Religions of the Axial Age | Mark W. Muesse, Lecture Notes

Religions of the Axial Age | The Great Courses

Religions of the Axial Age: An Approach to the World's Religions

Mark W. Muesse, Ph.D. Professor, Rhodes College

Course No. 6312
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Mark W. Muesse, Ph.D.
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InstitutionRhodes College

Alma materHarvard UniversityLearn More About This Professor
Course Overview


What could the beliefs and traditions of a Zoroastrian, a person of Jewish faith, a Buddhist, a follower of Confucius, or a Christian have in common? How do religions evolve over time?

This course offers a rare opportunity to relate your own spiritual questions to a variety of ancient quests for meaning and transcendence. In Religions of the Axial Age, Professor Mark W. Muesse shows you the historical conditions in which the world religions arose, while letting you see how they answered shared metaphysical and human dilemmas. He helps you think about specific traditions while pondering the common processes of religious development.

Not content to study religion merely from books, Professor Muesse has also observed and participated in these traditions in their native contexts, especially in South Asia. Thus his approach to the study of religion is not solely academic or historical but also reflects a deep respect for religious experience as it is felt and lived.

You will explore fascinating aspects of several major world religions at the time of their birth. Although Professor Muesse emphasizes the early religious traditions of Iran, South Asia, and China, he also shows how these compare, contrast, and contribute to contemporary Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

What Is the Axial Age?

Professor Muesse offers striking insights as he draws you closer to the period between 800 to 200 B.C.E., an era with notable parallels to our own. Using a term first coined by the German philosopher Karl Jaspers and recently popularized by the religious scholar Karen Armstrong, Professor Muesse calls this period the Axial Age because of its pivotal nature.

Through sacred texts, modern scholarship, and thoughts arising from his own personal experiences, Professor Muesse reveals what it meant to be a conscious, morally responsible individual in the Axial Age. For example, Confucius wanted to help politicians and civil servants do a better job of governing their countries; Buddha hoped to show men and women how to break free of suffering. You'll also examine the rise of Zoroastrianism in Persia (now Iran); Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism on the Indian subcontinent; and Confucianism and Daoism in China.

Zoroaster, Prophet of Personal Accountability

Was the Iranian prophet Zoroaster the first to conceive of the concepts of heaven and hell? Professor Muesse explains Zoroaster's vision of a blissful afterlife for those who sided with good, but a hellish afterlife for those who chose evil. Zoroaster may not have offered the first statement of an afterlife, but he may have been the first to hinge the eternal destiny of an individual to his or her worldly behavior. Moreover, for Zoroaster, humanity—and history itself—move in a direct, linear path toward a cosmic conclusion in which good ultimately triumphs, evil is annihilated, and paradise is established on Earth.

Zoroaster, who is also known as Zarathustra, taught that humans are responsible for the moral choices they make in a world where good and evil are locked in struggle. Zoroaster's apocalyptic vision may have been coupled with a bodily resurrection of the dead, in which those who had gone to heaven return again to Earth to continue life in physical form. If this were Zoroaster's belief, he would have been among the first—if not the first—to imagine such a fate.

The Wisdom of Ancient India

We're not the first people to ask the question, Is this all life has to offer? Professor Muesse shows us the longstanding centrality of this question in his extended exploration of the major religions of ancient India—Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism—during their formative stages.

Our journey first takes us to the indigenous Indus Valley civilization, a culture focused on agriculture, goddess worship, and fertility, and its encounter with tribal nomads called Aryans, believed by most scholars to be from Central Asia No one is certain how this encounter took place, but the fusion of cultures and beliefs profoundly altered Indian religion and provided the basis for the Hindu family of religions.

Eventually, as urbanization increased and some orders of society became wealthier, men and women began to wonder whether life had something more to offer. They questioned the emphasis on ritual and expressed concerns about the authority of the priests. The Upanishads, composed by a counter-cultural movement of mystics and ascetics, address questions of life, death, and the meaning of both. This concern with the fundamental meaning of life marks the rise of classical Hinduism and coincides with the Axial Age's beginnings in India.

A central element in the evolution of Hinduism was the widespread acceptance of the concept of samsara, the belief that individual beings undergo a series of births, deaths, and rebirths governed by the moral principle known as karma. In fact, virtually every school of philosophy or sect of religion that arises in India's history—including Buddhism and Jainism—takes samsara as the fundamental problem of existence, and each in its own way seeks to address it. This new religious concern reflects and shapes India's entrance into the Axial period.

Next, Professor Muesse takes you to northeastern India in the 6th and 5th centuries B.C.E., when many spiritual seekers had given up the comforts of home to seek enlightenment. They lived as hermits or apprenticed themselves to spiritual guides. Meditating and practicing ascetic disciplines, they sought a deep, internal understanding of reality's ultimate nature. You'll grasp the significance of the Buddha's life and thought as it emerged during this period. The Buddha advocated a strict if moderate regimen to break those habits perpetuating the illusion of selfhood and encouraging people to deny the world's impermanence. Learn about the Buddha's eightfold path to nirvana, a path that emphasizes the importance of acting ethically, developing virtue, and restraining both body and mind through the practice of meditation.

Like the Buddha, Mahavira, a founder of Jainism, achieved a visionary enlightenment after withdrawing from the luxury and temptations of the world. While he confronted similar issues, his own teachings gave innovative interpretations to the idea of the soul and karma. Jainism emphasizes the principle of ahimsa (doing no harm) and offers special practices for attaining personal liberation.

China and the Paths of Virtue and Nature

Our next stop is China, where we learn about Confucius and the mysteries of Daoism. Professor Muesse takes us inside China's earliest (pre-Axial Age) spiritual practices to give a context for the life and thought of Confucius—as well as Laozi, who was probably a fictional character invented by the philosophers of Daoism. Muesse explains that although Daoism arose in opposition to the ideas of Confucius, both systems of thinking can simultaneously coexist in the Chinese mind along with the ancient beliefs and rituals of Chinese folk religion and the later, imported wisdom of Buddha.

Confucianism and Daoism both draw a connection between public and private (state and family) harmony and governance. Confucius and his early followers, however, saw the cultivation of virtue as a cultural, human activity emphasizing study and ritual. The early Daoists aligned the self with a larger, ultimately harmonious natural order. They advocated accepting change as inherent to the way of nature. Eventually, Confucianism and Daoism were institutionalized and the philosophies of the founders went through considerable reinterpretation.

Professor Muesse's final lecture offers reflections on a central question of the course: What does the study of the Axial Age teach us about religion as a phenomenon in our lives?Hide Full Description


24 Lectures

Average 31 minutes each

1What Was the Axial Age?
2The Noble Ones
3The World of Zoroaster
4Zoroaster's Legacy

5South Asia before the Axial Age

From Iran, we move to South Asia and the pre-Axial culture of what came to be India. First we examine the indigenous Indus Valley culture, whose religious practices focused on goddess worship and fertility rituals, then the migration of the Indo-Aryans to the Indus Valley, bringing with them a world-view and a set of rituals based on their scriptures, the Vedas.

6The Start of the Indian Axial Age

This lecture focuses on pre-Axial Vedic ceremonies and what they accomplished. The rise of the Upanishads—composed to help provide answers to emerging questions about life, death, and their significance—marks the beginning of classical Hinduism and the start of the Indian Axial Age.

7Death and Rebirth

A key element in the evolution of Hinduism was the acceptance of samsara, the belief that beings endure a series of births, deaths, and rebirths. This lecture explores the development of these major concepts.

8The Quest for Liberation

In the Axial Age, Indian men and women renounced the material world in search for enlightenment. This search took a variety of forms and expressions, giving rise to the religious practices often associated with Hinduism. Roots of Buddhism and Jainism can also be traced to this quest.

9The Vedantic Solution

Quest for liberation focuses on knowledge of ultimate reality and the self. The Upani-shad's general viewpoint is that the soul is invisible and immortal, never created or destroyed, and separate from both body and mind. To realize the Absolute entails penetrating reality's veil and acknowledging the identity of the self and ultimate reality.

10The One and the Many
11The Life of Siddhattha Gotama
12"I am Awake"
13Why We Suffer
14The Noble Path
15From Buddha to Buddhism
16Jainism

17East Asia before the Axial Age
18The World of Confucius
19The Foundations of Confucianism
20The Cultivation of Virtue
21Early Confucianism and the Rise of Daoism
22The Daodejing
23Daoist Politics and Mysticism
24Reflections on the Axial AgeHide Full Lecture List
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☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆4.7 out of 5 stars. Read reviews for Religions of the Axial Age: An Approach to the World's Religions 4.7 97 ReviewsThis action will navigate to reviews.
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Overall☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆4.7Overall, average rating value is 4.7 of 5.

Most Helpful Favorable Review

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆5 out of 5 stars.
BGZredix
· 12 years ago

Review by BGZredix. Written 12 years ago. 5 out of 5 stars.Well done and fascinating; title quite misleading


In "The Origin and Goal of History," German philosopher Karl Jaspers coined the term "Axial Age" for… Show Full ReviewThis action will open a modal dialog.
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Most Helpful Critical Review
☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆2 out of 5 stars.
daniel103
· 9 years ago

Review by daniel103. Written 9 years ago. 2 out of 5 stars.Too slow, too little content


The lecturer speaks so slowly and deliberately, with pauses between almost every pair of sentences, … Show Full ReviewThis action will open a modal dialog.
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☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆3 out of 5 stars.
EngineerinVA
· 4 months ago

Microcosm of Comparative Religion


The study of “the axial age,” i.e., the years 800-200 BCE, notes that there were fundamental developments in religions from China to Greece including Daoism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Greek philosophy. This course examines these developments in spiritual thought during this relatively limited era of time although he refers the student to other offerings by The Great Courses (TGC) for Greek philosophy and Judaism.

Dr. Muesse organizes the course by religion (most of which are actually cultural philosophies that may not address any deity): Zoroastrianism in Mesopotamia (2 lectures), Hinduism (5 lectures), Buddhism (5 lectures), Jainism (1 lecture), Confucianism (3 lectures), Daoism (3 lectures). He considers each of these religions more or less in isolation and then draws out commonalities in the concluding lecture.

I was disappointed that Dr. Muesse was satisfied with showing commonalities without delving into the *source* of those commonalities. For example, if two religions believe in an afterlife, is that a manifestation of some principle that transcends these religions or is it just a coincidence? For another example, Dr. Muesse stresses that religions throughout the axial age marked the beginning of the concept of self. Is that a manifestation of some development of social evolution or is it just a coincidence?

I am also disappointed that his lectures were limited to these geographic areas and did not extend to Africa, the Americas, or western Europe. For example, Egypt was an advanced civilization with a deep and extensive spiritual legacy; why was Egypt excluded?

Dr. Muesse’s speaking style is more of a performance than a dialogue. He seems more concerned with transmitting his information than interacting with his listeners.

The course guide is average by The Great Courses (TGC) standards. The course guide is written in outline format as opposed to paragraph or bullet format. This breaks up the narrative. The course guide averages about 5 pages per lecture, which seems to be well below TGC standards. There are no graphics in any chapter. However, there is a timeline, an extensive glossary, extensive biographical notes, and a bibliography that describes the value that each reference offers.

I used the audio version. It was perfectly adequate. I doubt that video graphics would have added significant information.

The course was published in 2007.
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☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆5 out of 5 stars.
Rall
· 2 years ago

Take this class before any Eastern Religion class


This course does not need any more 5-star reviews. Those 5-star reviews and the course description make clear how good this course is. Those reviews also tell you in detail what is actually contained in this course. I bought this course in 2007 when it was first published. I am now reviewing all my TGC on religion, and notes from the classes on Eastern Religions I took in they 2000's at LMU Los Angeles. YOU NEED TO TAKE THIS COURSE BEFORE YOU TAKE ANY OTHER CLASS ON EASTERN RELIGIONS. This course explains the how, why, and cultural conditions that resulted in the great sages of eastern religions. When I first took this course I took copious notes. Reviewing it now I realize the importance of just about every sentence from the professor.
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☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆5 out of 5 stars.
Marilyn W
· 3 years ago

Well presented course with an excellent lecturer


The topic is very interesting to me so I'm definitely engaged from that standpoint. The material is organized in a very good way for presentation. The lecturer is very good. He speaks clearly and with animation -- top notch. He also takes time to introduce what will be coming in the next lecture. Well done!
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☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆5 out of 5 stars.
Pontiac
· 4 years ago

I find it quite engaging.


I have only listened to the first three lectures, but if the remaining are as good as the first three, I will be keeping this series to view over again from time to time. I sometimes do that with really good programs.
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☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆5 out of 5 stars.
bielecki
· 4 years ago

Engaging and informative lectures.


Back in the day I was a religion and philosophy major, and I wanted to refresh my understanding of this marvelous Axial Age. To be honest, I was at first put off a bit by Dr. Muesse's somewhat sing-songy presentation and also by the different pronunciation of some words and phrases I was certain I already knew. About 10 minutes later I realized that Dr. Muesse had it all right and I didn't. His knowledge and understanding of the subject matter is obviously wide and deep, and his presentation of it in this series is thoughtful and organized. Perhaps what I most appreciated was the times he shared personal thoughts and experiences (perhaps in the Buddhism and Daoism lectures) that illustrated the themes he was presenting. The course exceeded my expectations. Thanks Dr. Muesse.
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☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆5 out of 5 stars.
MarleysGhost
· 4 years ago

The Course that Can be Spoken of is not the Course


Although the title of the course is “Religions of the Axial Age” Professor Muesse points out up-front that he is not covering Greece or Judea in the course. He points out that there are plenty of courses on Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Judaism so there is less need for covering those topics. Even so he does bring in comparisons with Greek philosophy a couple of times. Plus (to cite only one example), I was so fascinated by his tracing of the religions of South Asia from the time of the Vedas that were mostly concerned with “right rituals” to the beginnings of religions that were concerned with questions of life, death and right behavior. Even though I was aware, I really had not thought so much about the differences of the Rig Veda and the Upanishads. It would have been a nice parallel with the growth of Judaism from the Patriarchs to Judaism in the time of the Axial Age.

But enough carping—otherwise this is a somewhat obscure topic, explained well and understandably. And I’d not ask for any lecture to be eliminated in order to accommodate other material, just another few lectures. Even with two lectures devoed to Zoroaster, I’d have liked more. And while Jainism is incredibly small in terms of adherents, its principles are so important, that only one lecture devoted to it seems not enough. My only real complaint is that this course should be 36 lectures long.

There is much to love in this course, I thought a highlight was following Buddhism from its beginnings in South Asia to its rise (and change) in China followed by tracing the beginnings of the Axial Age in China and then six lectures on Confucius, Confucianism, Laozi (assuming he existed), the Daodejing and Daoism. And who knew that the Daodejing was written as a political text? Actually there are so many highlights in this course I hate to single one out.

Dr. Muesse is not a particularly dynamic speaker, but his delivery is measured and precise. I always had the feeling that each word he used was the one that he exactly wished to use in order to convey exactly what he wanted. I took this course in audio and did not feel that I missed much by not having a video version.

Highly recommend for those with an interest in religion.
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☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆5 out of 5 stars.
Mark10101
· 4 years ago

great


wow that's great, it really helped me on solving some problems on the axial age!
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☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆5 out of 5 stars.
Zan dan
· 4 years ago

Great course!


I bought this two months ago and I’m real pleased with how the professor teaches and how much he knows.
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☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆4.7 out of 5 stars. Read reviews for Religions of the Axial Age: An Approach to the World's Religions 4.7 97 ReviewsThis action will navigate to reviews.
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Sort by: Newest answers▼Menuktaborn
· 5 years ago

Does the course address the Baha'i Faith?
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TracyTGC
· 5 years ago



Thank you for your question! No, it does not. The Baha'i Faith started in the mid-nineteenth century, well after the Axial Age (800- 2,000 BCE).



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OneL
· 6 years ago

Does the course guidebook have a glossary?
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TracyTGC
· 6 years ago



Thank you for your question. Yes, the guidebook does have a glossary.



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Goera
· 6 years ago

Is there any certification for a completion?
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AliciaTGC
· 6 years ago



Thank you for your question.

Our courses are designed for your learning pleasure. The benefit of our courses is that you can watch and or listen to them at your own pace.



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BlaaB
· 7 years ago

Is there a transcript available?
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KatherynTGC
· 7 years ago



Thank you for your question.
The transcripts for Religions of the Axial Age is available in hard copy thru our call center at 800-832-2412.



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Mackles
· 8 years ago

Is there a book that goes with these lectures?
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TGCGuitarist
· 8 years ago



This course will come with a course guidebook.



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reykjavik
· 9 years ago

Does he discuss Sikhism?
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TGCHusker
· 9 years ago



This course doesn't get into Sikhism in great detail, although there are references to Guru Nanak in lectures three and eleven. You may be interested in our course Cultural Literacy for Religion: Everything the Well-Educated Person Should Know, found here: http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/cultural-literacy-for-religion-everything-the-well-educated-person-should-know.html. Lecture twenty-two discusses the Sikhs.



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DaxO
· 9 years ago

Audio or Video?
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TGCHusker
· 9 years ago



Thank you for your question. This course is one that can absolutely be fully appreciated in audio format. While the video will have some pictures, graphics, and images to go with the material, they are nothing you can't live without. If you aren't an overly visual learner, the audio will most certainly work for you. As a general rule, unless the audio format is marked as a "soundtrack", you will be fine with either video or audio.



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Rory
· 9 years ago

Why is there no video streaming for the DVD purchase?


If there is audio streaming for CD purchasers, then shouldn't DVD purchasers also have access to SOME streaming version?

If video streaming not included for reasons like copyrighted content, then shouldn't there be a fallback to allow for access to audio streaming?
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TGCHusker
· 9 years ago



Thank you for your question. This course has no video streaming because the course is not available in video download format. Sometimes, vendor agreements we have with various firms will limit the formats that we can make the course available in. We strive to make all of our courses available in as many different formats as possible, but in some instances we are restricted to what we can offer. The streaming access is dependent upon the format you buy. Therefore, if you purchase a DVD and there is video streaming available for the course, you will receive that free of charge, and if you purchase a CD and there is audio streaming available for the course, you would receive that free of charge. Each course page should note which formats will have streaming available.



