Eastern Religion
Robert Sutton
Introduction:
Over the course of the first few weeks, there are four questions that we will be discussing. These are
1. What is the value of
the study of Eastern religions?
On a practical level, our world is
becoming smaller. In educational circles there is now a significant
interest in what is variously referred to as “Global Education,” or “Culture
Studies.” While in
Understanding how religions influence
human behavior is essential for a critical understanding of the world we read
about in the front-pages of our newspapers or viewing
on television.
Without a sophisticated
understanding of the religious historical forces at work in the modern world,
you will become a bystander, dependent on and easily manipulated by the
interpretations of others for understanding global and national events.
Studying Eastern religions can have
the strange effect of creating a greater understanding of one’s own religious
tradition. That is to say, the study of Eastern religions allows for
self-reflection concerning one’s fundamental beliefs. Eastern wisdom is,
in many ways, quite different from the West. This study presents you with the
opportunity, and it might be the only time you get this opportunity, of tapping
into the collective wisdom of humanity. In so doing, you might find
something of interest, namely, that you are not alone in asking the questions
that you have asked yourself. One of the distinctive features of American
culture is a radical individualism that has its strengths and weakness but one
thing it does is to place a great deal of responsibility on you to come up with
“personal” answers to some of life's most fundamental and recurring questions:
The study of Eastern religions is a
study in how these questions, and others, have been asked and answered.
And, just as you are not alone in asking these questions, you might also be
surprised to learn that others have come to conclusions similar to your own.
2. What are the
difficulties involved in studying Eastern religions?
3. What are the methods and
disciplines for this study?
Any appreciation of any religious
tradition, especially not our own, requires an imaginative capacity.
There is a significant difference between the acquisition of information and a
sympathetic appreciation of humanity's spiritual quest. In this course,
we will use every method and academic discipline, which will aid us in this
task.
Traditionally, one can identify six
major methodologies, which have been used in the academic study of religions:
In this course, as I indicated, we
will employ all these methods.
Virtually every discipline can be
and has been used in helping scholars and students understand religious
expression and behavior: History, archaeology, language, studies,
psychology, economics, art, sociology, anthropology, architecture, math,
virtually all the physical sciences.
4. What is religion?
Religion is, in general difficult
to define. If the definition is too broad one ends in vagueness and thus
fails to achieve real understanding. If, on the other hand, the
definition is too narrow, one will exclude more and more phenomenon as the
definition becomes more and more restrictive. This is one of the reasons
for the phenomenological approach, as well as the other methods. Notice,
they do not define religion but turn, with one method or another, to the actual
investigation and examination of religion.
In this book Smart offers a
paradigm for studying religion. Paradigm means to show an example or pattern
side by side in all its form. Now, in this case, various actual religions are
set side by side and compared. Prof. Smart offers 7 elements in his paradigm,
which serve to both define religion in general and also allow for a comparison
of diverse and actual systems of belief and practice.
In your notebook I want you to
complete a graph over the course of this semester. On the right hand
side, please list these 7 elements and across the top you will list the
religions, which we will study. Thus, for each of these religions, you will
fill in the appropriate box concerning how these religions look in terms of
these elements.
There are certain weaknesses with
this approach. Not all these elements are found equally within a
particular religion and, one must bear in mind that religions change over
time. Often these changes are in response to a particular element, for
example element 1, being emphasized at the expense of another element, such as
no.2, which a large number of people find important. This is one way of
understanding the dynamic behind the reformation or the Wesleyan movement.
In addition to this paradigm, I would suggest another which I also want you to develop a graph of in you notebook. Every religion, at least it could be argued, has a diagnosis of the human situation, a means for responding to this situation and a vision of health or wholeness. You could say, “need,” “vehicle of salvation,” and “healed state.”
Before looking specifically at the
Eastern religions, I want us to consider two very basic approaches to thinking
about religion. These two perspectives suggest viewing religion as either
(1) something that satisfies strong psychological or sociological needs or (2)
it is the vehicle through which persons can get in touch with reality that
transcends the everyday, physical world.
In accordance with the first view,
one can refer to Sigmund Freud, who understood religion to be a “universal
obsession neurosis” and it was he who predicted that, with the advent of
psychology, the neurosis, like other neurosis, would pass away as the human
species evolved. This is an evolutionary scheme deeply influenced by Darwin and
other philosophers, such as Hegel and Marx. Indeed the word “primitive” has its
basis in such a view. It might be helpful to see some significant dates
related to Freud and
Freud, born in 1856
1859
1871
1882
1899 Freud, The
Interpretation of Dreams
1923ff, Future
of an Illusion and Civilization and Its Discontents.
1939 Freud Dies
We can also look at Karl Marx who understood religion, or at least the Christian form
with which he was familiar, to be a tool for oppression which functioned as a
kind of “reverse mirror.” He says:
Man makes religion, religion does not make man. In other words, religion is the self- consciousness and self-feeling of man who has either not yet found himself or has already lost himself again. But, man is no abstract being squatting outside of the world. Man is the world of man, the state, society. This state, this society, produces religion, a reversed world-consciousness, because they are a reversed world.... Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. . . .
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for the real happiness. The demand to give up the illusions about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale of woe, the halo of which is religion ("Introduction," Towards a Critique of Hegel's "Philosophy of Right," 1844).
He elsewhere explains, "The social principles of Christianity declare all vile acts of the oppressors against the oppressed to be either the just punishment of original sin and other sins or trials the Lord in his infinite mercy imposes on those redeemed" (The Communism of the Paper Rheinischer Beobachter).
From the other perspective, one points to religious claims, often based on mystical
experiences, that individuals are in touch with a reality or dimension, which
is different from the ordinary world. William James has remarked:
Some years ago I
myself made some observations on this aspect of nitrous oxide intoxication, and
reported them in print. One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time,
and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our
normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one
special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the
filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of
consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting
their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are
there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably
somewhere have their field of application and adaptation.
No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these
other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the
question, for they are so discontinuous with
ordinary consciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes though they cannot
furnish formulas, and open a region though they fail to give a map. At any
rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality. Looking
back on my own experiences, they all converge towards a kind of insight to
which I cannot help ascribing some metaphysical significance (Varieties of Religious Experience
258).
Similarly, Rudolph Otto in The Idea of the Holy (Das
Heilige), has found in the literature of various
religions what he called the mysterium tremendum:
We are dealing with something for which there is only one
appropriate expression, ‘mysterium tremendum’. The feeling of it may at times come
sweeping like a gentle tide, pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest
worship. It may pass over into a more set and lasting attitude of the soul,
continuing, as it were, thrillingly vibrant and resonant, until at last it dies
away and the soul resumes its ‘profane’, nonreligious mood of everyday
experience. It may burst in sudden eruption up from the depths of the soul with
spasms and convulsions, or lead to the strangest excitements, to intoxicated
frenzy, to transport, and to ecstasy. It has its wild and demonic forms and can
sink to an almost gristly horror and shuddering. It has its crude, barbaric
antecedents and early manifestations, and again it may be developed into
something beautiful and pure and glorious. It may become the hushed, trembling,
and speechless humility of the creature in the presence of–whom or what? In the
presence of that which is a mystery inexpressible and above
all creatures.
–Otto, “The Analysis of Tremendum,” The Idea of
the Holy, chapter IV.
On-line
Resources:
McCutcheon, Russell T., "Studying Religion," http://www.as.ua.edu/rel/studyingreligion.html.
MacKendrick, Kenneth. The Study of Religion: An Introduction and Provocation, http://www.ccsr.ca/mackendrick.htm.