THE PHILOSOPHIES OF ASIA  by Alan Watts                  PHILOSOP.TXT
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       CONTENTS

       Introduction
        I. The Relevance of Oriental Philosophy
       II. The Mythology of Hinduism
       III. Eco-Zen
       IV.  Swallowing a BaU of Hot Iron
        V.  Intellectual Yoga
       VI.  Introduction to Buddhism
       VII. The Taoist Way of Karma


      THE RELEVANCE OF ORIENTAL PHILOSOPHY

      CHAPTER ONE

       When I was a small boy I used to haunt section of London around the
       Museum, and one day I came across a shop that had a notice over the
       window which said: "Philosophical Instruments." Now even as a boy I
       knew something about philosophy, but I could not imagine what
       philosophical instruments might be. So I went up to the window and
       there displayed were chronometers, slide rules, scales, and all kinds
       of what we would now call scientific instruments, but they were
       philosophical instruments because science used to be called natural
       philosophy.

       Aristotle once said that "The beginning of philosophy is wonder."

       Philosophy is man's expression of curiosity about everything and his
       attempt to make sense of the world primarily through his intellect;
       that is to say, his faculty for thinking. Thinking, of course, is a
       word used in many ways and is a very vague word for most people.
       However, I use the word thinking in a very precise way. By thinking, as
       distinct from feeling or emoting or sensing, I mean the manipulation of
       symbols-whether they be words, numbers, or other signs such as
       triangles, squares, circles, astrological signs, or whatever. These are
       symbols, although sometimes symbols are a little bit more concrete and
       less abstract than that, as in the case of a mythological symbol, like
       a dragon. However, all these things are symbols, and the manipulation
       of symbols to represent events going on in the real world is what I
       call thinking. Philosophy in the Western sense generally means an
       exercise of the intellect, and the manipulation of the symbols is very
       largely an exercise of the intellect, but it does sometimes go beyond
       that, as in the specific cases of poetry and music. Yet what philosophy
       has become today in the academic world is something that is extremely
       restricted.

       Philosophy in the United States, England, Germany, and France to some
       extent has fallen into the realm of two other disciplines: mathematical
       logic on the one hand, and linguistics on the other. The departments of
       philosophy throughout the academic world have bent over backwards to be
       as scientific as possible. As William Earl, who is professor of
       philosophy at Northwestern University, said in an essay called "Notes
       on the Death of a Culture," "An academic philosopher today must above
       all things avoid being edifying. He must never stoop to lying awake
       nights considering problems of the nature of the universe and the
       destiny of man, because these have largely been dismissed as
       metaphysical or meaningless questions. A scientific philosopher arrives
       at his office at nine o'clock in the morning dressed in a business suit
       carrying a briefcase. He does philosophy until five in the afternoon,
       at which point he goes home to cocktails and dinner and dismisses the
       whole matter from his head." Professor Earl adds, "He would wear a
       white coat to work if he could get away with it." Of course this
       critique is a little exaggerated, but by and large this is what
       departmental academic philosophy has become, and Oriental philosophy is
       simply not philosophy in that sense.