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IamwhoIam
· 9 years ago

The concept of the Axial Age is synthetic. And yet Prof. Mueuse dodges this concept. What is the justification for not dealing with Greek concepts?
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CustomerService
· 9 years ago



Thank you for your question! In this course, Professor Muesse focuses on the the Eastern Religions because he argues that the Western Tradition gets significant attention in other works, while the Eastern Religions are often underplayed. He wanted this course to be an opportunity to explore some of the lesser known religions with a focus on locations such as Iran, South Asia, and China.



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sooty
· 10 years ago

Am wondering if the setting's the same


I haven't ordered a DVD lately and am wondering if the set is still a wall with a window and ivy or if it's a bit more dynamic.

Thanks
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Quaker
· 10 years ago



Good question. This course was filmed in front of that window with the ivy, but that classroom was retired years ago. Newer courses feature more cameras, more sophisticated movement, more graphics and green screen technology, the amount of which depends on the material being covered (religion courses tend to have fewer graphics and special effects). If you'd like to see some free clips from recent courses, check out The Great Courses YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/TheGreatCourses.

====

 

PUBLISHED BY:THE GREAT COURSES

 2007

Mark W. Muesse, Ph.D. 

 

Chair of the Department of Religious Studies, Rhodes College 

 

Mark W. Muesse is the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. He received a B.A., summa cum laude, in English Literature from Baylor University and earned a Master of Theological Studies, a Master of Arts, and a Ph.D. in the Study of Religion from Harvard University.  

Prior to taking his position at Rhodes, Professor Muesse held positions at 

Harvard College, Harvard Divinity School, and the University of Southern Maine, where he served as Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. 

Professor Muesse is the author of many articles, papers, and reviews in world religions, spirituality, theology, and gender studies and has co-edited a collection of essays entitled Redeeming Men: Religion and Masculinities. He is currently compiling an anthology of prayers from around the world. 

Professor Muesse is a member of the American Academy of Religion and the Society for Indian Philosophy and Religion and has been a visiting professor at the Tamilnadu Theological Seminary in Madurai, India. He has traveled extensively throughout Asia and has studied at Wat Mahadhatu, 

Bangkok, Thailand; the Himalayan Yogic Institute, Kathmandu, Nepal; the Subodhi Institute of Integral Education in Sri Lanka; and Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey.  

Professor Muesse and his wife, Dhammika, have a daughter, Ariyana. For The Teaching Company, he has also taught Great World Religions: Hinduism. 

Acknowledgments: I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the following individuals in preparing this course: my friend Dr. Manoj Jain, who helped me with the lecture on Jainism; my editorial assistant Mr. Michael Turco, who ably assisted with the written elements; Dr. Joan Burton, The Teaching Company’s Academic Content Supervisor for this course; and most especially, my wife, Dr. Dhammika Swarnamali Muesse, who has deepened my understanding of Buddhism and supported me in every phase of this project. 

MWM 

i

========

Table of Contents 

========

Religions of the Axial Age: 

An Approach to the World’s Religions 

 

Professor Biography ....................................................................................i Course Scope............................................................................................... 1 

Lecture One What Was the Axial Age?.................................. 4 

Lecture Two The Noble Ones ............................................... 10 

Lecture Three The World of Zoroaster.................................... 15 

Lecture Four Zoroaster’s Legacy........................................... 20 

----

Lecture Five South Asia before the Axial Age ..................... 25 

Lecture Six The Start of the Indian Axial Age.................... 30 

Lecture Seven Death and Rebirth ............................................ 34 

Lecture Eight The Quest for Liberation.................................. 38 

Lecture Nine The Vedantic Solution ..................................... 42 

Lecture Ten The One and the Many..................................... 46 

----

Lecture Eleven  The Life of Siddhattha Gotama........................ 52 

Lecture Twelve  “I Am Awake” ................................................. 57 

Lecture Thirteen Why We Suffer ................................................ 62 

Lecture Fourteen The Noble Path ................................................ 67 

Lecture Fifteen  From Buddha to Buddhism.............................. 72 

Lecture Sixteen  Jainism ............................................................. 78 

----

Lecture Seventeen East Asia before the Axial Age........................ 84 

Lecture Eighteen The World of Confucius .................................. 89 

Lecture Nineteen The Foundations of Confucianism................... 94 

Lecture Twenty  The Cultivation of Virtue................................. 98 

Lecture Twenty-One Early Confucianism  

and the Rise of Daoism.................................. 103 

Lecture Twenty-Two The Daodejing................................................ 109 

Lecture Twenty-Three Daoist Politics and Mysticism........................ 114 

Lecture Twenty-Four Reflections on the Axial Age......................... 119 

---- 

Religions of the Axial Age: 

An Approach to the World’s Religions 

 

Timeline 125 

Glossary 128 

Biographical Notes 144 

Bibliography 147 

======

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Religions of the Axial Age: 

An Approach to the World’s Religions  

=====

Scope: 

The years 800200 B.C.E. comprise one of the most creative and influential eras in world history. The German philosopher Karl Jaspers termed this epoch die Achsenzeit, or the Axial Age, to indicate its pivotal importance in the evolution of human thought. Around the globe, sages and moralists, philosophers and priests grappled with novel ideas about the nature of humanity, the world, and ultimate reality and approached these issues with fresh ways of thinking. Of such importance was this era that modern people continue to live out their moral and religious lives through the fundamental categories and patterns of thought established during this time.  

The ferment of religious and philosophical activity centered in four distinct regions of civilization: East Asia, South Asia, West Asia, and the northeastern Mediterranean. Each of these areas witnessed the emergence of several imaginative individuals whose exemplary lives and teachings prompted their followers to create the traditions that led to the birth of the world religions. By setting these traditions and thinkers in juxtaposition, we are able to see more clearly the nature of the questions with which they struggled and to appreciate the similarities and differences of their solutions. We can also understand how their ideas have determined theological and religious thought and practices down to our day. 

The course begins with a discussion of the idea of the Axial Age and its characteristics and contours. The introductory lecture accents the importance of this period and explains the value of studying religions comparatively across a specific period of time, rather than merely as traditions isolated from one another and unrelated to larger developments in the evolution of the human spirit. Although the Axial Age had an impact on four major regions, this course will attend principally to the three Asian sites, primarily because of their importance in shaping the world religions and because The Teaching Company already offers a number of excellent courses devoted to the world of the ancient Greeks. In this series, we will focus on the developments of Zoroastrianism in Iran and its influence on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism in 

India; and Confucianism and Daoism in China. The course will unfold regionally, beginning in Central Asia, then tracing developments in West Asia, South Asia, and finally, East Asia. 

Although it is not an Axial center, we begin in Central Asia to study the early Indo-European peoples, who later migrated to West and South Asia and decisively shaped the religious outlook and practices of those regions. We will examine the shared culture of a group of these Central Asians known today as the Indo-Iranians and explore their similarities and differences after they divide in the second millennium B.C.E. When we get to West Asia, particularly ancient Iran, we examine the context out of which came perhaps the most mysterious of all major Axial sages: Zoroaster, also known as Zarathustra. Zoroaster, who may have been the world’s first prophet, was responsible for reforming the ancient Iranian religious tradition and for numerous theological innovations, such as the apocalyptic Day of Judgment, the devil, and perhaps even the idea of a messiah or savior. We will look at these new conceptions both in their native Iranian context and as possible influences on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  

In South Asia, we start with the indigenous Indus culture and witness the impact of the migration of the branch of the Indo-Iranians (retrospectively called the Indo-Aryans) that eventually made its way to northwestern India. We explore the elements of both Indus and Indo-Aryan religions to prepare for the examination of the Axial transformation of Indian religion. PreAxial religion in India focused on this-worldly concerns, such as the acquisition of material needs and comforts, long life, and successful reproduction, and was decidedly oriented toward ritual. With the advent of the Axial Age, Indian sages began to question the values associated with the material world and ritual practices. Indian religion became increasingly preoccupied with understanding the destiny of the individual and the nature of the deepest reality underlying all appearances. After a great deal of speculation, the ideas of reincarnation and karma were widely accepted, creating a new problem for Indian religion: attaining release from the endless rounds of death and rebirth known as samsara. Individuals by the hundreds began to renounce worldly life and experiment with solutions to this predicament. Among the scores of new spiritualities developed during this time, we examine three of the most important and most enduring: the mysticism of the Upanishads, which provided the foundational structure for the massive conglomerate of religious beliefs and practices later known as Hinduism; the teachings of the Buddha, based on an approach he called the Middle Way; and the beliefs and practices of the Mahavira, whose movement became known as Jainism. Setting these traditions side by side will afford us the chance to see how they responded to many of the same problems but offered distinctive and innovative solutions. 

Our final destination is East Asia. We begin with a study of the pre-Axial culture of what will later become China. Understanding this early period, which is barely within reach of current historiography, is important to appreciate the Axial transformations brought about by Confucius and thinkers associated with the tradition of Daoism. We look at the earliest attestations of religious practices that have been important throughout Chinese history, including divination and ancestor reverence. Later, when we turn to Confucius and his followers and then to the Daoists, we observe how these practices are retained and reinterpreted to fit the new concern with moral behavior brought by the Axial Age. Claiming only to transmit ancient traditions, Confucius taught a comprehensive ethic of personal development that remained influential throughout Chinese history and provided the basis for the Chinese educational system. Daoism, often associated with the mythic figure of Laozi, was concerned with many of the same issues as Confucius but suggested other solutions. Throughout Chinese history, Confucianism and Daoism functioned as complements to each other in such a way that individuals could claim allegiance to both Daoist and Confucian traditions. 

The series concludes with a set of reflections on the Axial transformations, emphasizing both the common themes across the centers of development and their distinctive qualities. We will consider the overall significance of this age for human history and its major contributions to human spirituality. 

 

Lecture One 

 

What Was the Axial Age? 

 

Scope: The Axial Age refers to the period of time from approximately 800200 B.C.E., in which unprecedented developments occurred in four separate centers of civilization: West Asia, South Asia, East Asia, and the northeastern Mediterranean. Just the mention of some of the individuals who lived during this period in these localities alerts us to the importance of the age: Zoroaster, 

Jeremiah, Isaiah, the Buddha, Vardhamana Mahavira, Confucius, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. In different ways, these individuals responded to an array of new issues stirred up by increased urbanization, political instability, the emergence of self-consciousness, and the impulse to understand the world and the human place in it as comprehensively as possible. These social and intellectual dynamics led to intense reflection on the nature and destiny of the individual, the fundamental questions of morality, and the character of ultimate reality. As a consequence of their creative engagement with these issues, the sages of the Axial Age produced the intellectual and moral matrix out of which the world’s religions were born; subsequent religious developments are, in large measure, the developments of the ideas and insights from the Axial period. 

 

Outline 

I. The Axial Age, the period between 800 and 200 B.C.E., saw a remarkable burst of creativity almost simultaneously in four separate areas of the Eurasian continent. 

A. In East Asia, in the area we now call China, Confucius and his followers provided the religious, philosophical, and political foundations for more than 2,000 years of Chinese culture. At the same time, Daoist philosophers produced a compelling alternative to Confucianism. 

B. In South Asia, a countercultural movement of ascetics and mystics composed a collection of teachings called the Upanishads that gave nascent Hinduism its characteristic features. Near the same 

time and place, both the Buddha and Mahavira attained new insights that inaugurated Buddhism and Jainism. 

C. In West Asia, in Palestine, the prophets of Judah helped shape the emerging religion of Judaism. Also in West Asia, in Iran, Zarathustra had recently established Zoroastrianism, which served as the state religion of three powerful empires and contributed decisive new ideas to Judaism and Christianity. 

D. Finally, in the northern Mediterranean, in the land of ancient Greece, Thales, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, and 

Aristotle essentially invented the Western philosophical tradition.  

E. Just as fascinating as the density of genius in this era is the similarity of ideas and modes of thinking that these individuals developed. They all struggled with many of the same fundamental issues, such as the nature and destiny of the self, the basis and practices of morality, and the highest goods of human life.  

II. The 20th-century German philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) identified this extraordinary period as die Achsenzeit, or the Axial Age, signifying that this era was pivotal in human history. 

A. During the Axial Age, as Jaspers observed, “The spiritual foundations of humanity were laid simultaneously and independently... And these are the foundations upon which humanity still subsists today.”  

B. What was happening at this particular time and in these particular places that might account for the prodigious output of critical ideas and the appearance of some of the greatest individuals known to the world?  

III. We can point to several social and political developments that contributed to the opening of the Axial Age. 

A. The Axial era occurred at a time and in places of increasing urbanization and mobility. This trend had significant effects on social structures and the human psyche. Urban life often disrupts one’s sense of identity and places traditional values and beliefs in doubt. 

B. Second, the Axial centers were generally characterized by political and legal upheaval.  

1. The Chinese Axial Age, for example, overlapped a brutal epoch in Chinese history known as the Period of Warring States. India, Judah, and Iran underwent similar periods of turmoil and transformation. 

2. Rapid political and social change, of course, generates uncertainty and insecurity, but interestingly, such times are often the most creative and innovative for religious and philosophical thought.  

C. Sages in all the Axial centers became increasingly anxious about death and preoccupied with what, if anything, lay beyond death. 

1. Pre-Axial humans, of course, were not unconcerned with death, but their sense of identity was more firmly rooted in their participation in the family, clan, or tribe. Accordingly, death could be accepted, knowing that the family would survive one’s personal demise.  

2. By the Axial Age, attitudes toward death began to reflect a greater concern about the experience of dying and the afterlife. Increasingly, death was regarded with dread, and speculation about what might lie beyond was filled with both hope and terror.  

3. Reflected in this shift in attitudes about death is the rise of a sense of individuality and a greater consciousness of the human being as a moral agent, accountable for his or her own actions.  

4. As humans began to think of themselves as separate, autonomous individuals, death became a more dreadful reality. Selfhood promotes a feeling of isolation or, at least, differentiation from the rest of the human community and the rest of reality, making it more difficult to accept dying as part of the natural process of living.  

D. The growing sense of selfhood and anxiety about life’s transience also stimulated conjectures about the nature of the person and spurred the search to discover something within the human individual that might endure the dissolution of the body, something eternal or immortal. 

1. As part of this quest, Axial sages developed a new way of thinking about the world and the place of humanity in it. S. N. Eisenstadt, one of the first scholars to study the sociological dimensions of the Axial Age, calls this way of looking at life transcendental consciousness, that is, the ability to stand back and see the world more comprehensively and critically.  

2. Transcendental consciousness produced novel conceptions of the world’s ultimate reality. In some cases, the Axial sages were not content to accept the old anthropomorphic gods and goddesses as the highest realities or powers governing the universe. They imagined sublime conceptions of ultimate reality, such as the Hindu Brahman and the Chinese Dao. 

3. Thinking about the highest realities also led these individuals to a greater interest in epistemology, that is, how we know what we know and what the limitations of our knowledge are. Attention to epistemology, accordingly, promoted a greater sense of self-consciousness and awareness of humanity’s place in the universe. 

E. Finally, the Axial Age marks a dramatic change in the very function of religion in human life. During this era, the purpose of religion shifted from what theologian John Hick calls cosmic maintenance to personal transformation.  

1. By cosmic maintenance, we mean that religion functions chiefly as a ritual means for human beings to collaborate with the divine powers to assist in keeping the world in good working order.  

2. During the Axial Age, however, religion takes on an unprecedented new role in human life: providing the means for the individual to undergo change in order to achieve immortality or happiness.  

3. Selfhood and the heightened awareness of suffering and death prompted some religions to imagine wonderful afterlife experiences as ways to overcome the painful realities of this life. Reaching these goals might mean accepting a new vision of the way the world works or accepting the demands of a particular god with the power to bestow immortality or paradise.  

F. Jaspers was certainly correct in his contention that this era laid contemporary humanity’s spiritual foundations. In these lectures, we will probe this idea in greater detail by examining developments in the Axial centers in West, South, and East Asia. For those interested in Axial Age developments in Greece and Judah, I recommend The Teaching Company courses in Greek philosophy and Judaism. 

IV. The approach of this course is unlike that of many courses in comparative or world religions.  

A. Some courses in religion focus on a particular tradition, such as Islam or Christianity, approaching the material in a chronological fashion. This method allows one to study a single religious tradition in depth and shows how religions evolve over time.  

B. In the second general method of religious studies, students examine religions one by one, noting similarities and differences. This method allows comparisons of various traditions, but the treatment is often shallow, and historical development is glossed over. Further, the short time allotted to each tradition often means that the religion’s development in the larger context of its culture is neglected, as are the ways in which one religious tradition shapes others.  

C. By examining these religions over the 600-year span of the Axial Age and against the background of their pre-Axial settings, we will have the opportunity to study religions both in their historical development and comparatively.  

1. The comparative dimension allows us to view how different religions respond to similar historical and sociological circumstances. It also allows us to see the mutual interaction of religions in proximity to one another.  

2. Limiting the time frame and the number of religions we cover enables us to gain a measure of depth in our investigation and connect the religions more fully with their social and political contexts.  

3. The greatest value of this course, however, derives from the era on which it is focused. The Axial Age is simply one of the most intriguing periods in religious history. We are about to observe the world’s great religions coming to life. 

 

Essential Reading: 

Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History, part 1, chapters 14. 

 

Supplementary Reading: 

Eisenstadt, The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations, Introduction. 

Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, chapter 2. 

Questions to Consider: 

1. Are there other historical periods that compare with the creativity and influence of the Axial Age?  

2. The Axial Age seems to emerge in connection with human selfconsciousness. What may account for the rise of self-consciousness?  

