孝) — filial devotion as the root of order - Junzi — the cultivated person, made not born - "To rule by virtue is like the pole star — it stays still, and the others turn around it." ### Slide 8: Is human nature good, or bad? - Eight — The Inheritors - MENCIUS - Human nature is good. - A child by a well — anyone would lunge to save it. The seed of compassion is already planted. Cultivation lets it grow. - XUNZI - Human nature is crooked. - Wood must be steamed and bent into a wheel. Without ritual and teaching, we follow appetite into chaos. Civilization is artifice — and that is its glory. - Two Confucian heirs, both right, both lasting. ### Slide 9: Wu-wei - Nine — Laozi & the Dao De Jing - The Way that can be named is not the eternal Way. - Where Confucius saw order, Laozi saw flow. The sage acts by not-acting — not laziness, but the deep effort of not forcing things. - Water finds its way around the rock. The empty cup is useful. The hub of the wheel is the still point that lets it turn. ### Slide 10: The butterfly's dream - Ten — Zhuangzi - Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, fluttering and free, knowing nothing of Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke. Now he does not know — was he a man dreaming of a butterfly, or is he now a butterfly dreaming of a man? - Zhuangzi laughs where Laozi murmurs. He picks up the categories — useful, useless, self, other — and rotates them in the light. - Spontaneity (ziran) over striving. Perspective is plural. The cook cuts the ox by following the grain — never blunting his blade. ### Slide 11: Buddhism + Daoism = Chan / Zen - Eleven — When Streams Meet - When Indian Buddhism arrived in China around the first century, it found a culture already steeped in Daoist intuition. - The two streams blended. Buddhist meditation met Daoist spontaneity. Out came Chan — and centuries later, in Japan, Zen. - No scripture above experience. The koan as a crowbar for the conceptual mind. The garden, the tea, the empty room — each a teaching. ### Slide 12: Living traditions - Twelve — Why It Matters Now - Mindfulness in psychology - MBSR, MBCT, ACT — clinical Western therapy is now built atop Buddhist attention practices. - Stoic-Buddhist parallels - Two ancient traditions, separated by continents, both teach: distinguish what you control from what you don't. - Complexity over duality - Yin and yang are not opposites — they generate one another. A useful posture for systems, ecology, design. - A different self - The non-self of Buddhism, the porous self of Daoism — quiet correctives to a culture obsessed with the brand of "I." ### Slide 13: Where to go from here - Thirteen — Further Wandering - READING - The Upanishads — Eknath Easwaran, tr. - The Bhagavad Gita — Stephen Mitchell, tr. - What the Buddha Taught — Walpola Rahula - The Analects — Confucius, Slingerland tr. - Tao Te Ching — Laozi, Ursula K. Le Guin tr. - Zhuangzi — Burton Watson, tr. - WATCHING - The Four Noble Truths → - Daoism & Laozi → - "Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water. - After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water." ## Related Decks - [Eastern Philosophy — Deck 02](https://shipslides.com/d/philosophy-eastern-philosophy) - [Aesthetics — What Makes a Thing Beautiful?](https://shipslides.com/d/catalog-philosophy-aesthetics) - [Greek Philosophy — from Thales to the Stoics](https://shipslides.com/d/catalog-philosophy-ancient-greek) - [The Enlightenment — Reason against Tradition](https://shipslides.com/d/catalog-philosophy-enlightenment)