SAST 203 - Sept 27 Notes

docx

School

University of Calgary *

*We aren’t endorsed by this school

Course

203

Subject

Philosophy

Date

Oct 30, 2023

Type

docx

Pages

Uploaded by GrandDuckPerson220

So to go back one more just to start at a little bit of review from Monday to place us where we are in the material we've introduced this new cosmology is much more abstract and more sort of fully developed theorizing about the nature of the cosmos and what happen the nature of the human soul of what happens after death so remember that we are roughly 1000 years on I'm gonna ask you to hold questions about the assignments until the end of class the country but will come back to that at the end or one of the states can answer if I didn't check if Raymond was here today but we'll get to that at the end of class so try probably OK so we were roughly 1000 years after the regulator a massive shift has happened as will continue to discuss next week we can get them Arias another newly emerging religions like Jane ISM and Buddhism were really at a point of sort of religious renaissance in South Asia a whole set of new religious ideas are budding at this time in the 6th century BC and all of these new religious movements whether we talk about you punish on Jane ISM or Buddhism share this basic view of how the world works namely that we as humans are trapped in samsara in the cycle of rebirth and re death and that liberation or escape from that cycle of rebirth and reject is both desirable and possible what causes us to be stuck in samsara how we get released and what the nature of liberation is those will each be answer those issues will be thought of slightly differently in each of these traditions but the basic idea that we're trapped in samsara and that we want to try to attain liberation from samsara data shared by all of these traditions for this week will really focusing on is how does the Hindu tradition in particular reconcile the fact that the opponent odds are presenting this radically new religious ideology this radically new vision of how the world works and what the nature of the human soul is even when that is so different from the Vedas and yet both sets of literature remember from anemic perspective R shruti that which is heard revealed literature literature that has no human or divine author and indeed the most sacred literature of can do tradition were the Apollo shots the answer here in terms of how we escape samsara is that we want to overcome Maya illusion and reach Satya or truth we do that by developing Yana or knowledge through yoga discipline of the body and mind and ultimately what we ended class discussing on Monday was the nature of the content of the owner of the knowledge that you I meant to realize in order to attain moksha and that is a one hit on popular the human cells for soul with brockman the divine substance by off and call it the divine instead of God because it's completely transcendent it is the concept of God as beyond any anthropomorphic form or any specific characterizations remember that this is embodied in the mahaki as the great statements of the upanishad's like cut from ASI thou art that your soul your optimum is indistinguishable from brockman now this is a highly abstract system of thought or conceiving of the world it is world denying as I've described it several times with the opposite of the Vedas in that it sees the physical world we live in as illusory as a femoral or temporary and is something we want to trance end but the other piece in the puzzle of what you punish odds are about is the reality that sage is the gurus and those who wrote these texts view this as an experiential religion they they view the process of attaining Yana or knowledge and then eventually reaching moksha or liberation as something that is empirical it is experientially verifiable other people have done it and so it can be empirically verified like a scientific experiment can be empirically verified because of that viewpoint we or we see that in point through the teaching methods that are used in the appanna shots if we think of grooves like delica anyona volkes teaching their students should decay two delica son or my trainee sorry OK to your vocals maitreya the wife we see that they're using means of teaching that are meant to

illustrate through experiential means or experimental mean sometimes and sometimes through through metaphor and analogy that this is something that can be viewed and experienced in the real world within the punish odds we have three common analogy is used there are far far more than three but these are the three most common analogy is used to describe the relationship of atman of the human soul to Brooklyn and particularly the top one here is where we see the idea that the knowledge and study of the punishments this kind of mental discipline and contemplation is viewed as something that empirically verifiable and that is the analogy of salt and water and this is in a passage with the student straight the K2 studying with his father or his father tells him to take a pot of water pour salt into it and leave it out overnight and then to come back and look at it in the morning and as we could all predict what happens in the morning he can't see any salt because it has dissolved into the water and the teaching there is that each grain of salt is like an outline each of us has our own soul like the great of salt and aunt liberation or actually even in their true fundamental nature those individual off bones are one with profit which is the water they're indistinguishable so that's a true sort of experimental teaching or method of teaching that really underscores the way in which this is the upanishad actex themselves view this as an empirically verifiable religion now there are other analogies really looking at the way the natural world works that also speak to this there may be less of an experiment one description is nectar or we would say pollen really that fees are pollinators gather nectar and pollen from many different flowers but then when honey comes from the honeycomb can't distinguish which bit of honey comes from which different flower that is the in that sense the nectar is like individual human ottomans or and rockman is like honey it is dissolved into one it is complete monism as ramen mentioned on Monday and there is indistinguishable similarly the analogy of rivers flowing into the ocean once the water it's the ocean we can't tell which bits of water came from the bow or the elbow river or from the Ganga river it's all one body of water I wanna Elise or highlight two these are yes are cheap these are analogies actually given in the opponent odds in dialogues between gurus and students so two things I want to highlight here one is the way in which this is often taught insert an experimental way that the mental discipline of question and answer is part of the yoga the discipline that leads to knowledge but the other is the focus on the natural world which is 1 means of continuity with the early religion of the betas which was very affirming of the natural world so wild upanishad's our world denying that they teach that the physical world around us is Maya or illusory and we want to come to the true understanding of brockman or the abstract nature of the world the teaching tools that are used to illustrate the knowledge of the punishments are still very much based on nature around us and that sort of bringing forward this value of the natural world from the Vedas into a Panasonic teachings other ways that we can think about the experiential or empirical elements of the upanishad's is really about the life of practice that is described in the text themselves so first we have life is a sanyasi azarin entiat in contemporary Indian language is the most common term for people who live this lifestyle style asado so these are people this is the idea in the ohana shots that in order to attain moksha in order to be liberated from the cycle of samsara we need to renounce family and social life or at least social life there are families in the opponent odds and devote ourselves full time to religious and ever again this is a religious teaching that will be shared by all of the new religious movements of the six century BC and the Marriott empire Jane ISM Buddhism and upanishad can do some will all teach that truly striving towards liberation from samsara is a full time endeavour and is off it's