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Lecture Two The Noble Ones 

 

 

Scope: Linguistic and textual analysis has conclusively shown that the people who occupied northwestern India and eastern Iran prior to the Axial Age were closely related, spoke similar languages, and held common religious beliefs. Most scholars think that these Indo-Iranians descended from the same stock of pastoral nomads who originated in the Central Asian steppes. A small minority, however, believe that these people were indigenous to India. This lecture explores the culture and religion of Indo-Iranians prior to their split into two separate groups. The Rig Veda and the Avesta, which later became the foundational scriptures of Hinduism and Zoroastrianism, respectively, give us a glimpse of the IndoIranians’ gods, their social and moral structures, their cosmology, and their ritual practices. Essentially, their religion served to provide the means for the Indo-Iranians to attain the goods necessary for a prosperous and stable life on Earth. The gods were entreated to help maintain productivity and harmony in the hereand-now rather than to secure otherworldly salvation. 

 

Outline 

I. To understand the changes in the Axial centers of East, West, and South Asia, we begin in Central Asia a millennium before the Axial Age, examining the cultural and religious practices of people living in the south Russian steppes, what is today roughly Ukraine to West Kazakhstan. Most scholars believe that these pre-Axial peoples gradually migrated to northern Europe, the northern Mediterranean region, Iran, India, and as far west as Ireland.  

A. The Indo-Iranians remained together until about 4,000 years ago, when they split, some venturing into present-day Iraq and others to present-day Afghanistan and the Indus Valley, gradually spreading across northern India. 

B. For this lecture, we are most interested in the period when the two groups were united in Central Asia before heading south into what is now Iran and India. We call these people the Indo-Iranians. 

C. As the descendants of the Indo-Europeans scattered throughout Eurasia, their single language evolved into dozens of languages in the Indo-European family. Analysis of Icelandic, German, Gaelic, Latin, Greek, Russian, Persian, Sanskrit, Sinhalese, and English shows evidence that they all derived from a single language. 

D. As the group divided, their languages evolved separately but were still similar enough to enable communication. The Indian tribes spoke a form of Sanskrit, and the Iranian tribes spoke Avestan, which now exists only in a collection of sacred writings called the Avesta. 

E. The Indo-Iranians referred to themselves as the “Noble Ones,” each arriving at their respective destinations, which they called the “Land of the Noble.” 

II. What we know of Indo-Iranian culture comes from two sources preserved in oral tradition: the Rig Veda, the oldest extant IndoEuropean text, and the Avesta, a slightly later text from Iran.  

A. The Indo-Iranians were nomadic and semi-nomadic animal herders who also hunted wild animals.  

B. Tribes had little to no formal governance. The society was divided into priests and “producers,” that is, essentially everyone who was not a priest.  

C. The Indo-Iranians were likely peaceful people, with a static society that, for centuries, experienced few significant cultural changes.  

D. Having not yet tamed horses, the earliest people didn’t travel far and knew nothing of warfare that horses made possible.  

III. The religious life of early Indo-Iranians suggests a commonsensical worldview with a belief in numerous gods. Trees were also venerated, especially those growing along riverbanks, probably because the bark or fruit was thought to have healing properties. 

A. The various gods related to different aspects of everyday life, but especially important were those who controlled the natural world: Sky and Earth (Asman and Zam), Sun and Moon (Hvar and Mah), and winds (Vata and Vayu). 

B. The Indo-Iranians worshiped an overarching “king of the gods,” who eventually became irrelevant and was forgotten. The Iranians called him Dyaoš, and the Indians called him Dyaus-Pitr, later known as the Greek and Roman gods Zeus and Jupiter.  

C. Gods associated with ritual practices were also important and included the gods of fire, water, animal spirits, and a visioninducing substance called haoma in the Avestan dialect and soma in Sanskrit. 

D. The ahuras (Avestan) or asuras (Sanskrit) were gods simply called “lords.” Three were of greatest significance. 

1. The first two were associated with oaths, which humans had little means to enforce; therefore, gods were invoked to punish those who failed their oaths.  

2. The third and greatest of the ahuras was Mazda, the Lord of Wisdom, who was, later in the Iranian tradition, represented by the Sun.  

E. There were numerous lesser divinities called the “shiny ones,”— devas (Sanskrit) or daevas (Avestan)—who represented courage, friendship, justice, obedience, and glory, also called charisma. 

IV. In addition to a complex world of spirits and gods, the Indo-Iranians believed in an abstract principle of cosmic order, which kept the Sun on its path and the seasons in proper sequence. Obedience to moral law promoted harmony and well-being, and rituals played an important role in maintaining this order. 

A. Rta (Sanskrit) or asha (Avestan) represented an absolute principle for appropriate human and divine behavior; deities were also subject to rta/asha. 

B. The principle of order was opposed by the power of disharmony and chaos, called druj (Avestan) or druh (Sanskrit).  

C. Rituals were needed to maintain rta/asha against the diametrically opposed druj/druh. In this, we see an example of the pre-Axial practice of cosmic maintenance based on the responsibility people felt to influence the processes on which their lives depended. 

D. To fully understand how these ritual practices promoted social and cosmological harmony, we need to look at the Indo-Iranians’ creation stories. The Avestan version says that the Earth was created in seven stages. 

1. First, the sky was conceived as a gigantic inverted bowl made of beautiful stone. Second, water was created, covering the 

bottom of the sky shell. Third, solid earth was created, floating on the water.  

2. In the fourth, fifth, and sixth stages, life was added in the form of one plant, one animal—a bull—and one man, named Yima (Avestan) or Yama (Sanskrit). In the seventh stage, fire was added. 

3. In the final act of creation, the gods performed the first ritual sacrifice. By crushing and dismembering the plant, the bull, and the man, they created new life. The world was now populated and began the course of asha through death and reproduction.  

E. From simple to complex rituals, the Indo-Iranians reenacted the gods’ primordial sacrifices to maintain cosmic and moral order and to ensure that new life replaced the old.  

1. Among the simplest rituals were offerings to the gods of water and fire. Milk and two plant leaves, to represent the animal and vegetable realms, were offered to water. Incense, wood, and animal fat were offered to fire.  

2. A sacred space was created for more complex rituals, in which priests uttered prayers to keep out evil spirits while fires burned in sacred vessels. 

3. Fire rituals were the most sacred, often involving the blood of goats, sheep, or cattle. Animal sacrifices were performed with special prayers so that the animal’s spirit could continue as part of a divine being called the Soul of the Bull, the life energy of animals.  

4. Consecrated and cooked meat was offered to other gods and then eaten. The Indo-Iranians ate only consecrated meat from domesticated animals. They also said prayers before killing wild animals to ensure their spirits’ safe return to the Soul of the Bull. 

5. Some rituals involved a sacred beverage, soma (Sanskrit) or haoma (Avestan). Soma was believed to be a god that lived in a plant whose properties induced ecstasy, a sense of immortality, freedom from suffering and fear, and communion with the spirit world. The experience of divine communion was important in confirming the existence of the gods while expanding the mind to consider the deepest possibilities of human life.  

V. We now arrive at the eve of the Axial Age, although further developments in Indo-Iranian religions will occur first. The central purpose of religion at this time was co-creation with the gods in the processes and functions of life. Forces were often personified as gods or goddesses or as abstract, impersonal principles. Human beings, clearly feeling a kinship with the natural and divine worlds, had to keep their world in good working order. 

 

Essential Reading: 

Boyce, Zoroastrians, chapter 1. 

 

Supplementary Reading: 

Foltz, Spirituality in the Land of the Noble, chapter 1. 

O’Flaherty, The Rig-Veda, “Soma.” 

 

Questions to Consider: 

1. The Indo-Iranians believed that the gods themselves were subject to rta/asha, the principle of order and morality. Many theologians have objected to such a view because it implies a reality above god. The issue of the divine’s relationship to morality led Socrates to ask in the Euthyphro: “Are morally good acts willed by God because they are morally good, or are they morally good because they are willed by God?” What do you think? Does the matter turn on how the divine is conceived? 

2. Do you think the value of spiritual experiences is invalidated if they are induced by physical substances, such as soma/haoma? 

 

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Lecture Three The World of Zoroaster 

 

 

Scope: The Avesta suggests that the culture of the Indo-Iranians had degenerated into widespread lawlessness some time before the Axial period. In response to the anarchy of these times, Zoroaster, one of the most mysterious individuals among the founders of Axial religions, arose to reform and purify the ancient religion that he served as priest. We know very little about the man himself, and there is considerable debate about when he even lived. Some scholars place him a few centuries before the start of the Axial Age, but there may be good reasons for including him in the lineup of Axial sages, not the least of which is his deep concern with morality and the ultimate destiny of the individual. Zoroaster’s ethical sensitivities led him to reinterpret the deities of the Iranian pantheon, effectively making them partisans of either good or evil. His reforms eventually led to a new religious tradition bearing his name. 

 

Outline 

I. The Indo-Iranians viewed cultural or religious innovation with suspicion and regarded change as sacrilegious. However, as they drifted south from Central Asia, they came in contact with the Mesopotamians, and their way of life changed dramatically. 

A. From the Mesopotamians, the Indo-Iranians learned how to domesticate horses, build war chariots, and fashion weapons, completely disrupting their once stable culture.  

B. They turned to stealing livestock, and raiding and pillaging brought with it a fundamental new purpose: to gain wealth and glory.  

C. But this lifestyle disrupted moral concerns and respect for the rule of law. Perpetrators showed little regard for the weak and defenseless.  

D. With this new way of life arose a third class of individuals alongside the priests and producers: the warlords and professional warriors.  

II. Society now had both peaceful people and warriors, and new nomenclature entered the vocabulary to distinguish between the two.  

A. In ancient Iran, the ashavans followed the way of order and stability. Followers of asha were thought to be blessed, suggesting divine approval.  

B. The wicked ones were the drujvants, devotees of the principle of disorder. Many worshiped Indra, the brave new deity of the heroic age.  

C. New gods more acceptable to the emerging warrior caste began to appear and even dominate some forms of religion. 

1. Indra was valiant in combat, reckless, and amoral but loyal to those who revered him and made offerings to him. In return, he was a giver of many gifts to his followers.  

2. Indra loved soma, the intoxicating drink that fueled his passion and reckless spirit.  

a. In earlier times, Indo-Iranians used soma to commune with the gods, to feel immortal, and to imagine a new life free of distress. 

b. In the heroic age of raiding, soma acquired another dimension, freeing its potential to produce a frenzy conducive to war and lawlessness.  

D. In contrast to Indra, other gods, such as Varuna, began to fall by the wayside in ritual and celebration. The adventurous life of the daring Indra was more appealing, and in time, Varuna and Indra would come to be seen as diametrically opposite gods. 

III. By the middle of the second millennium B.C.E., the Indo-Iranian peoples were gradually diverging to their respective lands. Our story now follows the peoples of Iran, among whom emerged Zoroaster (a Greek transliteration of Zarathustra), who is one of the least-known founding figures in the history of the world’s religions, a transitional figure, representing an interesting mixture of pre-Axial and Axial religious elements.  

A. Little is known about Zoroaster, including when and where he lived. Roughly, we date him to around 1200 B.C.E. in the eastern area of present-day Iran. He came from a modest family living in the semi-nomadic conditions of the Indo-Iranian period when cattle rustlers and outlaws were in their prime. 

B. A text called the Gathas (“verses”), part of the oldest Avesta, is the foundational scripture of Zoroaster’s religion and may have been composed by Zoroaster himself. More spontaneous prayers addressed to a god, as opposed to sermons or didactic proclamations, the Gathas are written in an archaic dialect close to the Sanskrit of the Rig Veda.  

C. The Gathas tell us that Zoroaster was a priest, an authorized ritual specialist.  

D. Troubled by the violence and lawlessness of the land, Zoroaster sought deeper truths. At age 30, he had an impressive visionary experience in which he was led into the presence of the Ahura Mazda and six other radiant beings, known collectively as the heptad (the “seven”), from whom he received a special revelation. 

E. He now had a purpose: “[to] …teach men to seek the right [asha].” Though he continued to have revelations, this was clearly the turning point in his life, transforming him from priest to prophet, a critic of religious practices and a mouthpiece for a god. 

IV. Zoroaster’s response to his new vocation was both conservative and revolutionary. He called his fellow Iranians to return to the principles of good, order, and harmony. But he added novel dimensions to create a powerful vision of the world. There were two chief thrusts of Zoroaster’s theology, both movements in the direction of simplification. 

A. First, Zoroaster wanted the Ahura Mazda to be seen as superior to Varuna and the other ahuras, and he became a passionate advocate for worshiping Mazda as the foremost deity.  

1. In his vision of the heptad, Zoroaster saw Mazda as the dominant deity. In later reflections, Zoroaster suggested that all the other ahuras and divinities were actually emanations or partial manifestations of Mazda.  

2. Zoroaster believed Mazda to be the only uncreated god, who himself created the world in seven stages. This view tended toward monotheism and probably contributed to the religious environment that would ultimately champion this idea.  

B. Second, Zoroaster assigned clear moral qualities to the gods. All the spirits—the daevas and the ahuras—were now plainly either good or evil. 

1. Because the daevas, such as Indra, were honored by the cattle rustlers, Zoroaster reserved the word daeva exclusively for the wicked gods and the word ahura for the ethical gods.  

2. He called the good spirits or divine assistants yazatas, beings associated with the principles of good and truth.  

3. Zoroaster also suggested the existence of an independent evil deity, a chief god among the daevas, called by various names but more commonly Ahriman. Thus, two superior beings— one completely good, the other completely evil—were locked in mortal combat, each struggling for triumph.  

V. In one of the ancient Gathas, Zoroaster’s theological perceptions are briefly reviewed in a cryptic text called “The Two Spirits.” In this short poem, he describes the two original spirits of good and evil appearing as twins. One problem with this overriding theology is that if Mazda were the original uncreated and wholly benevolent god, where did the evil spirit come from and why?  

A. Zoroaster doesn’t attempt to resolve the issue. What is important for him is not an abstract question of theological consistency but the pragmatic and existentially vital point that people must choose between good and evil.  

B. Irrespective of the origins of these entities, humans cannot escape their responsibility in aligning themselves with good or evil and must live accordingly.  

C. Thus, Zoroaster instigates the transformations of the Axial Age in his call to make a choice between good and evil, to accept personal responsibility for one’s actions and words.  

D. The call to this kind of personal obligation is novel in religious history because it is connected with new ideas about what it means to be human and divine.  

E. Later, we’ll see that for Zoroaster, an individual’s moral and religious decisions determine the quality of his or her personal destiny. One’s future well-being, especially in the world beyond this one, depends on one’s behavior here and now. This idea was both new for the times and common in and across the Axial centers.  

Essential Reading: 

Boyce, Zoroastrians, chapters 23. 

 

Supplementary Reading: 

Foltz, Spirituality in the Land of the Noble, chapter 2. 

Malandra, An Introduction to Ancient Iranian Religion, Introduction, chapters 12. 

 

Questions to Consider: 

1. What are the theological benefits and liabilities of conceiving the source of evil as within the godhead? What are the benefits and liabilities of locating the source of evil outside of god?  

2. The drujvants’ aspirations seemed to be embodied in the god Indra to a remarkable degree. Are we fated to worship gods who are merely reflections of our own beliefs and values?  

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Lecture Four Zoroaster’s Legacy 

 

 

Scope: Zoroaster anticipated other Axial sages by connecting human destiny and moral behavior. He imagined human history moving in a linear fashion toward a final conclusion, in which good would at last triumph over evil. At this eschatological moment, those whose lives had been aligned with the Ahura Mazda, the god of good, would be rewarded with an everlasting life of happiness, while those who served Ahriman, the god of evil, would be utterly annihilated. Zoroaster’s use of rituals, particularly those involving fire, was intended to help individuals cultivate moral qualities and ally with the spirit of good.  

  Although there are relatively few Zoroastrians left—today, it would not qualify as a major world religion—the legacy of Zoroaster’s teachings lives on in other religions. Although a controversial issue, many scholars believe that the Western monotheisms—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—absorbed some important aspects of Zoroastrian thought, such as the devil, the Day of Judgment, heaven and hell, angels, and the concept of a divine savior.  

 

Outline 

I. In simplifying Iranian religion, Zoroaster was both zealous prophet and great visionary, whose worldview was one of the most influential in history. His innovative theology helped shape other religious perspectives to come. 

A. Having clearly distinguished which gods were good and which were evil, Zoroaster’s theology was simple: One had to choose between the two forces.  

B. Zoroaster also believed that one’s ultimate destiny, in the afterlife, depended on whether one sided with the good Mazda or the evil Ahriman. This was a remarkable idea for its time because it suggested that individuals had a destiny beyond life. Earlier, such a belief was not widely accepted. 

C. Zoroaster claimed that the afterlife was dependent on one’s moral behavior, which was counter to the popular belief of his day, that destiny depended on whether or not one had performed great deeds or pleased the gods with sufficient sacrifices. This ethicization is one of the great themes of the Axial transformation, the idea that beliefs and practices are interpreted and understood in moral terms. 

D. Zoroaster believed that an individual would be judged on the fourth day following his or her death. Good people went to heaven to be with Mazda, while evil people fell into the abyss of hell. 

II. Zoroaster also envisioned a final cosmic destiny in which all of humanity was headed in a particular direction. 

A. He believed that time was linear, from beginning to apocalyptic end, which ultimately would result in a universal struggle between good and evil to be played out in a battle called Frashokereti, the “making glorious.”  

B. According to Zoroaster, good would prevail, establishing paradise on Earth.  

C. Zoroaster may have believed in a bodily resurrection of the dead; those already in heaven would return to Earth and continue life in physical form.  

D. He also expected a savior figure, a saoshyant, an apocalyptic judge who would play a decisive role in humanity’s destiny.  

E. It’s unclear whether all of Zoroaster’s ideas originated with him, but through his influence and prophecies, these ideas were widely disseminated.  

