Nietzsche on Christianity

1
Nietzsche on Christianity

• Not refute, psychoanalyze sick, self-hate
• Original sin, natural man as enemy of God
• And powerlessself-designed cage
• Christianity liesself deception
• God sin heaven and soul
• Deceptive hatred of life/self
• Culprit Greco-Roman St. Paul (Socrates)
• Hatred of flesh v Christ the evangel
• Last Christian died on cross

2
Buddhism Honest

• No god, heaven or soul
• Suffering v sin
• Honest about renounce life and seek nothing
• Nihilismvalue nothing
• So not powerlesswe can achieve our goal
• Promises Nothing(ness) delivers
• V Christianity

3
Philosophers and Deception

• Tricks of grammar and manufacture realities
• Cant get rid of God b/c still believe in grammar
• Ontological argument and Parmenides being
• Creating a real world
• Denigrate apparent one
• Descartes and self (soul)

4
Indo-European Concepts

• Rationalism structure real apparent
• Reason v feeling, mind/body, eternal soul
• Experience as a dream, illusion, phenomenon
• Buddhism as heresy in Hinduism
• Rejects ego and tied up with nirvana mystery
• Some kind of extinction
• 4 noble truthsNietzsche takehonest
• Decadentrenunciation of life, power, desire
• But does have a planwith a twistparadox

5
Questions?

• Quiz on paradox of desire

6
Focus on Puzzles of Nirvana

• No more rebirths no more suffering
• Escape from samsaracycle of lives

7
Politics and Religious Growth

• Grow with political support
• Chosen for self-sacrifice and altruism
• Typical results of orthodoxy
• Schisms, councils, declarations of heresy
• Major schism
• Mahayana and Theravada (Hinayana)

8
Mahayana and Theravada

• Hinayanasmall vehicle v great vehicle ?
• How many can be saved?
• Represented as deeper insight
• Buddha story impurity or everyone
• Metaphysical issue
• Boddhisattva v arhat ideal
• Historical Buddha and Buddha nature ??

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To China

• Only Mahayana succeed
• Exciting new ideas and concepts
• Puzzling and "foreign"
• Timing at the end of the Han dynasty
• Boredom with Han superstitious cosmology
• Neo-Daoism, Yi-ching, and what? (like today?)
• ?? Dark learning, metaphysics,
• ?? pure conversation about non-being/nirvana
• Serious handicap in Buddha story
• Consider Confucian reaction

10
Bad Buddha!

• Prediction at divine birthfather wants political
  fulfillment
• Discovers suffering, abandons political/familial
  responsibility
• Seeks his own release from suffering
• Egoistic! (If Nietzsche likes it, how could
  Confucius?)
• Enlightened and still needs moral persuasion to
  share the insight?

11
Paradox of Desire

• Motivates the bodhisattva ideal
• Desire for nirvana prevents entry into nirvana
• Last desire to be conquered
• No one worthy would ever choose to enter nirvana
• Returns to help others achieve
• Zen wrinkleWhy make it the last?
• Reject real/apparent world (Nirvana/samsara)

12
Enlightenment Analysis

• Changes accomplishment another way
• Desires to insight
• Some realization, point of view, insight that
  accounts for achievement
• Intellectualizes Buddhism
• Yogacara and Madyamika

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Yogacara Analysis

• Idealistnegative
• Only illusions, no reality
• If self is an illusion, the only global
  enlightenment has any significance
• Time slices of world consciousness
• Karmic role of desires
• Desire for this perception (the ego) to continue
  to next moment
• Explains coherence of ideas
• ? ? (Consciousness only) to ? ? (Hua Yen)

14
Madyamika

• More popular in China contradiction and silence
• Paradox and Daoism
• Spread as part of ?? (Dark learning)
• Buddha nature neither exists ?nor does not exist
  ?, nor both, nor neither, nor
• Daoist puzzles about ? ?

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Other Paradoxes

• "Being" school. Flip side of Yogacara
• Only Buddha nature is real
• Everything else is an illusion/unreal
• If there are illusions, they are real (Buddha
  consciousness)
• There are no illusions
• Early tendencies to Chan
• Even untouchables can be saved

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Internal Story

• Hui Neng ??and the Platform Sutra ? ?? ?
• Illiterate woodcutter becomes 6th patriarch
• No words and easy enlightenment
• Southern barbarian(?)
• Poem story no dust to wipe from the mirror
• No illusions to dispel
• Kyoto Stories

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Never Allowed to Study

• Pounds rice, carries wood
• Enlightened before he went to the temple
• Leaves monastery to return to Gwangdong
  mountains!
• Throws away the robe signifying status

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Background

• Cultural revolution against Buddhism
• Foreign, too intellectualized v practical native
  philosophies
• Egalitarian tendencies
• Southern movement
• Internal reform of Buddhism along Daoist lines
• Shift of center of Chinese intellectual culture

19
External Story

• Shen Hui the real influence
• Vanquished Shen Xiu and Northern ? Chan
• Sudden v. gradual enlightenment
• Cultivation to some goal v
• Give up the goal!

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Triumph at End

• Exile and triumphant return
• Story-telling skills
• Politics and money
• Authorship of the sutra
• Daoist Wang Wei hypothesis