generally conceived of as a full time in Denver for more than one lifetime that it will take many lives to reach this goal but it's not something you can kind of do part time it really takes serious mental end and physical discipline that is a full time engagement we also see the experiental experiential aspects of the opponents in the group student relationship remember that from the upanishad on words this will always be the format of religious literature in Hinduism that these texts are written as a dialogue between a teacher and their student asking them questions we then see the notion of yoga as discipline both as a physical form of discipline self denial and eventually the exercises movements the physical fitness movements that many of you engage in outside of school I'm sure will develop in the centuries following the upanishad that meditation and contemplation the mental discipline that goes hand in hand with physical discipline of yoga those are seen as practices that need to be engaged in on a daily basis full time for the rest of your life if you are seriously striving towards moksha in this lifetime right reiman is correct in pointing to the to which will talk about after the first exam a bit and most of you are familiar with contemporary Hindu literature probably know those kinds of dialogues the best the dialogue between Krishna and Arjun Akita or between other gurus and students in the mahabarata and peron's throughout later Hindu better turn any questions on these experiential aspects of the opponents before I move on so aside from introducing this new form of religion that we see in the punish odds the other major theme for this week is to think about this phenomenon that happens within the Hindu tradition in particular where new religious ideas are always absorbed into the old the other courses that 300 level courses like teach are on Hinduism primarily some of you in this class have taken those classes with me and I I often say that this is what I find to be the most fascinating thing about the Hindu tradition is as one of the oldest continually practiced religions on earth it has this amazing sponge like ability to absorb new ideas into itself into sort of synthesize them under one large umbrella that has many different traditions held together within it we see that that starts very early in Sanskrit literature in particular with this transition from the Vedas to the upanishad so this is an aspect of Hinduism preserved in Sanskrit literature from the very earliest text so the example that I like to give here is to specifically think about the horse sacrifice in gated grillage and so we think of Vedic sacrifice which I really emphasize last week is specifically about a physical sacrifices of ghee clarified butter soma the plant and animals into the sacrificial flame which is then carried through the atmosphere to the sky as an offering to the gods we if we think of sacrificing that way we have a very clear indication in the rig veda that this sacrifice was literal and physical so here I have just a tiny portion of verse about a sacrifice horse in the rig veda that is a hymn to the horse that says whatever of the horses flesh the fly has even and whatever stays stuck to the stake of the axe or the hands are nails with the slaughter or let all of that stay with you even among the gods so a bit gross in some sense but are really clear indication that the Vedas here are talking specifically and explicitly about an actual physical sacrifice and they're dedicating every bit of the horses flesh whatever gets stuck to the axe or get stuck under the nails of this letter even that is dedicated to the gods there's really no question that this is a physical activity remember they give karma the word karma as a physical action required to perform the religious sacrifice let's compare that then to this passage from the bread or any coupon a shot one of the oldest upanishad's which also has a him describing the horse sacrifice and this is how the brihad rania code punished describes the horse sacrifice the same sacrificial ritual ahead of the horse clearly is the dawn its site is the sun its breath is the wind and its gaping mouth as the

Your preview ends here

Eager to read complete document? Join bartleby learn and gain access to the full version