III. What made Zoroaster’s vision so compelling to many of his contemporaries? 

A. First, it was incumbent upon individuals to make the essential good/evil choice, which determined one’s future and shaped cosmic drama itself. The gods were at war, and human beings had to act to ensure that good prevailed. This elevated the importance of human moral responsibility. 

B. Second, Zoroaster’s vision provided meaning to suffering and promised compensation for it. For their suffering, the righteous would live an afterlife in paradise, while evil ones, too, received their just deserts.  

C. Zoroaster spent his life preaching while missionaries spread his message. Many of his followers were persecuted and killed, but their martyrdom only strengthened the convictions of those who survived.  

D. By the 6th century B.C.E., the movement became the state religion of the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire, which it remained until the 7th century C.E., when it was finally displaced by Islam. 

IV. Zoroastrianism eventually developed rituals intended to reinforce its basic message and theology.  

A. One central practice was to pray five times each day while standing before a fire, which could be the Sun or a fireplace. The Sun was associated with Mazda, and like their Indo-Aryan relatives, Iranians maintained the custom of keeping the sacred fires constantly lit. 

B. Purity also became associated with fire rituals. 

1. The constituent elements of the world—earth, fire, and water—needed to be kept pure.  

2. To keep the soil pure, the dead were not buried. Instead, they were laid in “towers of silence,” exposed for birds to pick their bones clean.  

3. The purity code included the death penalty for anyone polluting a sacred fire, but it allowed the killing of snakes and scorpions, both believed to be demonic creatures. 

C. Celebrations were also practiced, in particular seven major festivals tied to the rhythms of agricultural life. The most important was Noruz, or “New Day”, a new year’s celebration still held at the spring equinox, making it one of the oldest continuously celebrated festivals in the world.  

V. Whether or not Zoroastrianism directly influenced three other major religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—is a controversial issue. However, there are parallel beliefs among these religions, which all first began to appear in Jewish theology after the Exile, when Jews came into contact with the Persians. 

A. Evidence of influence is difficult to prove conclusively. Although there are examples of borrowing from other scriptures in West Asia, there are none from Zoroastrianism.  

B. Early Jewish and Christian theologians probably never read Zoroastrian scripture because much of it was in the oral tradition. The infiltration of Zoroastrian ideas most likely occurred as Jews came into contact with followers of the movement during the postExile period.  

1. In the 6th century B.C.E., Jews came into contact with the Persian Empire; thereafter, new ideas—curiously similar to Zoroaster’s—began to appear in Jewish and, later, Christian writings.  

2. These ideas were significantly different from the theology of earlier Hebrew writings and bear the traces of outside influences. 

C. One of the parallels among these religions is the linear view of time, with a beginning, middle, and end.  

D. Another parallel is the belief in a final apocalypse. The idea of the 

Day of Judgment first appeared in the books of Ecclesiastes and Daniel; the latter vision has the same Zoroastrian themes of an apocalyptic end to history, a resurrection of bodies and a day of judgment, and the determination of human destiny based on the moral quality of the individual’s life.  

E. A third parallel is the belief in heaven and hell and the idea that human beings might attain everlasting life in the heavenly realm or experience anguish in hell. 

F. The idea of the devil seems clearly to be of Iranian origin. The devil appears nowhere in Genesis, but by the time the New Testament was written, 500600 years after the Exile, Satan emerged as a god of evil.  

G. A final important parallel among these religions is the idea of a universal savior or apocalyptic judge who appears at the end times.  

1. Though the idea of a messiah was part of Jewish tradition before Jewish contact with the Persians, their vision of the messiah, who he was and what his role might be, was far from clear. 

2. Zoroaster’s idea of a saoshyant, a universal redeemer appearing at the end times, may have shaped some of the Jews’ expectations. An apocalyptic figure called the Son of Man first appears in Daniel, in which we read that this figure would descend from heaven at the end of history and play a decisive role in the annihilation of evil.  

H. Finally, it is possible that the wise men who appeared at Jesus’ birth were actually Zoroastrians searching for their saoshyant and were led to Judea, where Jesus was born. 

 

Essential Reading: 

Foltz, Spirituality in the Land of the Noble, chapters 3 and 5. 

 

Supplementary Reading: 

Hultgård, “Persian Apocalypticism.” 

 

Questions to Consider: 

1. What was revolutionary about Zoroaster’s thought? 

2. Why might some people be uncomfortable with the idea that Zoroastrianism influenced primary notions in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam? If you are a Jew, Christian, or Muslim, does the idea that Zoroastrianism may have contributed some important beliefs to your religion affect your faith? 

3. How is life different if time is conceived as cyclical rather than linear? 

 

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Lecture Five South Asia before the Axial Age 

 

 

Scope: From Iran, we move to South Asia and the pre-Axial culture of 

what came to be India. We first examine the indigenous Indus Valley culture, whose religious practices focused on goddess worship and fertility rituals. Then we witness the migration of the Indo-Aryans, the descendants of the Indo-Iranians who found their way to South Asia. Although no one is quite sure what occurred when the Indo-Aryans encountered the Indus culture—or what was left of it—the meeting of these traditions yielded profound changes for Indian religion and ultimately provided the basis for the Hindu family of religions. The Indo-Aryans brought with them a worldview and a set of rituals based on their revealed scriptures, the Vedas. Through those texts, we glimpse the Aryan pantheon of gods and their understanding of human beings. 

 

Outline 

I. To help us understand the transformations that led to the birth of the Axial religions of India, we look at the Indus culture, which flourished along the Indus River valley at least 1,500 years before the IndoAryans entered what is now Pakistan and the Punjab area.  

A. By the time the Aryans arrived in the region, around 1500 B.C.E., the Indus culture was declining but still potent enough to influence the evolution of Hinduism, believed to have emerged from the confluence of the ancient Indo-Aryan and Indus religions. 

B. The Indus culture was discovered in the 19th century when ruins were found, indicating that this was the largest civilization of the ancient world, with some cities containing as many as 50,000 people at one time.  

C. We know little about the Indus dwellers’ governance and society, but evidence suggests a centralized authority and law enforcement.  

D. They were likely peaceful agriculturists who traded with the Mesopotamians.  

E. The Indus language remains indecipherable; thus, we don’t know what these people called themselves and have no writings to aid in our understanding of their religion.  

II. Indus dwellers were deeply concerned with sexuality and procreation. Archeological finds include figurines of women with exaggerated hips and breasts. Horned animals with powerful flanks and obvious male genitalia depict male sexuality. However, without textual evidence, we can make only educated guesses about these artifacts based on similar findings in other societies. 

A. Female figurines are thought to symbolize a divine goddess, indicating that the earliest humans worshiped a mother goddess long before male gods.  

1. Whether or not Indus dwellers were part of a vast goddess religion, they did revere and celebrate the reproductive powers of women. 

2. Goddess worship is a prominent part of contemporary Hinduism, with a long and deep-rooted history, and it’s plausible that this tradition derives from Indus practices. 

B. The depiction of horned male animals and stone phalluses implies a fascination with sexuality and reproductive functions. But what precisely was the icons’ function?  

1. Throughout recorded history, Hindus revered a god, Shiva, represented symbolically as the male and female sex organs in an icon called the lingam-yoni, alluding to the powers of creation and procreation and the importance of male/female balance.  

2. Indus images may have functioned in much the same way as the modern Shiva, thus revering creative power and balance.  

C. Sexual images might have had a magical function, such as good luck charms to enhance fertility and conception.  

III. Indus cities also had sophisticated bathing facilities, suggesting an intense concern with purity and cleanliness beyond simple hygiene. But as yet, no obvious places of worship or sacred precincts have been unearthed. 

A. Like Hindus today, the Indus peoples seemed focused on ritual purity, or cleanliness necessary for approaching the sacred. Ritual purity also concerns food, clothing, the persons one may touch or associate with, and a host of similar regulations and restrictions.  

B. Purity rituals maintained a society’s sense of order; thus, the baths likely served to remove impurities and reinstate the order of things, just as in contemporary Hinduism.  

C. Because no positively identified sacred buildings have yet been unearthed in the Indus culture, the home may have served as a sacred space, again, similar to contemporary Hinduism. This underscores the important pre-Axial fact that the sacred and secular were not sharply distinguished.  

D. There is no indication that the Indus peoples thought much about an afterlife. Ritual practices seemed to be chiefly for maintaining order in the present.  

IV. Already in decline by 1500 B.C.E., the Indus culture came to an end at about the time that the “Indo” branch of the Indo-Iranian people began to arrive in the region.  

A. Formerly, historians believed that the Indo-Aryans conquered the Indus culture. But many contemporary scholars of ancient India think that the Indo-Aryans migrated slowly and relatively peacefully into the Indus region, coexisting for a time with the remaining Indus peoples.  

B. Some scholars contend that the Aryans were actually indigenous to India, not Central Asia, and migrated from the subcontinent to other locations. Regardless of where they originated, ancient connections can be found between the Indo-Aryans and the Iranians.  

C. Initially, the Indo-Aryans were pastoral nomads, not agriculturalists. They called themselves the “Five Tribes” and were led by chieftains. Recall that the Indo-Aryans also referred to themselves as the “Noble Ones,” the literal meaning of Aryan.  

V. Our knowledge of the Aryans comes from the Vedas, instructions, prayers, and hymns created for the purpose of performing rituals.  

A. Today, the Vedas are the Hindus’ oldest and most sacred scripture of divine knowledge with universal secrets.  

B. The Vedas are divided into four collections. The oldest, and the one we’ll look at, is the Rig Veda, which contains more than 1,000 songs to various gods and goddesses.  

C. The Vedas tell us that Aryan religion principally involved ritual and sacrifice. As in Indus culture, Aryan ritual appears to focus mainly on acquiring the necessary goods for a happy and comfortable existence in the present.  

VI. To understand the Aryans, we explore some of their rituals, why they were performed, and to whom they were addressed.  

A. The Vedas describe 33 different gods and goddesses believed to dwell on Earth, in heaven, and in the mid-space between the two worlds, a tripartite world similar to that envisioned by the Iranians.  

B. Most of these gods—devas in the Sanskrit—had specific functions or realms. 

1. For instance, Indra was the god of war and, according to Zoroaster, was one of the principal devas associated with chaos and evil.  

2. Agni was the divine fire who lived in the domestic hearth and in plants. He also dwelled in mid-space as lightning and as the fire of the Sun. Because of his versatility, Agni was the mediator between gods and humans and, therefore, figured prominently in Aryan rituals.  

3. Other gods and goddesses included Surya (Sun), Yama (death), Ushas (dawn), Kubera (wealth and prosperity), and a host of other, lesser divine beings of different ranks and qualities, including the asuras, whom the Indo-Aryans considered evil. 

C. Different devas took center stage at varying times and were usually worshiped according to whose favors were needed at the moment. 

VII. We now look at how the Indo-Aryans viewed themselves and their place in the universe. 

A. Significantly, the Vedas have very little to say about views of human nature and destiny. Aryans rarely analyzed themselves nor had they a systematic self-understanding.  

B. The Vedas are more interested in praising gods and performing rituals than understanding what it means to be human.  

C. The Rig Veda hymns portray fairly wide speculation about what occurs at death. One hymn alone lists numerous possible fates for humans, from going to heaven, to dissolving into the elements of the natural world, to being “cooked” by the funeral pyre and subsequently consumed by the gods.  

1. Other hymns suggest that the soul descends to the underworld, ruled by Yama.  

2. The hymns contain no consensus about the makeup of the human personality or about what determines one’s final destiny.  

D. The Aryan relationship to the body is not spelled out, and it’s unclear what determines fate.  

1. Sometimes, it appears that the correct performance of rituals decides one’s destiny; sometimes, it seems to depend on deeds; and sometimes, one’s fate is unrelated to the life lived. 

2. The Vedas make no pronouncements that destiny is related to moral choices, as Zoroaster believed. 

E. The Aryans surely regarded death as an occasion for grief and sadness, yet there is no indication that death was terrifying or that an afterlife—if there was one—was unpleasant. 

F. The Rig Veda also says nothing of reincarnation, an Axial development that receives widespread acceptance as the Vedic tradition evolves into Hinduism.  

 

Essential Reading:  

Hopkins, The Hindu Religious Tradition, chapter 1. 

 

Supplementary Reading: 

O’Flaherty, The Rig-Veda, “Creation,” “Agni,” “Indra,” “Varuna.” 

 

Questions to Consider: 

1. What are the similarities between the Indus culture and contemporary Hindu tradition? 

2. What are some of the differences between Indus peoples’ beliefs and Zoroastrianism? 

 

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Lecture Six The Start of the Indian Axial Age 

 

 

Scope: Central to Aryan life, rituals gave meaning to everything from the creation of the universe to the death of the individual. Vedic rituals ensured the proper functioning of the world. The most important ritual was the shrauta rite, in which elaborate ceremonies and special functionaries, the priests of the Brahmin caste, helped an individual gain the favor of the gods for particular benefits. But as the Indo-Aryans spread and settled over northern India, many began to question the value of rituals and the power of the priests. Some Aryans began to worry about their individual fates, and death increasingly became a matter of serious concern. The Upanishads, a collection of texts later included among the Hindu scriptures, were composed to help provide answers to the emerging questions about life, death, and the significance of both. This time period marks the beginnings of classical Hinduism and the start of the Indian Axial Age.  

 

Outline 

I. Ritual, the essential means for appealing to the divine, was of vital importance to the Aryans in pre-Axial India. To understand the impulses that led to the reinterpretation of ritual during the Axial period, however, we’ll first look at the dynamics of pre-Axial ritual. 

A. The Vedas are vague about how the Aryans understood human nature and individual destiny, yet the belief structure supporting their rituals was complex and specific.  

B. A passage from the Rig Veda illustrates this complexity in a creation story about Purusha, the primordial sacrificial victim. Purusha was a man with “a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, [and] a thousand feet,” whose dismembered body was the origin of all creation in the universe. 

C. This story illustrates how sacrifice became the method of renewing creation. But the powers responsible for the well-being of life often needed human assistance—priests. 

D. Ritual dismemberment as the basis for creation also implies a relationship between the ritual and the world beyond it. By manipulating certain aspects of the ritual, the priests themselves were controlling aspects of life—making them tantamount to gods. The technical term for this belief is sympathetic magic. 

E. Finally, the myth of Purusha allows us to understand the caste system. The stratification of priests, producers, warriors, and servants was intended by the gods, a fundamental element in the nature of reality. To challenge the system would be akin to challenging the gods, and the consequences would be dire. 

II. The Aryans performed many different rituals and for many different reasons, but the most important may have been the shrauta rites, particularly the fire sacrifice.  

A. Shrauta rituals were more elaborate than others and were performed for different occasions, but ordinarily, they were thought to influence worldly gains, such as breeding more and better cattle, producing “manly” sons, or promoting health and longevity.  

B. Only members of the Brahmin, or priestly, caste could conduct these rituals, because only they had the skill to do so. Setting up and performing the sacrifice might take several days or weeks. 

C. Under Brahmin supervision, workers created a sacred space using precise measurements. Earthen altars contained sacred fires and corresponded to Earth, mid-space, and heaven.  

D. The gods were invited to attend, and participants drank soma and sacrificed animals, which they cooked and offered to the gods and human participants.  

E. The most important aspect of the ritual, however, was the singing of prayers and hymns, using verses from the Vedas, by Brahmin priests. The sacred words had to be correctly uttered or the ritual might be ineffective, perhaps even dangerous.  

F. In the early Vedic period, the Aryans believed that the sacrifices persuaded the gods to act on behalf of the one making the sacrifice. Over time, however, the ritual itself was the transformative agent. By manipulating the objects of the sacrifice, and especially by uttering powerful words, the Brahmins came to believe that they themselves were controlling the cosmic powers.  

G. Eventually, uttering sacred words during rituals became akin to tapping into the creative power of the sacrifice. The priests regarded themselves as the custodians of this power, called Brahman, or “that which makes great.” 

III. Following the Vedic period (1500–800 B.C.E.), the period of classical Hinduism marks the time when the complex traditions of Hinduism began to take shape, coinciding with the advent of the Axial Age in India. During this transitional time, significant changes took place. 

A. Despite the rise of classical Hinduism, Vedic traditions were retained. Older Vedic notions and practices were kept intact and, to some extent, reinterpreted. In addition, a set of new ideas and concerns was added to the mix, resulting in what we call Hinduism.  

B. But changes did occur, and the most important was the expansion of the Indo-Aryans into the Gangetic plain of northeastern India around 1000 B.C.E., sometimes called the “second urbanization” of India. The Aryans eventually gave up the nomadic life, settling in towns and becoming farmers.  

C. These basic sociological changes coordinated with certain developments in Indo-Aryan religion, such as growing doubts about the value of ritual.  

1. The middle castes may have resented the power of the Brahmins and their monopoly on ritual performance.  

2. But perhaps even more important was an emerging sense that rituals were not all that worthwhile.  

D. Further, a collection of writings—the Upanishads—from this period began to reevaluate Vedic practices. One story illustrates a dialogue between a young Brahmin, Nachiketas, and Yama, the King of Death.  

1. Through an interesting set of circumstances, Nachiketas is sent to the underworld, where Yama grants him three wishes.  

2. For his third wish, Nachiketas asks Yama to explain what happens when a person dies, but Yama is reluctant to answer. 3. As an alternative to answering the question, Yama offers Nachiketas wealth and longevity on Earth, precisely what the Vedic rituals were intended to secure and what the IndoAryans may have considered the highest goods of life. 

Nachiketas refuses these gifts in favor of his desire to know about the afterlife. 

E. The story of Nachiketas at the dawn of the Axial Age signifies an important shift among some practitioners of Indian religion: Earthly riches now count for little. It wasn’t that practitioners believed the old rituals didn’t work but that what the rituals provided was ultimately unimportant. 

F. Finally, for the first time in early Indian literature, expressions of anxiety about death appear. In earlier passages from the Rig Veda, there is no agreement about the ultimate fate of human beings and no sense that the Indo-Aryans were even concerned about the afterlife. The stage is now set for change.  

