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Religions of East Bklt.Qxd RELIGIONS OF THE EAST : PATHS TO ENLIGHTENMENT COURSE GUIDE Professor Stephen Prothero BOSTON UNIVERSITY Religions of the East: Paths to Enlightenment Professor Stephen Prothero Boston University Recorded Books ™ is a trademark of Recorded Books, LLC. All rights reserved. Religions of the East: Paths to Enlightenment Professor Stephen Prothero Executive Producer John J. Alexander Executive Editor Donna F. Carnahan RECORDING Producer - David Markowitz Director - Matthew Cavnar COURSE GUIDE Editor - James Gallagher Design - Edward White Lecture content ©2005 by Stephen Prothero Course guide ©2005 by Recorded Books, LLC 72005 by Recorded Books, LLC Cover image: Smiling Buddha, Angkor Thom, Cambodia © Clipart.com #UT069 ISBN: 978-1-4193-5871-5 All beliefs and opinions expressed in this audio/video program and accompanying course guide are those of the author and not of Recorded Books, LLC, or its employees. Course Syllabus Religions of the East: Paths to Enlightenment About Your Professor ................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 5 Lecture 1 The Nature of Religion and How Asian Religions Complicate Things ................................................................................. 6 Lecture 2 Hinduism Before Hinduism: Vedic Religion ......................................... 12 Lecture 3 Hinduism as a Way of Wisdom ........................................................... 17 Lecture 4 Hinduism as a Way of Devotion .......................................................... 21 Lecture 5 Sikhism: The Way of the Disciples ...................................................... 27 Lecture 6 Hinduism and Sikhism in America ....................................................... 32 Lecture 7 Theravada Buddhism: Buddha, Dharma, Sangha ............................... 38 Lecture 8 Mahayana Buddhism: Emptiness and Compassion ............................ 43 Lecture 9 Zen Buddhism: Koans and Zazen ....................................................... 48 Lecture 10 Tibetan Buddhism and the Dalai Lama ............................................... 53 Lecture 11 Buddhism in America ........................................................................... 58 Lecture 12 Confucianism: Becoming Human by Becoming Social ....................... 64 Lecture 13 Daoism: Becoming Human by Becoming Natural ............................... 69 Lecture 14 Pop Goes the Buddha: Asian Religions in Popular Culture ................ 74 Course Materials ........................................................................................................ 79 3 About Your Professor o r e h t o r P n e Stephen R. Prothero h p e t S f o y s e t r u o c h p a r g o t o h P Professor Prothero is the chairman of the Department of Religion and direc - tor of the Graduate Division of Religious and Theological Studies at Boston University. A historian of American religions, Professor Prothero specializes in Asian religious traditions in the United States. He teaches courses on Asian religions, American religious history, Buddhism in America, Hinduism in America, death and immortality, and Jesus in America. His first book, The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott (1996), was award - ed the Best First Book in the History of Religions in 1997 by the American Academy of Religion. He has published articles in Journal of the American Academy of Religion and Religion and American Culture. He is also the coedi - tor, with Thomas Tweed, of Asian Religions in America: A Documentary History and the author of Purified by Fire: A History of Cremation in America . His most recent book is American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon . 4 m o c . t r a p i l C © Smiling Buddha, Angkor Thom, Cambodia Introduction The main aim of this course is to cultivate basic literacy in the principal reli - gions of Asia: Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism. This course explores the origins of these religious traditions in Asia and their transplanta - tion to the United States. The course considers three related issues: why reli - gion matters, what the term “religion” means, and how Asian religions—espe - cially Buddhism and Confucianism—wonderfully complicate that term. 5 Lecture 1: The Nature of Religion and How Asian Religions Complicate Things The Suggested Reading for this lecture is William E. Paden’s Interpreting the Sacred: Ways of Viewing Religion. Why Does Religion Matter? • Religion is not going away, despite claims by secular thinkers. • Religion is an important factor in world affairs (for example, the attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001). Until fairly recently, it was an article of faith among intellectuals that religion and modernity were incompatible. Secularization theory stated that where and when modernity advanced, religion would fade away, both in society and in individuals. This was the view of Karl Marx, who called religion “the opiate of the masses.” It peaked in the 1960s, when “Death of God” theology was in vogue and a Time magazine cover asked, “Is God dead?” By the mid-1970s, secularization theory itself was starting to expire. The 1976 election of Jimmy Carter—a “born-again” Christian—made Americans increasingly aware of the importance of religion in public life. The so-called “Reagan Revolution” of the 1980s and the rise of the Moral Majority advanced this process. By the 1990s, the old thinking about the disappearance of religion in the face of modernity was starting to look delusional. Smart sociologists admitted to making a mistake. Peter Berger (b. 1929), in The Desecularization of the World (1999), wrote: The world today, with some exceptions . is as furiously religious as it ever was and in some places more so than ever. This means that a whole body of literature by historians and social scientists loosely labeled “secularization theory” is essentially mistaken. International events have also had a hand in making plain religion’s enduring power: • The 1979 Iranian Revolution • The 1990s rise to power of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India, which showed that right-wing political activism was not unknown even to the Hindu faith • The tragic events of September 11, 2001 Today, the question is not whether religion is a force in history, but what sort of force it is. Is religion hazardous to your health? Is it good for you? Or both? E N O What Is Religion? E R U Everyone today seems to know precisely what religion is and what it does. T C Religion, some say, is a wonderful thing. It holds a society together. It gives E L 6 meaning to individual lives. It transports us to Heaven. Others say religion is a horrible thing. Collectively, religion divides us. Individually, religion drives us crazy. According to my students, “organized religion” is particularly bad. They prefer “disorganized religion,” which they call spirituality. The only people who don’t know what religion is, it seems, are scholars like myself, who trouble our students with questions like, “What is religion?” The term “religion” comes to us from the Latin religio , which means a feeling of fear in the presence of the gods and one’s obligation to worship them. Religio is probably related to religare , which means to bind, to tie, to restrain, or to unite. So, early on, religion was associated with three primary principles: • Binding oneself to God (or the gods) • Sacred obligations: things one is bound to do • Security: religion as an anchor in a wind-tossed world Ancient Theories: The Greeks and the Romans One early theory was that gods personified natural forces—naming and pro - pitiating fire, lightning, rain, earthquakes, and other events in nature. Enlightenment Theories Enlightenment thinkers believed religion to be irrational—that, at its base, religion is rooted in emotion and experience. • In 1755, David Hume (1711–1776) stated, “Religion’s origins are in barbaric emotion, especially fear.” • Freidrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), in 1799, wrote that religion is a “feeling of absolute dependence.” Anthropological Approaches In his book Primitive Culture (1871), the English anthropologist Edward Tylor (1832–1917) posited that religion originates in and is therefore essen - tially “belief in spiritual beings,” or animism. This is a classic definition. For example, one dictionary definition of religion is “belief in the existence of a superhuman controlling power, especially of god or gods, usually expressed in worship.” Another English anthropologist, Sir James G. Frazer (1854–1941), in The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (1922), stated that there were three ascending categories in human cultures: magic, as practiced in polythe - istic religions; monotheistic religions; and science, which was higher still. This theory contributed to the secularization assumption. Sociological Approaches Suggesting that religion was social, not individual, the French sociologist and philosopher Emile Durkheim (1858–1917) said, Religion is a unified system of belief and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and prac - tices which unite into one single moral community called a church, all those who adhere to them. 7 The key here is that religion is a group practice, not an individual experience. Karl Marx (1818–1883), the German philosopher, social scientist, historian, and revolutionary, famously
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