Access to all documents
Unlimited textbook solutions
24/7 expert homework help

fire common to all men the body of the sacrificial horses the year it's back is the sky it's abdomen is intermediate region that's the atmosphere its underbelly is the earth its feet are the days and nights its bones are the stars its body hairs are the plants and trees it's four quarter is the rising sun in its hindquarters the setting sun when it yawns lightning flash owns when it shakes itself it thunders and when it urinates it rains its main is speech itself so a completely different vision of the horse sacrifices here to begin with this is clearly a metaphorical description of a horse sacrifice and remember that within a few short centuries of the upanishad is being developed will start to see clear written evidence that Hinduism is moving towards valuing vegetarianism vegetarianism will never be a universal practice within within Hinduism becomes a common and popular practice within a few short short centuries of yaupon shots being written and maintains a popular practice today for many Hindus across the globe so to begin with there's a subtle indication here that we don't need to talk that maybe we're even discouraging physical sacrifice that we can think about the sacrifices in a metaphorical way in the same way that rig veda 1090 described the sacrifice of the first man as a metaphor for creation there's no indication in that verse that it's a literal human sacrifice it's a metaphor of sacrificing humans and this verse is very explicitly mimicking rigveda 1090 the body of the horrors is the world in the same way that the body of prusia created the world in the sacrifice abbreviated MIT purusha size he came to light his breath became the wind the horses described in a very similar manner here so this is intentionally ecoline and bringing forward ideas from the rig data and it's also then created a metaphor for what do we really want to sacrifice is this about a sacrifice of a physical horrors no this is about sacrificing my a are the illusory ignorant view that the physical world around us is reality we sacrifice our attachment to the physical world around us and that is what propels us towards Yana or motion So what we see here is kind of a 2 pound approach to bringing these new views about religion in conversation or synthesizing them with the early religious views of Vedic civilization one is the text will never come out right and reject the betas at no point to the punishment in fact they want to start of the Vedas right they don't say you should stop doing that sacrifice what they say is you need to do the sacrifice with proper nyana with proper understanding and here is how you understand the sacrifice of the horse as being about the quest to overcome Maya or illusion and attained moksha or liberation and then by emphasizing that second part of you need to do the sacrifices with proper understanding there also suddenly advocating or suddenly arguing for this new religious path is more important so well they're never going to say don't perform the sacrifice stop honoring the betas they definitely are giving a higher place of honor to the new religious ideas then you wanna focus the knowledge and contemplation focused ideas so that's the second piece of this function that we see over and over again across the millennia in Hinduism where new religious idea will see this in the keto which Bremen has already brought up in the chat a new religious idea is introduced that new religious idea pays respect to what came before it reinterprets what came before and it says on the surface all of these religious practices are equal but also if you read it by the end you should really be convinced that the new religious practice is a little more equal it's a little more it is definitely the more the preferable of the paths preferable to the older path are there any questions before I move on we'll go through these verses again in discussion on Friday OK so again what I want to close with is talking about the continuity is between bacon upanishad literature even though we've jumped forward 1000 years percina very different set of religious identity of religious goals and

religious beliefs the tradition itself sees this as a closely related set of ideas and they see it as two parts of 1 of 1 tradition are Steve just asked for exams would be we be expected to analyze texts like this it's everyone's going to be grateful to you for answering that before asking that yes so one form of short answer questions will be that I give you a quote that we've from the primary source reading and I ask you to analyze it in a one paragraph response quotes that I talk about will always be things we've talked but I give you an example always be something that we talked about in class or that is in the reading guide questions so you have a clear road map to which quote you should with parts of the reading you should focus on when you prepare for exams that's a really good question are Steve so in terms of that consistency first we have the definitions within the tradition that both debaters any opponent odds are considered true to literature the revealed literature of tradition the most sacred literature of Hinduism this is the last fruity literature will see after exam one when we start looking at later classical Hindu tradition everything else will be a different category of religious literature which is still revered but is less sacred smitty the remembered literature tradition which has human authors still revered still sacred but less sacred than the shruti revealed literature we see the clear reinterpretation of ritual rather than rejecting the Vedic religion do punishments are bringing the values of the of the Vedic religion forward and giving them new meaning for a new time something we haven't talked about a lot in this class is death or I think I did talk about some the idea of death upanishad primarily defined the suffering of samsara is being caused by the process of having to die over and over again the Vedas you could say have a very similar fear of death the fact that it's basically taboo in the Vedas to talk about what happens to humans after death is sort of a similar kind of sense of death is the is this negative force in the world is something to be avoided what we also see for the first time and we'll see this even more so when we get to the bhagavad gita in a few weeks is reincarnate reinterpretation of important vocabulary so of course we see reinterpretation of yajna or sacrificed because we've seen the narrative reinterpretation of ritual but also the meaning of terms in Sanskrit that are still are still central or important to the tradition but are redefined so remember that in the Vedas karma which literally means action just meant performing the physical action up doing ritual sacrifice in the opana shots for the first time we see karma being used in the way that we use it in contemporary English in the applause karma means the moral value of our actions good or bad and the way in which that ethical value of our actions determines the value of our future reverbs And we've already also talked about the creation imagery and the sacrifice of Persia how that is echoed in the way that you punish odds reinterpret the horse sacrifice this is just a review slide for you for studying for the exam and also that we can talk about on Friday if there are questions so I got through the material on the slides a little faster than I expected to today are there any questions about material the content of lecture today before I move on and ask answer questions about the assignments so the reinterpretation of karma are steep is that in the vetoes karma has its original and most basic meaning it simply means an action Remember that creep in Sanskrit means to do or to make an karma comes from the verb creed so it really in a religious sense means performing the physical action I'm doing the sacrifice slaughtering the horrors offering horse meat into the fire but karma in view punishes me has the same meaning that we ascribe to it in contemporary English since, is one of many English to Sanskrit words that have entered contemporary English it means the moral value of our actions and the way in which that moral value determines the quality of our future birds in Hinduism as in