 

Essential Reading:  

Hopkins, The Hindu Religious Tradition, chapter 2. 

 

Supplementary Reading: 

Mascaró, The Upanishads, “Katha Upanishad.” 

 

Questions to Consider: 

1. How did the concept and practice of ritual evolve among the Aryans? 

2. What is the significance of the story of Nachiketas and his encounter with Yama? 

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Lecture Seven Death and Rebirth 

 

 

Scope: A key element in the evolution of Hinduism was the widespread acceptance of the concept of samsara, the belief that beings endure a beginningless series of births, deaths, and rebirths, governed by the moral principle known as karma. This lecture explores the development of these major concepts and the novel problems they presented to Indian religion and philosophy. Once these ideas were accepted, virtually every school of philosophy or sect of religion that arose in India’s history—including Buddhism and Jainism— took samsara as the fundamental predicament of existence, and each in its own way sought to address this problem. This new religious problematic signaled India’s entrance into the Axial Age. 

 

Outline 

I. Between 800–600 B.C.E., Indian religious life began to change dramatically. The old Vedic ritual system, which had dominated Aryan religion for centuries, came under scrutiny, and material earthly riches became less important than spiritual gains.  

A. As people became more prosperous, sages began to wonder if there were more to life—if human existence could transcend the acquisition of material success.  

B. There was an increasing concern with death and the ultimate fate of individuals, a departure from the Vedic focus on the complete enjoyment of earthly life.  

C. For certain groups of Aryans, probably Brahmins and others acquainted with the Vedas, the question of death and afterlife was a matter of much discussion and speculation, though opinions were diverse and inconsistent. 

D. Doubts began to arise about the Vedic picture of the afterlife, in which one enjoyed a pleasant and permanent existence among the gods and ancestors. Although this was not a universal Aryan view, many believed it and thought that performing the appropriate rituals was the way to secure it. 

II. At the end of the Vedic era and the start of the Axial Age, the fear arose that one might initially reach heaven only to lose it again through death. The word redeath now entered the religious lexicon, implying that one died, ascended to heaven for a time, then died again, dissolving into the elements of the natural world.  

A. The notion of redeath was probably an intermediate step toward the concept of reincarnation, or transmigration of the soul, where one endures a continual series of births, deaths, and rebirths.  

B. No one is sure how belief in reincarnation appeared and became widely accepted throughout India, but it likely began in northern India among a small coterie of philosophers and holy persons at the start of the Axial Age. 

C. Not unique to India, the concept of reincarnation is found among some Native Americans, the Trobriand Islanders, and in West Africa. The idea was also popular with Pythagoras, Socrates, and other Axial Age philosophers of ancient Greece—descendants of the Indo-Europeans. 

D. Rebirth became the fundamental assumption of virtually all Indian religions and philosophies, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Though these religions interpret rebirth in different ways, the common term used to denote this concept is samsara, or “wandering.” 

III. The ancient Indian Upanishads give us the first clear sense of reincarnation. But before we delve deeper into that topic, let’s look more closely at this classic text, because it is vital to understanding subsequent developments in Indian religion.  

A. The most important Upanishads were probably composed between 

800–400 B.C.E., squarely in the Axial Age. The number of Upanishads varies, but most editions contain 13 or 14 “principal” Upanishads. 

B. By tradition, the Upanishads are considered part of the Vedas and, like the Vedas, are not systematic or always consistent. But the Upanishads represent a different view of the world from the earlier Vedic texts, such as the Rig Veda.  

C. Whereas the earlier Vedas are centrally concerned with rituals and sacrifice, the Upanishads are much more contemplative. They 

seem to reflect the outlook of the solitary ascetic or seeker, rather than the world of the priest or religious official.  

D. Despite the clear differences with earlier Vedic texts, the Upanishads are still regarded as Ğruti—revealed knowledge— sharing the same sacred status as the Vedas.  

E. Like the Old and New Testaments, the Upanishads and the Vedas were written during different epochs. As with the New Testament, the Upanishads more clearly and completely describe revelations than the Vedas (or Old Testament); this explains the apparent inconsistencies and tensions between the two works. Thus, the Upanishads are often called Vedanta, which means the 

“completion of the Veda.” 

F. Written earlier, the Vedas make no mention of the concept of transmigration, but by the time the Upanishads appear, the concept of rebirth has started to enjoy widespread acceptance. Yet the Upanishadic passages deal with rebirth through metaphor or analogy, rather then clearly spelling out what it is. 

G. Some passages imply that reincarnation is driven by one’s desire to be reborn. Other views hypothesize that cremation fires convert corpses into smoke, which carries the dead to heaven; there, they become food for the gods, before returning to Earth through a series of natural events and being reborn in male semen.  

IV. As the Axial Age progresses and the Upanishads develop further, the details of reincarnation are refined. One of the most important of these developments is the concept of karma. Whereas the idea of rebirth is not exclusive to India, the belief that one’s future incarnation depends on how one behaves in this life is a distinctive Indian contribution.  

A. In older Vedic times, karma referred to ritual action that priests performed to make a sacrifice effective. But in the development of classical Hinduism, karma came to include the idea of moral action. Like Zoroaster’s beliefs, the Upanishads make one’s moral behavior the decisive element in human destiny.  

B. Karma is a theory that states that the events in one’s life—good or bad—are neither chance occurrences nor foreordained by realities outside of oneself. Rather, the concept refers to one’s actions and their consequences.  

C. Karma does not separate action from consequences; the effects of one’s acts will eventually return to the actor in what is known as the fruiting of karma.  

D. Karma is inevitable, always returning to the agent who created it, no matter how long it takes, even more than one lifetime. 

E. Karma pertains not only to physical acts but to thoughts and words, indicating a growing focus during this time on the interiority of the spiritual life, a characteristic of Axial transformations throughout the world. 

F. Karma can be good or evil, positive or negative. In essence, by performing good actions, one produces positive karma; wicked or irresponsible actions create negative karma. 

G. Karma is a principle of absolute justice, a process that occurs ineluctably and impersonally, with no god or divine being meting out justice. According to Hinduism, even the gods themselves are subject to karma.  

 

Essential Reading:  

Sharma, Classical Hindu Thought, chapters 1113. 

 

Supplementary Reading: 

Obeyesekere, Imagining Karma, chapter 1. 

 

Questions to Consider: 

1. The idea of samsara may have developed independently of the concept of karma. Is it possible to believe in karma without holding to the notion of rebirth?  

2. Does it take more faith to believe in reincarnation than to believe in the annihilation of the self at death or in the resurrection of the dead?  

3. What would it take to persuade you to accept the principle of karma? 

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Lecture Eight The Quest for Liberation 

 

 

Scope: India may be the most intensely religious place on Earth, and 

nowhere is that intensity more evident than in the Axial Age movement that led Indian men and women by the hundreds to renounce the material world and their lives in society to seek the final liberation from samsaric existence. Virtually constituting a fifth caste, ascetics, wandering hermits, teachers, yogis, and holy persons of every stripe left the ordinary life in search of the knowledge that would bring them eternal repose from the endless wheel of rebirth. The search for this knowledge took a wide variety of forms and expressions, giving rise to some of the characteristic religious practices often associated with Hinduism. The historical roots of Buddhism and Jainism can also be traced back to this movement. 

 

Outline 

I. The ideas of rebirth and karma may have arisen independently of each other, but if so, they came to be inextricably linked in the Indian imagination during the Axial Age, spawning a new attitude toward life and the world. Karma meant that one’s current condition was shaped by the deeds one had performed in the past, creating a level of hierarchy in the present. 

A. One might be reborn at any level on this hierarchy, ranging from plant life, to various levels of animal life, to the human realm (and its several castes), and then, to various levels of divinity.  

B. Too much bad karma could take one from human existence to that of a buzzard, for example. Good karma might enable an outcaste to be reborn as a Brahmin.  

C. To be reborn as a god or a Brahmin or, in some senses, simply as a human being was extremely rare and required a great deal of karmic merit.  

D. What made rebirth as a human so precious was that humans could positively affect their future existence. Animals, in contrast, weren’t capable of generating much karma, which meant that they couldn’t greatly affect their rebirths. Humans, however, had almost limitless opportunities to act morally, that is, to produce karmically relevant deeds.  

II. In the pre-Axial era, the Indo-Aryans weren’t obsessively concerned about death. But that perspective changed significantly when the concept of samsara, or multiple rebirths, became adopted. One of the facets of rebirth is that samsara is not a desirable situation. 

A. Most people who believed in reincarnation didn’t want to be reborn because even the best possible life is fraught with suffering, pain, and grief and eventually ends in death.  

B. It may take a million more lifetimes, but individuals would eventually realize the futility of samsaric existence. In the end, one must seek the ultimate aim of life: liberation from samsara altogether.  

C. The Hindus call this liberation moksha, complete release—the end of reincarnation.  

D. From the samsaric standpoint, endless lifetimes and the prospect of infinitely more caused Indians in the Axial Age to reconsider the value of the material world  

III. As the idea of samsara spread, it spurred individuals to leave their families and jobs to seek a way to escape rebirth. This mass movement included men and women of all ages and castes but especially attracted those from the upper and middle castes.  

A. It was during this period (800–400 B.C.E.) that Aryan culture became settled in towns. Farming and commerce flourished, and more people enjoyed material prosperity during a time of economic, social, and religious activity. 

B. Traditional practices and beliefs were no longer taken for granted. The power of the Brahmin priests was called into question, and many people became dissatisfied with the shape of the new culture. 

C. There was also a yearning for high adventure, for the quest of the perfect life that few dared to try. Those who joined the homeless and ascetic life saw in renunciation their only hope for freedom and fulfillment.  

D. Sages believed that by perfecting the spiritual life, the samsaric realm might be conquered to achieve even greater bliss.  

E. Many of these samanas, as they were called, lived alone in caves or forests; some lived with their families in ascetic communities; some wandered from village to village carrying only a change of clothes and a bowl used to beg for food.  

F. So large and so familiar was this countercultural movement that the samanas were virtually regarded as a fifth caste, alongside priests, warriors, producers, and servants. Others sought out these ascetics for advice and lessons for living. 

G. The relationship between ascetics and ordinary people became symbiotic. Non-ascetics gained good karma by giving to ascetics food, clothing, and shelter. Ascetics needed the support of ordinary folk to make their quest for moksha possible.  

H. There was an intensely experimental quality to this period in Indian religious history. Samanas wandered from place to place seeking various gurus, trying different disciplines, and adopting diverse doctrines. Meditation, hatha yoga, and countless varieties of self-denial and self-mortification arose during this time.  

I. Teachers competed for the allegiance of students and lay followers. Debates were held, conversations became heated, and rivalries were common. The intensity and energy of these competitions point to the profound importance and urgency of the quest.  

IV. Though their lifestyles and beliefs varied widely, ascetics were united in their quest for relief from samsara and the belief that freedom lay in acquiring knowledge.  

A. Knowledge had always played an important role in Vedic religion. But in the Axial Age, the quest for knowledge was urged on by the desire to know the deep reality that was the foundation for the whole of life.  

B. The quest was for a knowledge that was comprehensive and fundamental. It was no longer enough to know the correct words to chant and rituals to perform. Samanas wanted to understand the deepest principles of reality. 

C. The trend to view the world, not as collection of unrelated objects and beings, but as an integrated totality that could be understood 

by knowing its fundamental basis was so pervasive that this effort is seen as one of the salient characteristics of the Axial Age. 

D. The sages searched for the key to the basic forces in the cosmos, hoping to reduce them to a singular principle, thus affording genuine freedom and fulfillment.  

E. This knowledge was necessarily extraordinary and could only be gained by rigorous methods of asceticism and introspection, not transmitted through lectures or read from books.  

F. Many of these ascetic seekers claimed to have found the way to final liberation, the answer to life’s deepest questions, the knowledge of the secrets of the universe itself.  

 

Essential Reading:  

Sharma, Classical Hindu Thought, chapters 1416. 

 

Supplementary Reading: 

Huyler, Meeting God, chapter 9. 

 

Questions to Consider: 

1. What was the fundamental force in motivating people to become ascetics during the Axial Age? 

2. What are the chief differences in the quest for knowledge between early Indo-Aryans and the sages of the Axial Age? 

Lecture Nine The Vedantic Solution 

 

 

Scope: For many ascetics, the quest for liberation focused on discovering the knowledge of ultimate reality and the self. The results of their search are disclosed in the ancient collection of texts known as the Upanishads. Recorded in these texts are the speculations of generations of Axial Age sages. The general viewpoint of the Upanishads is that the soul is invisible and immortal, never created and never destroyed, and separate from both the body and the mind. Eventually, the Upanishads reaches the conclusion that the soul is identical with Brahman, the deepest reality, far beyond the reach of concepts, words, or any other product of the human mind. Atman and Brahman are simply different words for the same reality. Maya, or illusion, leads us to act as if individuality were real, but in fact, there is only one reality, and that is atmanBrahman. To realize the Absolute thus entails penetrating maya’s veil and acknowledging the identity of the self and ultimate reality.  

 

Outline 

I. The Upanishads were the first texts to offer a solution to the problem of samsara through Vedanta, a principal branch of Hindu philosophy. In seeking to unlock the deepest mysteries of existence, end the samsaric cycle, and bring about utter bliss, sages sought two particular bits of knowledge. One was the nature of the self and the discovery of what lies deep within the individual as his or her essence. We focus first on this essence. 

A. The vast majority of religions and philosophies of the last 3,000 years have asserted that the human essence is something more than our material bodies. Religion gives various names to this essence, such as self, spirit, mind, heart, and soul.  

B. The Sanskrit word for “soul” is atman, an ancient Vedic term that was reinterpreted in the Axial Age.  

C. In the early Vedas, the atman was closely associated with breath. By the time the Upanishads had begun to be composed, however, the breath was seen as too physical, too closely associated with the body.  

D. The sages of the Upanishads sought to define the soul as something that transcended the body and survived death, in other words, an immortal substance.  

E. Some authors suggested that the mind or consciousness was the soul. But almost all of the Upanishadic sages were reluctant to agree because of the mind’s capriciousness and unsettled nature. 

F. Some sages believed that what is beyond the senses and the mind itself could not be sensed or thought about. From this insight, the Upanishads derived the unique quality of the soul—that it must be beyond comprehension.  

G. Because the soul transmigrated from body to body through rebirth, the atman must also be immortal. It is not created; it simply always has been. 

H. Upanishadic thinkers didn’t all agree on the specific details of the human self, but they all subscribed to a general understanding that distinguished a higher self from a lower self.  

1. The lower—phenomenal—self comprised the body, the senses, and the mind. These aspects are all transitory and mortal.  

2. The higher self—atman—was distinguishable from these other elements by virtue of its eternal and spiritual nature. Confusing the higher with the lower self is what brings anguish to the human condition. 

II. Just as Indian thinkers sought to understand the nature of the self, they also wanted to comprehend the ultimate reality, the fundamental power or principle supporting all there is, which would also free them from samsara. 

A. Like the quest for the soul, the sages’ pursuit of ultimate reality was founded on an idea from the old Vedas, rooted in the Brahmins’ mysterious power hidden within ritual—Brahman. 

B. By the Axial Age, Brahman had come to mean more than the power of ritual; it now referred to ultimate reality itself, which was a logical development in Indo-Aryan religion.  

1. The ritual and its sacred words had always been understood to correspond to greater cosmological and moral realities beyond the simple ceremony itself.  

2. The story of the sacrifice of Purusha suggested that society, various elements of the world, ritual practices, and the Sanskrit language itself were all intrinsically and mystically connected to one another. Seeking the deeper meaning to the nature of existence by understanding Brahman was a natural outcome of this line of thinking.  

C. Sages didn’t agree about the exact nature of Brahman, but they did agree that Brahman is one undifferentiated unity with no parts or divisions.  

D. Brahman is said to permeate all things but cannot be perceived. It embraces good and evil yet transcends both. Paradoxically, it encompasses the whole of reality yet surpasses it.  

1. However, Brahman was not the same as god, a supreme being. More aptly, it was described as the Absolute or being itself. These words obviously do not tell us much or give us concrete images with which to conceive of Brahman, but that is precisely the point. 

2. Brahman thus transcends all human categories and images; Hindu theologians defined Brahman as nirguna, “without qualities.”  

E. Gradually, the Upanishadic sages came to realize that Brahman was ultimately unknowable, at least in the conventional sense. Brahman eluded conception and perception, and thus, these faculties were ineffective in discovering the absolute reality.  

III. As the sages of the Upanishads continued their quest of the human essence and ultimate reality—the mystical—an epiphany emerged in the later Upanishads. The concepts of atman and Brahman converged such that the soul was seen as identical to ultimate reality itself, one and the same, and to believe otherwise was the source of our misery. 

A. In addition to their assertion that the soul carried a divine spark, the sages believed that atman and Brahman were two names for the same reality. The true self is ultimate reality; therefore, Brahman-atman is the only reality there is. 

B. Despite the Upanishads’ exalted view of humanity, the soul still finds itself in an endless cycle of death and rebirth, seeking evernew manifestations until it finds its rest in God.  

C. The Upanishads address the seemingly contradictory claim that Brahman and atman are one and the same yet the soul still suffers from samsara, by stating that samsara is a consequence of our ignorance and misunderstanding of reality. 

D. Maya is the veil over reality that accounts for our ignorance, causing us to perceive and conceive of the world as composed of many different things rather than the one reality it is.  

E. Maya also deceives us into thinking of ourselves as separate entities, individuals separate from one another and from ultimate reality.  

F. Maya causes us to forget who we truly are and prompts us to identify with our lower selves, thus trapping us in samsara until we fully recognize the truth about Brahman and atman. 

G. People tend to think and act in self-centered ways, focusing on desires and deeds that perpetuate the illusion of our separateness from Brahman. This sense of separateness engenders fear and hatred, greed for material goods and power, and ultimately, fear of death.  

