BLOG 4: Chapter 4 - Culture and Religion in Eurasia/North Africa

Culture and Religion in Eurasia/North Africa

"Within the major civilizations, these so-called "little traditions" constantly with the "great traditions," and in societies that lay beyond the zone of civilization, such as those in Aboriginal Australia, they linked living human beings to the land,  to the vegetable and animals worlds, to their ancestors, and the gods or spirits that inhabited everything." pg. 148

"Chinese and Greek thinkers focused more on the affairs of this world and credited human rationality with power to understand that reality." pg. 148

"All the traditions sought an alternative to an earlier polytheism, in which the activities of various gods and spirits explained what happened in this world. These gods and spirits had generally been seen as similar to human beings, through much more powerful." pg. 148

"These enormously rich and varied traditions have collectively posed the great questions of human life and society that have haunted and inspired much of humankind ever since." pg. 149

"An iron-age technology, available since roughly 1000 B.C.E, made possible more productive economies and more deadly warfare." pg. 149

CHINA AND THE SEARCH FOR ORDER

"What followed was a period (500-221 B.C.E) of chaos, growing violence, and disharmony that became known as the age of warming states." pg. 150

"One answer to the problem of disorder - through not the first to emerge - was a hardheaded and practical philosophy known as Legalism" pg. 150

"Legalists generally entertained a rather pessimistic view of human nature." pg. 150

THE CONFUCIAN ANSWER

"Believing that he had found the key to solving China's problem of disorder, he spent much of his adult life seeking a political position from which he might put his ideas into action." pg. 151

"After his death, his students collected his teachings in a short book called Analects, and later scholars elaborated and commented endlessly on his ideas, creating a body of thought known as Confucianism." pg. 152

"The Confucian answer to the problem of China's disorder was very different from that of the Legalist. Not law and punishments, but the model example of superior was the Confucian key to a restored social harmony." pg. 152

"Thus, in both family life and in political life, the cultivation of ren- translated as human-heartedness, benevolence, goodness, nobility of heart - was the essential ingredient of a tranquil society." pg. 152

"Confucius emphasizes education as the key to moral betterment." pg. 152

"Confucianism became the central element of the educational system, which prepared students for the examinations required to gain official positions." pg. 153

"Thus generation after generation of China's male elite was steeped in the ideas and values of Confucianism." pg. 153

"Usually only young men from wealthy families could afford the education necessary for passing examinations, but on occasion villagers could find the resources to sponsor one of their bright sons, potentially propelling him the stratosphere of the Chinese elite while bringing honor and benefit to the village itself." pg. 154

The Daoist Answer

"To Confucians, humankind "disposes over the world of [wild] things, tames wild animals, and brings cowed vermin under his control." pg. 155

"Applied to human life, Daosism invited people to withdraw from the world of political and social activism, to disengage from the public life so important to Confucius, and to align themselves with the way of nature." pg. 156

"Like Confucianism, the Daoist perspective viewed family life as central to Chinese society, though the element of male/female hierarchy was downplayed in favor of complementarity and balance between the sexes." pg. 156

South Asian Religion: From Ritual Sacrifice to Philosophical Speculation

"The earliest of these texts, known as the Vedas (VAY - duhs), were collections of poems, hymns, prayers, and rituals," pg. 157

"The fundamental assertion of philosophical Hinduism was that the individual human soul, or atman, was in fact a part of Brahman." pg. 158

THE BUDDHIST CHALLENGE

"About the same time as philosophical Hinduism was emerging, another movement took shape that soon became a distinct a separate religious tradition - Buddhism." pg. 159

"In this respect, Buddhism was a simplified and more accessible version of Hinduism" pg. 160

"Thousands of women flocked to join the Buddhist other of nuns, where they found a degree of freedom and independent unavailable elsewhere in Indian society." pg. 161

"This early version of the new religion, known as Theravada (Teaching of the Elders), portrayed the Buddha as an immensely wide teacher and model, but certainly not divine." pg. 161


HINDUISM AS A RELIGION OF DUTY AND DEVOTION

"Buddhism as a distinct religious practice ultimately died out in the land of its birth as it was reincorporate into a broader Hindu tradition, but it spread widely and flourished, particularly in its Mahayana from, in other parts of Asia." pg. 163

"By 1000 C.E., Buddhism had largely disappeared as a separate religious tradition within India." pg.164

"In the process, that tradition had generated Buddhism, which became the first of the great universal religions of world history, and then had absorbed that new faith back into the fold of an emerging popular Hinduism." pg. 164

TOWARD MONOTHEISM: The Search for God in the Middle East

"a distinctive monotheistic religious" pg. 165

ZOROASTRIANISM

"Like Buddhism, the Zoroastrian faith vanished from its place of origin, but unlike Buddhism, it did not spread beyond Persia in a recognizable form." pg. 166

JUDAISM

"There, around 1000 B.C.E, they established a small state, which soon split into two parts - a Northern kingdom called Israel and a southern state called Judah." pg. 166

THE GREEK WAY OF KNOWING

"The enduring significance of Greek thinking lay not so much in the answers it provided to life's great issues, for the Greek seldom agreed with one another, but rather in it's way of asking questions" pg. 169

"He was also one of the first Greeks to ask about the fundamental nature of the universe and came up with the idea that water was the basic stuffs from which all else derived, for it existed as solid, liquid, and gas. Others argued in favor in favor of air of fire or some combination" pg. 169

THE BIRTH OF CHRISTIANITY ... WITH BUDDHIST COMPARAISONS

"The man, Jesus of Nazareth, and the religion of Christianity that grew out of his brief career, had a dramatic impact on world history, similar to and often compared with that of India's Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha." pg. 172

"Those powerful religious experiences provided the motivation for their life's work and the personal authenticity and attracted their growing band of followers." pg. 172

"Both Jesus and the Buddha called for the personal transformation of their followers, though "letting go" of the grasping that causes suffering, in the Buddha's teaching, or "losing one's life in order to save it," in the language of Jesus" pg. 172

"Furthermore, Jesus' teachings had a shaper social and political edge than did those of Buddha." pg. 172