       These things, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism, are sometimes also called
       religions. I question the application of that word to them because I
       like to use the word religion rather strictly. Now I am not going to be
       so bold as to venture a definition of religion that is supposed to be
       true for all time. All I can do is tell you how I use the word, and I
       wish to use it in an exact sense from its Latin root which really means
       "a bond or rule of life." Therefore, the most correct use of the word
       religion is when we say of a man or woman that he or she has "gone
       into" religion; that is to say, has joined a religious or monastic
       order and is living under a rule of life or is living a life of
       obedience.
       For if Christianity is a religion, if Judaism is a religion,
       and if Islam is a religion, they are based on the idea of man's
       obedient response to a divine revelation. Thus religion, as we
       understand it in these three forms of religion, consists really of
       three things we will call the three c's: the creed, the code, and the
       cult. The creed is the divinely revealed map of the universe or the
       nature of things. It is the revelation of the existence of God, of
       Allah, of Yahweh, or as we say, God, by His existence, by His will, and
       in His design of the universe. That is the creed. To this we add the
       second c, the code, and this is the divinely revealed law, or exemplar,
       which man is supposed to follow. In the case of Christianity there is a
       certain variation in this because the principal revelation of the code
       in Christianity, as well as the cult, is not so much a law as a person.
       In Christianity, God is said to be supremely revealed in the historic
       Jesus of Nazareth.. So the code here becomes really the following of
       Jesus of Nazareth, but not so much an obedience to a law as through the
       power of divine grace. Then, finally, there is the cult, and this is
       the divinely revealed method or way of worship by which man relates
       himself to God through prayers, rites, and sacraments. In these
       particular religions these methods are not supposed to be so much man's
       way of worshipping God, as God's way of loving Himself in which man is
       involved.
       So, in the Christian religion in the Mass we would say that
       we worship God with God's own worship, following the saying of that
       great German mystic, Meister Eckhardt:
       "The love with which I love God is the same love wherewith God loves
       me." So, too, when monks in a monastery recite the divine office, the
       psalms are supposed to be the songs of the Holy Spirit, and so in using
       the psalms the idea is that you worship God with God's own words, and
       thereby become a sort of flute through which the divine breath plays.

       Now neither Hinduism, Buddhism, nor Taoism can possibly be called
       religions in this sense, because all three of them significantly lack
       the virtue of obedience. They do not concede the godhead as related to
       mankind or to the universe in a monarchical sense. There are various
       models of the universe which men have used from time to time, and the
       model that lies behind the judeoChristian tradition, if there really is
       such a thing, is a political model. It borrows the metaphor of the
       relation of an ancient Near Eastern monarch to his subjects, and he
       imposes his authority and his will upon his subjects from above by
       power, whether it be physical power or spiritual power. It is thus that
       in the Anglican Church, when the priest at morning prayer addresses the
       throne of grace he says, "Almighty and everlasting God, King of Kings,
       Lord of Lords, the only ruler of princes, Who dost from Thy throne
       behold all the dwellers upon earth, most heartily we beseech Thee with
       Thy favor to behold our sovereign majesty, Elizabeth the Queen and all
       the royal family." 

       Now, what are these words? This is the language of court flattery, and
       the title "King of Kings," as a title of God, was borrowed from the
       Persian emperors. "Lord have mercy upon us," is an image drawn from
       things earthly and applied to things heavenly. God is the monarch, and
       therefore between the monarch and the subject there is a certain
       essential difference of kind, what we might call an ontological
       difference. God is God, and all those creatures, whether angels or men
       or other kinds of existence that God has created, are not God. There is
       this vast metaphysical gulf lying between these two domains.

       That gives us, as citizens of a democracy, some problems. As a citizen
       of the United States you believe that a republic is the best form of
       government. Yet how can this be maintained if the government of the
       universe is a monarchy? Surely in that case a monarchy will be the best
       form of government. Many of the conflicts in our society arise from the
       fact that although we are running a republic, many of the members of
       this republic believe (or believe that they ought to believe) that the
       universe is a monarchy. Therefore, they are, above all, insistent upon
       obedience to law and order, and if there should be democracy in the
       Kingdom of God, that would seem to them the most subversive idea ever
       conceived. Now I am exaggerating this standpoint a little bit just for
       effect. There are some subtle modifications which one can introduce
       theologically, but I will not go into them at the moment. There are at
       least two other models of the universe which have been highly
       influential in human history.

       One is dramatic, where God is not the skillful maker of the world
       standing above it as its artificer and King, but where God is the actor
       of the world as an actor of a stage play-the actor who is playing all
       the parts at once. In essence this is the Hindu model of the universe.
       Everybody is God in a mask, and of course our own word "person" is from
       the Latin, persona: "That through which comes sound." This word was
       used for the masks worn by actors in the Greco-Roman theater, which
       being an open-air theater required a project.