 

Essential Reading:  

Mascaró, The Upanishads. 

 

Supplementary Reading: 

Brereton, “The Upanishads,” in Approaches to the Asian Classics, de Bary and Bloom, eds. 

Hopkins, The Hindu Religious Tradition, chapter 3. 

 

Questions to Consider: 

1. What qualities distinguish humans from other animals? 

2. How might early Axial Age sages have concluded that the nature of reality and the nature of the soul (Brahman and atman) were one and the same? What are the theological benefits and liabilities of this identification? 

3. How did Brahman come to be considered ultimate reality itself?  

 

Lecture Ten The One and the Many 

 

 

Scope: The realization of the identity of atman and Brahman required more than mere conceptual knowledge. To attain the knowledge that liberated one from samsara, it was essential to gain a deep, existential understanding wrought by various spiritual practices, including meditation and asceticism. These techniques were intended to turn the adept within, enabling him or her to dissociate from the “lower” self and identify with atman. This reorientation of identity allowed individuals to relinquish the desires that kept them bound to samsara. 

  But the Vedantic solution was not for everyone. Many found it too 

demanding or too rarefied. Ordinary people preferred a spirituality in which ultimate reality could be conceptualized and to which they could relate. Through the theology of Saguna Brahman, it was possible for the ultimate reality to be partially depicted through images without lapsing into idolatry. The Bhagavad-Gita, written late in the Axial Age, advanced this view of personal theism and asserted its consistency with the path of the Vedanta. 

 

Outline 

I. Two fundamentally different theologies and practices emerged during the Indian Axial period. One was the belief that ultimate reality is incomprehensible to ordinary consciousness. To attain complete awareness of Brahman and atman, different methods evolved among different practitioners.  

A. The Vedantic way insisted that truth could be found only within one’s deepest self; to discover this was to discover the highest reality. 

B. One method of discovering the divine within is through the Hindu practice of meditation. 

1. By the Axial Age, meditation had eclipsed ritual as the chief discipline for samanas seeking moksha (a state of equanimity toward the world). Restraining the body and mind to achieve a state of inner stillness was most important. 

2. When the mind was focused in meditation, one could avoid distracting thoughts and sensations.  

3. Serious and regular meditation could bring about visions, ecstasy, intensified awareness, and transcendence of thoughts, which brought one to the higher self, or atman. 

C. Meditation complemented the samanas’ efforts to dissociate from the lower self. Some of the techniques were intended to close off avenues that led seekers astray, keeping them trapped in the net of maya.  

D. Some ascetics took vows of silence, because the knowledge of Brahman was beyond language.  

E. Some tried to overcome their attachments to the material world through poverty, fasting, and celibacy.  

F. Others took more extreme measures, such as “mortifying” the body, which might include standing immobile for long periods of time, piercing the flesh, lying on a bed of nails, or practicing selfflagellation.  

G. These varied practices were meant to train ascetics to give up all attachments that encourage a sense of individuality or separateness from the rest of reality.  

H. To realize the higher self and its identity with Brahman, one had to relinquish all selfish desires. Desire created karma, and karma bound one to samsara. 

II. For the Upanishadic sages, the true self had nothing to desire or fear. And because one lacked for nothing and feared nothing, taking this path brought about a deep sense of serenity and indescribable joy, beyond all earthly pleasures.  

A. Breaking the cycle of samsara meant no rebirth, no clinging to life, no dread of dying, just a state of equanimity toward the world, called moksha.  

B. Those who worked toward moksha were jivanmuktas—living, liberated souls. 

C. Some texts refer to the experience of moksha as “merging with” or “returning to” Brahman, but those images mislead because the soul does not need to unite with Brahman if it already is Brahman. 

 

Another paradox is that the jivanmukta must strive to reach liberation, but effort is not what accomplishes unity with Brahman. Moksha is less an achievement than it is a simple understanding of truth. 

III. The Upanishads blended tantalizing and provocative ideas with just enough uncertainty to inspire successive generations to continue reinterpreting their essential features. Here, we uncover more philosophical problems of Vedanta. 

A. One question to be explored is that if Brahman-atman is the only reality there is, why does the illusion of maya exist and how is it created? 

B. Another logical problem arises: If there are no individuals, then there are no souls in the plural. But if there are no souls—only Brahman-atman—is transmigration real or is samsara itself an illusion?  

C. Despite these questions, the Upanishads’ significance to the overall Hindu tradition was that they established key elements that provided Hinduism with its many characteristic features: 

1. The belief in the unity and the incomprehensibility of ultimate reality. 

2. The notions of samsara, karma, atman, and moksha. 

3. The sense that the world and ourselves are not really the way they appear.  

IV. Despite its profound importance in the development of the Hindu tradition, the Vedantic perspective didn’t satisfy everyone’s religious sensibilities. As Hinduism evolved through the Axial period, new perspectives and practices were added to accommodate individual beliefs and tastes.  

A. Hinduism became a family of religions without a creed or core of beliefs. It embraces differences rather than excluding them.  

B. Hinduism recognized that people were at different stages in their spiritual lives, and the practices and beliefs of one person might not be suitable for another.  

C. Many Indians found the Upanishads’ path of knowledge too demanding and unappealing to live.  

Most Hindus preferred a more traditional piety focused on worshiping personal gods and goddesses, as opposed to the highly abstract Brahman.  

E. The worship of personal deities continued unabated in the Axial Age and became even more popular near its end with the composition of the Bhagavad-Gita, perhaps the most frequently read Hindu scripture.  

V. In addition to the belief that ultimate reality is incomprehensible to ordinary consciousness, a second theistic view arose during the Indian Axial period. Here, we see the divine represented by symbols and images, allowing devotees to draw closer to the divine. 

A. To incorporate the vast numbers of venerated gods and goddesses, Hinduism refined the theology of Brahman, providing a way for both the devotees of gods and the seekers of Brahman to understand that they were venerating the same ultimate reality.  

B. Though the Upanishads clearly emphasized the incomprehensibility of Brahman (nirguna, or “without qualities”), later thinkers offered the idea of a partially knowable Brahman, called Saguna Brahman—or “one with qualities.”  

C. The many gods and goddesses of popular piety were now many manifestations of the one inconceivable reality, each a conduit to the ultimate reality. 

VI. The Saguna Brahman acknowledges the individual need for a concrete focus, an image toward which each can orient his or her devotion, direct prayers, and grasp the nature of the ultimate reality. Throughout their history, Hindus have fashioned physical representations of their gods and goddesses to serve as centers of faith.  

A. Hindu images can be anthropomorphic, appearing humanlike. To imagine ultimate reality as similar to us allows devotees to feel close to the highest reality. 

B. Hindu images can also be non-anthropomorphic, taking the form of stones, trees, rivers, and celestial bodies.  

C. The danger in personalizing the divine, however, is making it seem too human until it becomes unworthy of devotion. To avoid this danger, Hindu images incorporate non-human elements, such as half-human/ half-animal features. These remind devotees that gods and goddesses are not like us.  

When an icon is first handcrafted, elaborate rituals are sometimes performed to invite the god or goddess that the image represents to inhabit the icon. The consecrated image is treated as if it were alive; it is bathed, clothed, decorated, and offered food.  

E. At specific times during the day, worshipers are offered a special viewing—darĞan—of the divine image. Seeing the god or goddess and being seen by it is vastly important to Hindus. 

F. Ordinarily, the incarnation of the god or goddess is only temporary, and the physical image is destroyed to remind devotees that the image itself is not the divine. 

G. Even though the Hindu pantheon is immense—330 million gods and goddesses—individual Hindus do not worship them all. Each devotee has an ista-devatƗ, a personal deity of choice.  

H. Some consider the religious use of images idol worship, but even religions that refer to the divine as “father” or “king” are, in essence, giving form to that which is ultimately formless. Unless one is absolutely silent about ultimate reality, it is not possible to avoid human-made images and concepts, whether physical or linguistic.  

I. The idea of Nirguna Brahman, therefore, reminds devotees that the ultimate reality always transcends any image. 

VII. The best resource for understanding the worship of Hindu gods is probably the Bhagavad-Gita, the popular scripture written at the end of the Axial Age.  

A. Primarily a dialogue between the warrior Arjuna and the god Krishna, the Gita is a taste of Hinduism’s many practices and beliefs, including Vedic rituals, karma and morality, meditation and yoga, and devotion to the gods. One of its central points is that all these disciplines are spiritually beneficial. 

B. The Gita also suggests that devotion to god is the best practice of all. In it, Krishna encourages Arjuna to focus his mind, will, and heart on god and to let go of all else in order to find liberation from samsara. 

C. All that matters is to do all things with faith in and dedication to god. The Gita says that faith can be so potent that it doesn’t matter if one is devoted to the god Krishna by name. What matters is not the object of faith but its quality and sincerity. 

 

Essential Reading:  

Sharma, Classical Hindu Thought, chapters 1 and 3. 

 

Supplementary Reading: 

Huyler, Meeting God, chapters 12. 

 

Questions to Consider: 

1. The Western theistic traditions have generally resisted and often condemned physical images of the divine. The Second Commandment of the Hebrew Bible forbids the making of “graven images” (Exodus 20:4). Nonetheless, these same traditions are full of linguistic images and metaphors for god. Are there good reasons to prefer linguistic images over physical ones for understanding divine reality? 

2. In what ways do monotheistic traditions tend toward polytheism? How might monotheism and polytheism be problematic categories? 

3. What is the main difference between Saguna Brahman and Nirguna Brahman, and how does that affect one’s pursuit of the divine?  

Lecture Eleven The Life of Siddhattha Gotama 

 

 

Scope: Among the many seekers of liberation in the South Asian Axial Age was a man whose given name was Siddhattha Gotama. Prompted by a shocking encounter with sickness, old age, and death, Gotama became one of the thousands of renouncers in northeastern India seeking relief from the endless suffering of samsara. With attention to both the historically verifiable and the mythic aspects of his biography, this lecture traces Gotama’s life from his birth into privileged circumstances through his practice of extreme asceticism and, finally, to his determination to seek liberation by the Middle Way.  

 

Outline 

I. Siddhattha Gotama was among the thousands of intrepid individuals who sought to end samsara in northeastern India during the Axial Age, the figure who eventually became known as the Buddha. We begin with some accepted historical knowledge about his early life, distinguishing the historical Buddha from later embellishments of his life. 

A. The earliest Buddhist scriptures existed in oral tradition and were not written down until 300–400 years after his death. As the tradition developed and spread, new scriptures were added, and views of the Buddha’s life and significance also changed.  

B. The Pali Canon, the Buddhist texts closest in time to his life, is the most reliable source for constructing his life. For our purposes, the most important part of the canon is the set of writings called the Suttas, or discourses, which the Buddhist tradition considers the direct words of the Buddha himself. 

C. The Pali Suttas say little about the Buddha’s life before his awakening; thus, we can construct only an outline of his life using these scriptures. 

D. We know that there was an individual named Gotama who was born into a privileged life in the area near the current border between India and Nepal. Though there is debate on the actual dates, according to tradition, he was born in 563 B.C.E., well within the Axial Age. (The majority of scholars today place his date of birth near 490 B.C.E.) 

E. Historical scholarship tells us that Gotama underwent a profound, life-changing experience that eventually led him to new insights into the human condition and to a new spiritual movement. He taught his ideas to a growing body of followers throughout northeastern India during the period of great social change and religious ferment. 

F. Following his awakening, the Buddha’s teaching ministry lasted for several decades until he died. Tradition says that he lived until the age of 80. 

II. Little else can be said about the historical Buddha with much certainty, but there are several versions of his early life and how he came to claim the title the Buddha. Most of them are variations on a basic storyline, as follows.  

A. Though modern historiography places doubt on this royal lineage, Siddhattha was born to the king and queen of the Sakyan peoples. Although it is true that Siddhattha’s family was privileged, it is unlikely that his parents were monarchs, because the small states of this area were tribal republics ruled by councils of elders.  

B. One late addition to the narrative suggests that Siddhattha was conceived by his mother, Queen Maya, during a dream in which she was impregnated by a god-like King Elephant, a divinely ordained and supernaturally accomplished conception.  

1. Ten months later, the child Siddhattha was born, while his mother was on a journey to the home of her parents.  

2. He sprung from his mother’s side while she stood upright, holding the branch of a tree.  

3. Immediately, the newborn took seven steps and confidently declared that he was born for the good of the world and this would be his last birth in the samsaric realm.  

C. Other versions of Siddhattha’s birth include his father’s consultation with court astrologers, who agreed that the child would become a cakravartin, a “wheel-turner,” one whose existence would decisively change the lives of others. Whether or not he would become a great monarch or forsake the world and 

follow the path of the spiritual pioneer was unclear to the astrologers. 

D. Determined that his son become a monarch like himself, Siddhattha’s father was advised to shield his son from unpleasantness and raise him in a wholly delightful environment, with the best food, the best clothes, and the best entertainment. He couldn’t be exposed to the brutal realities of existence until he firmly committed himself to being king. 

E. Some say Siddhattha wasn’t allowed to leave the palace; others suggest that he made occasional excursions, but only after his father had arranged to have Siddhattha’s route purged of potentially upsetting sights. Beggars, elderly people, and the sick and disabled were kept off the streets.  

F. At 16, Siddhattha married his beautiful cousin Yashodhara, who eventually gave birth to his son. Everything seemed right with the world. And so it was, for Siddhattha’s first 29 years. 

G. Whether historical or not, the story of Siddhattha’s early life suggests that without even working for it, he already had everything other people spend their lives pursuing: riches, power, celebrity, and every imaginable creature comfort.  

III. Though young Siddhattha epitomized the fulfillment of humanity’s greatest dreams, having it all was still not enough. At the age of 29, he realized this insight after coming face-to-face with suffering for the first time. 

A. Siddhattha encountered a person in the throes of illness, another ravaged by age, and a corpse en route to the charnel ground. Up until that moment, he had never witnessed or heard of any of these things.  

B. Siddhattha was distressed to learn about the realities of life and to discover that all beings were subject to old age, illness, and death.  

C. At the same time, he also encountered a wandering samana who had renounced everything but nonetheless appeared happy in the midst of a suffering world.  

D. Distraught by the first three spectacles and intrigued by the fourth, Siddhattha decided to give up the comforts of the privileged life to seek a way to soothe his now troubled mind. The Buddhist traditions refer to this episode as the “Four Sights.” 

E. Siddhattha left his family and home forever, taking up the life of a samana. 

F. Some elements of this story seem preposterous; for example, could he really have been sheltered from life’s harsh realities or been oblivious to suffering, old age, and death for nearly 30 years?  

1. It’s possible that Siddhattha’s real epiphany, significantly occurring at the age when the lives of Jesus, Zoroaster, Ezekiel, Mahavira, and Guru Nanak also took dramatic turns, came when he recognized that he himself was subject to the realities of life. 

2. At this critical moment, Siddhattha’s illusion was shattered, and there was simply no returning to a life that ignored suffering and death.  

G. Rather than serenity, Siddhattha’s first epiphany brought profound agitation. It meant dropping the pretense of uniqueness and accepting wholeheartedly one’s common share with everyone else.  

IV. Siddhattha traveled throughout the cities of the Ganges basin, a novice samana in search of ascetics who could teach him the disciplines that would end his samsara.  

A. His first teacher was a renowned master of yogic meditation. After mastering this doctrine and reaching a state of “nothingness,” however, Siddhattha found that it did not bring him freedom.  

B. Under the tutelage of his second instructor, Siddhattha was able to reach the level of “neither perception nor non-perception,” but this, too, failed to provide the wisdom he sought.  

C. These practices brought extraordinary—but only temporary— experiences. Siddhattha wanted to attain permanent freedom from suffering and samsara. He continued to find value in meditation, but he rejected his teachers’ claims that their states of meditation were the highest realization of the spiritual life.  

D. Siddhattha then practiced self-mortification, depriving himself of food until he became emaciated. He concluded that far from terminating suffering, this practice only intensified it. Surely, there had to be some other way to conquer samsara. 

 

Essential Reading:  

Carrithers, Buddha, chapters 13. 

Supplementary Reading: 

Ñanamoli, The Life of the Buddha, chapters 12. 

 

Questions to Consider: 

1. Why might the myth of Siddhattha’s life be just as important as factual information in understanding what came to be known as Buddhism? 

2. What is significant about the age at which Siddhattha had his first epiphany? 

  

Lecture Twelve “I Am Awake” 

 

 

Scope: As a consequence of a profound enlightenment experience at age 

35, Siddhattha Gotama claims the title the Buddha, the “Awakened One.” Based on the insights of this experience, the Buddha inaugurated a 45-year ministry of teaching to renouncers and householders alike. In this and the next two lectures, we explore the substance of his Dhamma, or teaching, as expressed principally through the Four Noble Truths. The first of these principles concerns the nature of suffering. The Buddha’s understanding of suffering was deep and subtle and, hence, requires careful explanation lest his entire teaching, which is based on this idea, be misunderstood. This lecture looks at how the Buddha could see suffering as a pervasive and insidious mark of all existence, even though life manifests moments of pleasure and happiness. 

 

Outline 

I. Siddhattha Gotama fervently practiced the contemplative and ascetic arts for six years after renouncing his former privileged lifestyle. Yet he realized that neither pleasure and delight nor self-denial and mortification would bring him the peace he sought. Setting a course between the two extremes, he devised an approach called the Middle Way. 

A. Once he decided to find this Middle Way, Siddhattha began caring for his ravaged body; physical well-being would be necessary to pursue liberation.  

B. He meditated beneath a tree near the village of Gaya, recalling how he had once paid close attention to his breath, which had brought him a heightened sense of awareness and a pervasive calmness.  

C. This type of meditation differed from the practices of his former teachers because it emphasized mindfulness, making one attentive to what was happening in the mind, body, and external environment without judgment. As a result of mindful meditation, the Buddha believed that the mind would become more receptive to the true nature of the world and the self.  