Buddhism it is the intention between our behind our moral choices that determines whether we get good or bad karma from them Jane ISM which will talk about next week views the physical impact of our actions as that is what determines good or bad karma but Buddhism and Hinduism both view intention as the key issue and whether we get good or bad karma from an action good and I'm asked to go over the sacrifice of crucial reference in the pots again will talk about this more on Friday but you are exactly right that in the re interpreted reinterpreted for sacrifice in the brooder any coupon Sean you punished for doing two things there is scribing new meaning to sacrificed there making it a metaphor about sacrificing my or illusion in order to arrive at true knowledge or brockman they're also very clearly and intentionally echo mean the language that is used in the sacrifice of Persia in renovated 1090 in the same way that the sacrifices the primordial man or the first man and related to 90 creates the physical world around us in the pre hookah him to the horse sacrificed that pathic him to the horse sacrifice this party of the horse is a metaphor from the physical world that's being sacrificed does that make sense her need as I mentioned at the beginning those last few slides are updated and they didn't upload fully so I'll put them up on detail after class today OK so let me start with the very first question that was asked by agape about the reading assignment the writing assignments the gradebook imported from last years D2L shellan I haven't it hasn't been updated yet the TAS and I are working on that so the the final authority for what you actually have to do is always the syllabus and the course outline last year I had some separate writing assignments and then the exams this year instead I decided to have some written elements of the exam so you only have exams but the exams will be a mix of multiselect questions and also some writing portions so there are no extra writing assignments just the exams and participation that's all you have to do for this class the content for the the lecture is over who best to those of you who don't have questions about tests and studying are welcome to go if you want to but I'll stay on for a bit longer and answer any other questions about assignments so for the exam someone asked about will I tell you what kinds of which reading selections we have to talk about what I'll do is I'll ML review within class how to know which sections to focus on and basically I've already said that right anything that we quote and discussed in the lecture slides or anything that is highlighted in the discussion questions the reading guide questions those are the quotes from your reading that you might be asked to interpret an exam so that's basically in the same way that the vocabulary slide at the beginning of each slide set that is your study guide for which terms you should know for an exam the slide sets and the discussion questions or reading guide to those are your guys for which quote you should know for the exams also bear in mind that I we will have an in class review session before the exam happens so you'll also get to ask more questions will have in a synchronous drop in session where you could come to ask the study questions to prepare for the exam for the exams you there will be time do you have to finish it in 90 minutes and you only have one attempt but you'll have a 48 hour period during which you can complete it those are sort of rules about on line exams that during the pandemic so I stuck with those rules they were first that you have a minimum of 48 hours to complete it and second that you have to have 50% more time than you would have in class in case you have Internet connectivity issues so I've stuck with those two rules so you can finish at anytime during that 48 hour period but you have to have it done by that 48 hour period we just got an e-mail yesterday that D12 and updated and next semester there's going to be an opportunity to offer synchronous exams where you take your exam on the computer but it's during class time that

Your preview ends here

Eager to read complete document? Join bartleby learn and gain access to the full version

Access to all documents
Unlimited textbook solutions
24/7 expert homework help

won't happen until next semester because we didn't have that capability and eat well until apparently this week so you basically go by the old pandemic rules about online exams OK the lecture recordings are if you click on cloud recordings under zoom that's where the past Electro recordings are a number of people have had issues with trying to use the passcode this isn't the pass code to join the zoom it's a pass code that's embedded in the recording it should automatically copied to your clipboard if it doesn't automatically copied to your clipboard you need to call and get help from them that's unfortunately not something that Raymond or honey for I can help you do Jayden asked have I decided how many questions there will be on the exams I'm still working on that I was just doing some math today but I will let you know before the exam is released I think you could probably what I'm working on in terms of math right now is probably 20 multiselect questions and then four short answer questions should work out to a pretty decent even number for the marking but don't that's not a promise that just my goal i will clarify with