D. According to Buddhist tradition, Siddhattha sat beneath a huge tree—later known as the Bodhi, or “wisdom,” tree—and vowed not to leave until he had realized the liberating knowledge that he had sought for so many years.  

E. His period of contemplation took him deeper than he had ever gone before. But far more important were the deeper insights into the human condition that he attained, the liberating knowledge he sought. 

F. As he advanced toward the goal, he was approached by Mara, the demonic tempter, who tried to lure Siddhattha away by offering him the pleasures of the world and taunting him with threats and doubts.  

G. Finally, Siddhattha won the understanding that liberated and conquered samsara. He also realized that he would never be reborn into this world again. At this moment, he earned the title the Buddha, or the “Awakened One.” 

II. For 49 days, the Buddha enjoyed his liberation and decided to teach his insights to others. He traveled the region talking to ascetics and anyone who would listen.  

A. He first thought of his two teachers but discovered that they had died. Next, he approached his former disciples, five ascetics who had chided him earlier for giving up the ascetic path. When they saw their former mentor, they were astounded by his demeanor and recognized that something profoundly significant had happened to him.  

B. The Buddha talked about his insights, laying out what he called the Four Noble Truths. The talk is sometimes called the Buddha’s “First Discourse” and “Turning the Wheel of Dhamma.” The Pali word Dhamma might be translated simply as “the truth that leads to liberation.” 

C. The Four Noble Truths are considered the essence of Buddhism. Most of the Buddha’s subsequent teachings might be thought of as explanations and amplifications of these basic points.  

D. The Buddha never expected his teachings to be accepted on his authority and, in fact, discouraged such acceptance. He rejected many of the common reasons people find for accepting religious beliefs; instead, he encouraged individuals to take responsibility 

for their own convictions. His teachings included the following caveats: 

1. Do not accept anything simply because it is said to be revelation, or because it comes from sacred texts, or because it is traditional. 

2. Do not accept hearsay, or anything on the grounds of pure logic, or because it seems rational. 

3. Do not accept anything because you agree after reflecting on it, or because the teacher is competent, or simply because he is regarded as a teacher. 

E. The Buddha did not mean, however, that one should accept viewpoints based only on gut feelings, or even if they agreed with one’s conscience or reasoning. He believed that reasoning was no more reliable than judgments based on texts or spoken by charismatic individuals.  

1. According to the Buddha, a belief should be tested by its results when put into practice.  

2. To guard against the possibility of bias or limitations in understanding, acceptable views should be checked against the experience of those who are wise.  

III. In his discourse, the Buddha declares the first of his Noble Truths, setting out the primary basis for his worldview. The other three Noble Truths will be discussed in subsequent lectures. 

A. The First Noble Truth is that life itself is suffering. All that we experience—birth, aging, illness, and death—is suffering, as are the presence of displeasing things and the absence of pleasing things. Not getting what one wants is also suffering. 

B. The word suffering was translated from the Pali term dukkha, though scholars believe it does not effectively convey what the Buddha meant by dukkha.  

C. There is “ordinary” dukkha, the suffering that accompanies injury, sickness, old age, and death. Then there is the dukkha of change, or suffering caused by loss or associated with unpleasantness.  

D. The world is in constant flux, creating a state of impermanence, or anicca. Though impermanence doesn’t cause dukkha, one’s unwise or unskilled response to the world of change does. 

E. When the Buddha referred to dukkha, he was describing the fundamental quality of the whole of existence, not merely saying that life had moments of tragedy and sorrow. He suggested that human existence is entangled in dukkha. 

F. If dukkha is comprehensive and constant, it becomes clear that understanding dukkha is not just a problem of translation; it is also an experiential issue.  

G. What makes dukkha a Noble Truth is that we do not fully appreciate the extent to which we suffer or feel the dissatisfaction of existence. Thus, individuals are challenged to discover the depth and breadth of dukkha through introspection and observation. The true depth of suffering can be seen only from the perspective of the enlightened mind. 

H. Dukkha might also refer to disappointment, a pervasive feature of life.  

1. Disappointment and dukkha are both the consequence of our own habits of mind. Disappointment is the result of reality not conforming to our expectations.  

2. It is more truthful to say that our desires and expectations do not conform to reality, causing suffering. When the Buddha characterized dukkha as not getting what we want, he implicitly put the onus on us, not the thing we want or don’t want. 

I. The Buddha also states that getting what we want causes disappointment; therefore, both the frustration of desire and the fulfillment of desire contribute to suffering.  

J. The problem with achieving our desires is that doing so does not really satisfy us in the way we had hoped. We end up wanting more in order to attain the satisfaction we lack.  

K. Desire itself has basic causes that urge us to crave things. In the Second Noble Truth, the Buddha explains the factors that lead us to desire in the first place.  

 

Essential Reading:  

Rahula, What the Buddha Taught, chapters 12. 

 

Supplementary Reading: 

Ñanamoli, The Life of the Buddha, chapters 12. 

 

Questions to Consider: 

1. What were the qualities of the Buddha’s Middle Way? 

2. What are the difficulties with translating the Pali term dukkha into English? In what ways might this problem reflect the obstacles an observer has in understanding another religion?  

Lecture Thirteen Why We Suffer 

 

 

Scope: Proceeding like a physician, the Buddha continued to analyze the human condition with medical precision. If suffering is the malady that afflicts humanity, it is necessary to explore its etiology and to determine whether or not a cure is available. The Buddha concluded that suffering was caused by a number of interrelated factors. He thought that belief in a permanent, substantial self; the denial of impermanence; and desire and attachment all contributed to suffering, frustration, and disappointment and kept beings bound to samsara. 

 

Outline 

I. The Buddha was more a healer with remedies for specific problems than a philosopher with opinions about metaphysical questions. In the First Noble Truth, he names the disease and its symptoms—suffering, or dukkha. In the Second Noble Truth, he declares that a principal cause of dukkha is desire, which leads to rebirth, accompanied by delight and lust. The Second Truth is at the heart of the Buddha’s vision and is what most distinguishes it from other religious perspectives. 

A. Though craving, or tanha, generally translates to “desire,” its literal meaning is “thirst.”  

B. The difference between desire as wish and desire as thirst is one of degree. A desire first conceived can easily become intense craving. Thirst suggests an intensity, an immediate need for something specific.  

1. One aspect of tanha is the nature of the experience that arises from it—the state of being conditioned by thirst. Exploring it helps to explain why tanha makes us prone to suffer. 

2. A second issue is the prior state of being that originally fostered thirst. Exploring this helps us understand how to alleviate it.  

C. The Buddha is not wholly opposed to desire. The problem arises when desires are self-centered and become intense cravings—

when an object of wishing becomes a matter of necessity, as if our lives depended on it. 

D. Further, we may already possess what we desire and believe that losing it would be devastating to our existence.  

E. Desire leads to attachment, or clinging, and both Buddhism and Hinduism recognize attachment as one driving mechanism of samsara. Attachment is the nature of the relationship we have to objects, people, values, beliefs, ideas, power, status, experiences, and sensations.  

F. The problem is not with the objects of attachment themselves but with the nature of our relationships to them, which can become like addictions.  

G. In a world of constant change, nothing can sustain our attachments; anything we become attached to is subject to change, causing suffering. To allay this suffering, we seek something else to cling to, but the more we try to secure happiness through acquisition, the more we suffer. 

H. Attachment can also include aversion to an object or situation, causing a negative relationship that is just as difficult to relinquish. The Buddha’s answer to the dual dangers of clinging and aversion is equanimity, the Middle Way between the two extremes.  

II. What makes us thirsty?  

A. When we misapprehend the nature of the world and ourselves, we are said to be ignorant. Ignorance, avijja, is simply a lack of knowledge.  

B. In addition to not knowing, avijja suggests the further imposition of wrong ideas and beliefs onto reality. Not only do we fail to know reality, but we also “mis-know” it. 

C. Fundamentally, we mis-know reality because we erroneously believe in permanence without understanding that everything is impermanent. We view as a thing something that is a process. 

1. For the Buddha, change was constant and persistent; even solid objects are in constant flux. Quantum physics seems to confirm the Buddha’s view that the foundational elements of the world are more like energy fluctuations than solid, substantial materials.  

2. The Buddha viewed the cosmos as a complex array of processes rather than a set of things. It’s not just that things change but that change is the only thing there is. 

D. The difference in the Buddha’s thinking about the nature of change appears in the way he applies this concept. Many who acknowledge the world’s transience try to sneak permanence through the back door by declaring a part of existence exempt from change. The concept of god is one such effort; the concept of the soul living after the body perishes, as in the Vedanta tradition of Hinduism, is another.  

III. Perhaps the Buddha’s most distinctive contribution is his belief that there is no permanent, immortal, substantial soul. This feature of the Buddha’s thought is called anatta in Pali, but the Sanskrit term, anatman (“no-self”), makes it clear that the Buddha denies the atman, the Hindu idea of the soul or true self.  

A. Most interpreters of Buddhism refer to anatta as a doctrine or concept, but perhaps it’s better described as a practice or anticoncept. Anatta is more a denial of a belief than a belief itself. The moment we think of anatta as a concept, we have placed an obstacle in the way of its realization. 

B. The Buddha asserts that the concept of self can lead to fruitless speculation and contribute to our suffering. Rather than put forward another view of self, the Buddha simply indicates that the concept of self is an unskillful way of thinking about human beings. 

C. We can refer to the self reflexively, as in talking about ourselves, but the Buddha says we should never think that it refers to anything substantial or permanent. Neither should we think that the Buddha denies our existence or suggests that human life is an illusion or unreal. 

D. Anatta essentially means that we do not exist in the way we think we do. The Buddha’s denial of self declared that no concept is capable of expressing the reality of who we are. 

IV. The Buddha’s description of humans may seem negative on the surface: The so-called self is not a thing; it is no-thing, nothing. It is insubstantial; it lacks permanence and immortality. But on further inspection, it is clear that he merely attempts to disrupt our old habits of thinking about who we are.  

A. Rather than viewing individuals as immortal souls housed in a perishable body, the Buddha saw the human as a complex of interconnected and ever-changing energies or forces, which he called the Five Aggregates of Being.  

1. The first aggregate is matter, which refers to our physical makeup, changing each moment as cells die and are replaced.  

2. The second is sensations or feelings, including the tonal quality of our experiences, the way we judge experiences as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. These judgments condition our tendencies of attachment and aversion.  

3. The third is perception, not only what we perceive but also what we perceive it as—apperception.  

4. The fourth is mental formations, the sources of desire, craving, and intention. This component is the source of karma for Buddha. Hence, as long as there is craving, there will be rebirth.  

5. The fifth is consciousness, the process of awareness.  

B. Nothing about these components endures. Our perceptions, thoughts, bodies, and consciousness are all in flux. There is no permanent subject or agent underlying these processes either. 

C. The soul or self is simply an illusion, an unsubstantiated belief in the same way a rainbow is an optical illusion, created by the convergence of various conditions. To the Buddha, atman is an illusion supported by changing conditions. This is why no one is able to identify or pinpoint the soul or essential self. 

D. The Buddha says that our problems arise when we ascribe reality to this illusion. Believing in a permanent, substantial self is the root of suffering, setting in motion a series of thoughts, words, and deeds that precipitate anguish, misery, and disappointment.  

 

Essential Reading:  

Carrithers, Buddha, chapter 4. 

Rahula, What the Buddha Taught, chapters 3 and 6. 

 

Supplementary Reading: 

Collins, Selfless Persons, part 2. 

Questions to Consider: 

1. Why might anatta be considered more of an anti-concept than a concept itself? What are the potential problems with regarding it as a concept? 

2. Compare the ways in which the Buddha’s view of humans might be considered negative with how he truly viewed humans.  

Lecture Fourteen The Noble Path 

 

 

Scope: The Buddha’s good news is that we need not suffer and that freedom from samsaric existence is, indeed, possible. Liberation, however, is not the product of a divine gift of grace. Individuals seeking freedom from samsara and the suffering that accompanies it must discipline themselves and follow a strict regimen to break the habits that bind persons to the illusion of selfhood. This lecture outlines the Buddha’s Eightfold Path to nibbana, which emphasizes the importance of acting ethically, developing virtue, and restraining the body and mind through the practice of meditation. We will see how each element of the path contributes to loosening the grip on the samsaric sphere and emptying the mind of its misconceptions about the nature of the world and the self.  

 

Outline 

I. Though there is much in the Buddha’s teaching that seems gloomy on the surface, the good news for humanity can be found in the third and fourth Noble Truths. The Third Noble Truth was straightforward: You do not have to suffer. Genuine, enduring happiness is possible, a reality Westerners know as nirvana. 

A. If tanha—thirst or craving—is the cause of dukkha—suffering— then clearly, the solution is to stop craving. By ending our craving, attachments slip away, and we end the cycle of suffering and rebirth. 

B. Understanding the objective of ending craving helps us understand why the Buddha formulates the path in the way he does. The objective is nibbana, or nirvana, the Sanskrit term more familiar to Westerners. 

C. Simply stated, nibbana is the end of suffering, the point at which one stops craving for reality to be other than what it is, radically accepting the way things are.  

D. The Buddha called nibbana the eradication of desire, the cessation of thirst, and the destruction of illusion. In this sense, nibbana is self-annihilation, as some Westerners have interpreted Buddhism. But what is really annihilated is the illusion of a separate, substantial self.  

E. Like moksha in Hinduism, nibbana can be realized in life. There is also a final nibbana realized at death.  

1. One who achieves nibbana in life is known as an arahant. An arahant has fully realized the Dhamma, the truth of the Buddha’s vision, and is free of craving, aversion, and misknowing.  

2. Arahants experience physical pain and other forms of old karma, but they do not generate new karma; this is called nibbana with remainder. 

3. At final nibbana, or parinibbana, all karmic energies sustaining existence are dissipated, and the arahant is released from rebirth. This is nibbana without remainder.  

II. The Third Noble Truth is simple, but the difficulty lies in giving up craving. Because craving is a deeply ingrained pattern of experience, ending craving requires a multifaceted and incremental approach. The method for quenching thirst is detailed in the Fourth Noble Truth. 

A. The Buddha’s message of freedom from suffering was not about grace or a gift from god. Because we are the cause of our own suffering, only we can free ourselves from it, which requires discipline and effort. 

B. The Fourth Noble Truth shows the way for this discipline with an outline of what the Buddha called the Noble Eightfold Path: right understanding, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. 

C. The word right means more than just “true,” as in the opposite of “false.” It also suggests that which promotes the end of suffering.  

D. Because the eight parts are interrelated, the practice of one supports the practice of the others, but not in a linear fashion. All eight elements are pursued concurrently.  

III. The eight components of the Buddha’s discipline have traditionally been divided into three sections: study, conduct, and concentration. For this reason, the Noble Path is sometimes called the Triple Practice. For our purposes, these components are referred to respectively as 

cultivating wisdom, developing moral conduct, and disciplining the mind.  

A. Study, or cultivating wisdom, requires at least some measure of understanding in order to begin the practice of Dhamma.  

1. To gain right understanding, one must become acquainted with the basic principles of the Buddha’s teaching by study, discussion, and reflection.  

2. But concepts take one only so far. Eventually, Dhamma must be understood in a deep way that comes only at enlightenment.  

B. In developing moral conduct, the Buddha’s path is not about commanding correct or moral behavior. The Buddha understood morality to be rooted in human nature because it is our nature to be compassionate.  

1. Developing moral conduct is done through right intention, specifically, avoiding the natural human tendencies toward greed, hatred, and harm by practicing non-attachment, good will, and harmlessness.  

2. Developing moral conduct also involves right action, which is epitomized in the Five Precepts, one of the most important practices for all Buddhists. The Five Precepts are ideals that one vows to live by, not commandments. 

a. The first precept states: “I will refrain from harming sentient beings.” Some Buddhists interpret this precept strictly, becoming vegetarians and refusing to kill any form of sentient life. Others, realizing the great difficulty of living in this world without taking life, strive to minimize the amount of harm they do.  

b. The second precept states: “I will refrain from taking what is not offered.” In other words, Buddhists do not steal or covet.  

c. The third precept states: “I will refrain from sexual misconduct.”  

d. The fourth precept states: “I will refrain from false speech.” This includes lying, slander, gossip, cursing, loud talk, idle chatter, and meaningless babble.  

e. The fifth precept states: “I will refrain from stupefying drink.” Alcohol and substance abuse can lead to 

addiction, dull the senses, and hinder the capacity to see the world and oneself clearly. 

3. Another aspect of moral practice involves right speech. Right speech means communicating in the most generous and beneficial ways possible, encouraging kind, gentle, and edifying speech.  

4. A fourth aspect of moral practice is right living, to earn a living in ways that foster the well-being of others. The Buddha specifically named military service, trading in intoxicants or poisons, and selling animals for slavery or slaughter as unwholesome occupations.  

C. The third aspect of the Triple Practice involves disciplining the mind.  

1. For the Buddha, the mind was not a static reality, nor did he identify it with the brain. The mind meant the totality of thoughts, sensations, feelings, and consciousness that in each moment arise and fall away.  

2. In its unenlightened state, the mind is unruly and undisciplined, like an untamed horse. Until it’s tamed, it can cause more harm than good. To bring the mind under control requires patience, skill, and persistent training. 

3. Right effort, right concentration, and right mindfulness can train the mind, harnessing its considerable powers for the benefit of others and ourselves. 

a. Right effort means giving deliberate attention to developing positive qualities and thoughts and letting go of negative ones. Generosity, friendliness, equanimity, and patience are positive qualities to aim for. 

b. Right concentration is the discipline of regular meditation to sharpen our awareness of the world and ourselves by attending to the features of ordinary life in the present moment. 

c. Right mindfulness is the practice of meditative awareness taken in daily life. Attentiveness, non-attachment, and other Buddhist virtues were regarded as skills that anyone could develop and reinforce with regular practice. 

D. In addition to initial study of the Middle Path, the Buddha outlines a second form of right understanding: awakened understanding, the wisdom one attains at the end of the path.  

1. To have awakened understanding means to see reality the way it is, unencumbered by expectation, belief, or defilements of any kind.  

2. In the Buddha’s view, this form of comprehension means to know for certain the authenticity of the Four Noble Truths without reliance on authorities other than one’s own experience.  

3. To realize the Dhamma at this level means to live one’s life in accord with the truth. One no longer aspires to nibbana, for it has been seen. 

 

Essential Reading:  

Rahula, What the Buddha Taught, chapters 4–5. 

 

Supplementary Reading: 

Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path. 

 

Questions to Consider: 

1. Why might some think that practicing Buddhism is akin to annihilation? Is this a fair assessment? 

2. How are the elements of the Eightfold Path interrelated? How does following this discipline lead to nibbana? 

Lecture Fifteen From Buddha to Buddhism 

 

 

Scope: For nearly half a century, the Buddha roamed the Gangetic basin, teaching his Dhamma and building a community of followers. 

Many sought ordination in his monastic community, known as the Sangha. At age 80, the Buddha peacefully passed into parinibbana, the final release for an awakened being. Following his death and cremation, his relics were housed in special structures called stupas, which provided a focus of religious practice for many. (It was not until about 300-400 years after his death that images of the Buddha were created.) Shortly after his parinibbana, his followers gathered to consider how to preserve the Buddha’s Dhamma. Early Buddhist councils led to the creation of authoritative texts (Suttas) and to the discussion of important doctrinal issues that ultimately split the community into several factions. The conversion of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka at the end of the Axial period was instrumental in making Buddhism a major international religion. 

 

Outline 

I. The Buddha’s five original disciples, bhikkhus, quickly understood his message and realized nibbana to become the first arahants of 

Buddhism. Soon, their number grew, and they formed a Sangha 

(monastic community). The Buddha’s enlightened disciples toured the Gangetic plains, preaching the Dhamma in the language of their listeners and bringing wisdom to the masses.  

A. These missionaries found a receptive audience during a time when many of the traditional political, social, and economic institutions 

were rapidly changing. The Buddha’s message of the impermanence of existence certainly rang true for many.  

B. The Buddha’s emphasis on spiritual self-sufficiency, rather than on tradition or the Brahmin priests, appealed to those who accepted individual responsibility for their well-being and ultimate destiny. 

C. The Buddha and his disciples spoke to people from all walks of life, without discrimination based on gender, age, social status, or moral standing. The Buddha’s openness to all was inspired by his conviction that spiritual attainment was not limited to certain castes, as many believed.  

D. As the Dhamma spread, so did local Sanghas, which provided an ideal setting for individuals seeking to follow the Middle Way. Though it was not essential to join a Sangha to find enlightenment, the Sangha relieved one of the obligations and responsibilities of everyday life that could hinder progress toward nibbana.  

E. Sangha life was simpler but could also be more restricted than domestic life. Members were expected to adhere to five additional precepts: not eating after midday; not watching secular entertainment, such as dancing, singing, or theatre; not using perfume or jewelry; not using a luxurious couch or sleeping on a soft bed; and not handling money.  

1. The intent of these precepts was to keep practitioners within the Middle Way by disallowing luxuries or distractions.  

2. Beyond these additional precepts, monastics followed a daily routine of meditating, engaging in study and discussion, and begging for food.  

F. The Sangha was also the principal means by which to spread the Buddha’s message. Eventually, the role of monastics as missionaries evolved into teachers and custodians of Dhamma.  

G. Five years after the founding of the Sangha, women were admitted as ordained members of the order. The Buddha’s stepmother, Queen Prajapati, became the first Buddhist nun, a radical step for the time. The Buddha’s wife, Yashodhara, and their son, Rahula, also joined the community. 

II. In his 80th year, the Buddha became ill on one of his teaching expeditions. Aware of his impending death, he asked his attendant to prepare an outdoor bed between two sala trees.  

A. As his death approached, the Buddha asked his disciples three times if they had any doubts about the teachings or disciplines. They stood silent. He then uttered his final words: “All compounded things are subject to decay. Work out your salvation with diligence!” He passed into a deep meditative state and entered mahaparinibbana, the great final release.  

B. The Buddha died during the full moon of the month of Vesakha 

(April–May) around 410 B.C.E. Tradition says that he was also 

born and enlightened on this same day. Today, the chief Buddhist holiday is Vesak, which celebrates his birth, enlightenment, and attainment of parinibbana. 

C. The Buddha’s body lay in state for six days. On the seventh day, he was cremated on a pyre of fragrant wood. The remains were collected as relics and divided into eight portions, distributed to representatives of the eight city-states connected to his life.  

D. The relics were interred in burial sites called stupas, reserved for royalty during pre-Buddhist times. Atop the stupas stood poles with a series of disks, a stylized representation of a parasol and an object associated with royalty. For Buddhists, the parasol-shaped structure also represented the Bodhi tree.  

E. The stupas became pilgrimage sites, and for some, walking around such sites could help ensure a favorable rebirth. Others saw the stupa as the Buddha himself, containing his bodily relics that might release them from suffering or heal ills.  

F. It wasn’t until after the Axial Age, between 200–100 B.C.E., that images of the Buddha appeared in human form, first created in the region of Gandhara, now in modern Afghanistan. Earlier, he had been represented by such things as an empty throne, footprints, the Bodhi tree, the wheel of Dhamma, and the parasol.  

III. Soon after the Buddha’s parinibbana, the Sangha gathered to discuss the future of the movement, the first Buddhist council. The Buddha had not named a successor but recommended a representative form of governance, with the Dhamma as guide and teacher.  

A. The first council met to discuss and concur on exactly what the Buddha had taught. One member recited all of his discourses, and these recollections became the basis for the Suttas in the Pali Canon. Another member recited all the rules of monastic discipline, which others then memorized; these were kept in oral tradition until they were written down three or four centuries later. 

B. A second council was convened 70 years later, and a third around 250 B.C.E. These Sangha gatherings were intended to discuss and settle doctrinal and practical disagreements.  

C. In some respects, the Buddha’s teachings had not provided a foundation on which to build a religion. He neither encouraged nor discouraged belief in gods; he offered little in the way of worship 

or ritual practice; and there were no congregational meetings or weekly services. Sangha meetings were held to conduct business or discuss Dhamma, not to encounter the sacred. 

D. Eventually, conventional religious elements were incorporated. A type of creed known as the Triple Refuge was developed and became a declaration of one’s Buddhist identity.  

E. The stupas satisfied the needs of some followers for tangible symbols. Other Buddhists continued to worship the devas. Divine worship, however, was reserved for asking particular favors from the gods, not for achieving nibbana. Veneration of the gods coexisted comfortably alongside Buddhist practices, as it does today.  

F. The Buddha himself would later become part of the Hindu pantheon as one of the 10 principal manifestations of the god Vishnu. Interestingly, many Hindus venerate the Buddha as a god and many Buddhists venerate the gods of Hinduism. 

IV. With the patronage of one of India’s greatest rulers, King Ashoka, the 

Buddhist presence was more keenly felt in India and other parts of Asia.  

A. Ashoka, at first a ruthless monarch, reigned more than a century after the Buddha’s death.  

B. Following one campaign, he toured a battlefield and witnessed the corpses of thousands of soldiers and civilians. Stunned by the carnage, he began to fully embrace Dhamma. 

C. According to legend, Ashoka outlawed animal sacrifices and took pilgrimages, built hospitals and schools, and opened the original stupas to retrieve the Buddha’s relics, redividing them to establish 84,000 new stupas.  

D. He sent missionaries throughout India, Southeast Asia, and the 

Greek kingdoms in Afghanistan and Central Asia to spread Dhamma.  

E. Ashoka also called a third council in 250 B.C.E. to deal with doctrinal issues that were troubling the community. In large measure because of his sponsorship, what started as an obscure Hindu sect was soon elevated to the status of an international religion. 

F. With Ashoka’s influence, Buddhism eventually became a predominant presence in India, until it finally died out between the 12th and 14th centuries C.E.  

V. Early Buddhism was marked by a number of doctrinal disputes and disagreements concerning practice and monastic polity. Debates often led to divisions within the community; at least 18 different schools regarded the Pali Canon as authoritative.  

A. Of the 18 different schools, only the Theravada school remains, making it the oldest extant Buddhist tradition. Of the three major varieties of Buddhism today, Theravada (“way of the elders”) probably represents the form closest to the way Buddhism was practiced around the time of the Buddha.  

B. Around the 1st century C.E., the Mahayana form of Buddhism began to take shape in northwestern India, adding a substantially different dimension and new views about the Buddha and his role in making salvation available to humanity.  

1. New mythologies appeared, giving the Buddha a more divine, god-like status. Mahayana developed the idea of the bodhisattva, an enlightened being who remained in the samsaric realm to help others attain awakening.  

2. Mahayana was exported to China and other parts of East Asia. It gradually became the most popular variety of Buddhism but has also fragmented over time into new schools.  

C. Out of the Mahayana also emerged the third major form of Buddhism, Vajrayana. Observed for centuries in Tibet and Mongolia, Vajrayana is the Dalai Lama’s practice.  

 

Essential Reading:  

Carrithers, Buddha, chapter 5. 

 

Supplementary Reading: 

Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhism, chapters 4–5. 

 

Questions to Consider: 

1. Like practices that came before it, Buddhism saw many different schools of thought arise from the Buddha’s original teachings. What might have caused these schisms? 

2. What role did stupas play for followers of the Buddha, and how does that relate to earlier Hindu traditions? How might the veneration of stupas exist in tension with teachings of the Buddha?  

Lecture Sixteen Jainism 

 

 

Scope: Near the time of the Buddha and in the same region of northeastern India lived another prominent individual who renounced worldly ties following the death of his parents. Vardhamana practiced extreme asceticism for 12 years, until he gained a new understanding of the self and the world. His achievement earned him the title Mahavira, the “Great Hero.” Like the Buddha, he gathered a community of followers and taught them for a long period of time, until his death at age 72. 

Mahavira’s teachings shared much in common with the Dhamma of the Buddha and the philosophy of the Upanishads. Yet Mahavira gave innovative interpretations to the ideas of the soul and karma and emphasized different practices for the achievement of liberation. His teaching is perhaps most noteworthy for the prominence it gave to the practice of non-harming (ahimsa), which greatly influenced Indian religion and had a particularly profound effect on Mohandas Gandhi’s program of non-violent resistance.  

 

Outline 

I. In spite of its small size, Jainism has had a tremendous influence on Indian history and religions. The most significant contribution is its practice of ahimsa, not harming living beings, similar to Buddhism. Unlike Buddhism, however, Jainism’s doctrines—according to the Jains—did not arise from one founder.  

A. Modern history locates the origins of Jainism in the same cultural environment that gave rise to classical Hinduism and Buddhism, but devout Jains believe that Jainism is an eternal religion whose truths have no beginning in time.  

B. The world is subject to a universal life cycle, wherein Jainism’s truths are reintroduced to humanity because they are forgotten and lost. When an Axial Age sage named Vardhamana Mahavira taught the doctrines of Jainism, he was only transmitting a religion that had been taught many times before by others. 

C. Jainism’s teachers are called Tirthankaras, or bridge-builders, and show the way to salvation (liberation from samsara) through their words and example. They represent the highest possible attainment for the soul.  

D. There have been 24 Tirthankaras, the most recent of which was Mahavira, and there will be 24 more in the current universal cycle; the next is expected in 81,500 years. 

II. Modern scholarship must begin its study of Jainism in the Axial Age because there is no evidence to support the historical existence of the first 22 Tirthankaras. Evidence is thin for the 23rd, an ascetic named ParĞva who lived in about the 9th century B.C.E.  

A. The historical Mahavira may have been born in 599 B.C.E. in Kundagram, now in the Indian state of Bihar. 

B. According to some accounts, Mahavira was born to King Siddhartha and Queen Trishala, followers of ParĞva, the 23rd Tirthankara. 

C. Before his birth, his mother dreamed that the child would become either a great emperor or a Tirthankara.  

D. According to another birth story, Mahavira was conceived by a Brahmin couple, but his embryo was supernaturally implanted in Queen Trishala’s womb. This episode was probably meant to ease the rising tensions between the Brahmin and warrior castes, because many Brahmins resented the fact that some members of the warrior caste were encroaching on their spiritual territory. 

E. According to some Jain traditions, Mahavira married a young woman called Yashodhara—curiously, the same name as the Buddha’s wife—and together, they had a daughter. Another Jain sect denies this marriage. 

F. At the age of 30, Mahavira became a samana, renouncing his kingdom and wealth and pulling out his hair by the roots. To overcome all desires and attachments, for the next 12 years, he practiced intense asceticism, including fasting, mortification, meditation, and silence.  

G. He discarded his clothing and spent the remainder of his days in the nude. Clothing, like anything else, could be an attachment. 

Mahavira avoided harming other living beings, including plants.  

H. At the age of 42, he attained enlightenment and was recognized as a Tirthankara and a jina, or spiritual conqueror. His followers were called Jainas or Jains because they were disciples of the jina. 

I. For the next 30 years, Mahavira traveled throughout the Ganges region, teaching his principles and practices for attaining freedom from samsara.  

J. Tradition says that Mahavira died at age 72; his chief disciple, Indrabhuti, realized enlightenment a few hours afterward and later recollected his teacher’s words, which became the basis for the Agam Sutras, one of the most important Jain scriptures.  

III. Like Buddhists and Hindus, Jains appropriated many of the basic assumptions and beliefs circulating in the Ganges basin in the early Indian Axial Age. But in almost every case, Mahavira reinterpreted these ideas to fit his worldview, including time, conceptions of the world’s structure, the nature of the soul, and karma. 

A. Mahavira believed that the world was never created and will never be destroyed, thus following a cyclical pattern. Each cycle is divided into two halves, a period of ascendancy and a period of decline.  

1. During the period of ascendancy, people are tall, live long lives, and are wise and virtuous without the need for ethics or religion.  

2. As the cycle proceeds, the world gradually succumbs to corruption and deterioration, ethics and religion are introduced, and writing is invented because people’s memories have failed. It is during these stages that the Tirthankaras appear. 

3. At the lowest point of the cycle, people are short and live only 20 years, dwelling in caves and pursuing immoral activity. 

4. When it reaches its lowest point, the world enters another period of ascendancy, and the cycle repeats forever.  

B. Mahavira believed that the physical world comprised three levels: 

the underworld, the Earth’s surface (the middle realm), and the heavens.  

1. The underworld contains seven or eight realms of hell, where the wicked are punished to remove negative karma. When souls have suffered enough for their sins, they may be reborn in another realm.  

2. The middle level is the home of life, called Jambudvipa, “the island of the rose-apple tree.”  

3. The upper level is home to the gods. Above the universe’s ceiling is a crescent-shaped structure where the Tirthankaras and the completely liberated souls dwell.  

C. Like the sages of the Upanishads, Mahavira believed that the soul is real, unchanging in essence but not characteristic. All souls are equal and embody sentient as well as nonsentient beings. In their pure state, souls have perfect perception, knowledge, happiness, and power.  

D. The Jains believe that karma is a material substance made of fine particles that cling to the soul. When a soul acts, it attracts these particles, which adhere to it, weigh it down, and stain it with a particular color according to the karma’s moral and spiritual quality.  

1. The Jains believe that karma determines one’s future births and keeps humans in bondage to the material, samsaric world. 

2. Karmic defilements distort our perceptions and limit our knowledge of the world, leading to attachment and selfcentered thoughts and deeds. 

E. Jains believe that the world is composed of an infinite number of material and spiritual substances, each with an infinite number of qualities and manifestations. Because of this complexity and the limitations of human knowledge, all claims to truth must be tentative. This principle of non-absolutism means that we must be humble and acknowledge that we could be wrong. 

IV. With this outline of the Jain worldview, we can now consider the Mahavira discipline for attaining liberation. The objective of the Jain path is, first, to stop the accumulation of new karma and, second, to eliminate old karma that weighs down the soul. To reach the first goal, Mahavira advised his followers to fulfill five Great Vows. To reach the second, one must do good deeds and practice asceticism. 

A. The first and foremost Great Vow is ahimsa, to refrain from harming any living beings. Unlike Buddhists, Jains believe that even unintentionally injuring another creature generates negative karma.  

1. Jains are vegetarians and refuse to use leather or other animal products. They avoid occupations that might cause harm to life forms and some even sweep the pathway before them as they walk to avoid stepping on bugs.  

2. But ahimsa also involves practicing right thought and right speech.  

3. The other four vows include speaking the truth, never stealing or taking what is not given, practicing non-attachment, and practicing chastity. 

B. The elimination of accumulated karma principally involves doing good deeds and practicing asceticism.  

1. Those who would attain enlightenment must fast, meditate, perform penance, practice yoga, and study and recite scripture.  

2. The ultimate ascetic practice is to fast to death, symbolizing absolute renunciation.  

C. Mahavira also preached a path of self-salvation. Because each soul is accountable for its own karma, only the individual can reverse his or her karmic accumulations.  

D. Disagreements about doctrine and practice among Jainism’s ascetics were mostly minor, but one major division resulted in two different orders.  

1. The Digambara order renounced clothing and held that women could not reach liberation; they would have to await rebirth as men. 

2. The Shvetambaras contended that nudity was optional and that women were capable of enlightenment.  

E. Although differences exist, all Jains agree on the central message of non-violence, non-absolutism, and non-attachment. These practices are basic elements for personal liberation from samsara and the collective goal of peace for the world. 

 

Essential Reading:  

Dundas, The Jains, Introduction, chapters 1–2. 

 

Supplementary Reading: 

Tatia, That Which Is, “The Jaina Faith and Its History.” 

 

Questions to Consider: 

1. In what ways are Buddhism and Jainism similar? 

2. What is the principle of non-absolutism, and how does it relate to the other dimensions of the Jain worldview?