east asian religion midterm

Oracle Bones

Definition: Turtle shells and animal bones, especially ox shoulder blades, used for divination — communicating with supernatural powers to obtain answers about the future.

Historical context

• Used during China's Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BCE).

• Many were discovered at Anyang, the late Shang capital.

• Shang religion centered on ancestors, nature spirits, and the high deity Di (Shangdi).

Key details

• Diviners prepared a question, heated the bone or shell until cracks formed, and interpreted those cracks as a response.

• Questions involved warfare, harvests, illnesses, weather, childbirth, and sacrifices.

• Inscriptions recorded questions and sometimes predictions and outcomes.

• The Shang king's religious authority was closely connected to divination and communication with ancestors.

Significance

• Oracle bones provide some of the earliest surviving evidence of Chinese writing.

• They reveal how closely religion and political authority were connected: the king relied on communication with supernatural powers to guide decisions.

• They also show the importance of ancestor worship in ancient Chinese society.

Mandate of Heaven

Definition: The Mandate of Heaven (Tianming) was the belief that Heaven granted a ruler the right to govern, but that this right could be taken away if the ruler became immoral or failed to care for the people.

Historical context

• Developed when the Zhou dynasty defeated the Shang around 1046 BCE.

• The Zhou needed to justify why they had overthrown the previous ruling dynasty.

• The Zhou ruler claimed authority as the Son of Heaven (Tianzi).

Key details

• Heaven was viewed as an ethical force that favored virtuous rulers.

• The Zhou argued that the last Shang king had become corrupt and mistreated his people.

• The Many Officers, a speech associated with the Duke of Zhou, defended the Zhou conquest as Heaven's will.

• Later dynasties used the Mandate to explain dynastic change: good government maintained legitimacy, while misrule could lead to the loss of Heaven's favor.

Significance

• It connected political legitimacy with moral responsibility.

• Kings were expected to govern virtuously rather than simply maintain power.

• It became one of the most influential ideas in Chinese political history, helping explain why dynasties could rise and fall.

Filial Piety

Definition

- Filial piety is the obligation to respect, care for, and honor one's parents and elders, both during their lives and after their deaths.

Historical context

• A central principle of Confucianism, which developed in ancient China during a period of political conflict and social instability.

• Confucius believed a harmonious society could be developed through proper moral education and relationships.

Key details

• Children should respect and support their parents, follow appropriate family responsibilities, and honor deceased ancestors.

• Your notes emphasize that moral education begins in childhood, within the family.

• The family serves as a model for society: rulers should care for their subjects as responsible parents care for their children.

• Hierarchical relationships should involve reciprocal responsibilities, not just obedience.

• Filial piety also became significant in Chinese Buddhism, particularly through Mulian's efforts to save his mother.

Significance

• Filial piety connected family morality to political and social order.

• Confucians believed that people who learned respect and responsibility at home would help create a harmonious society.

• It also became an important point of interaction between Confucianism and Buddhism in China.

State Confucianism

Definition

- State Confucianism was the adoption of Confucian teachings and moral principles as the ideological foundation of the Chinese imperial government.

Historical context

After the Qin dynasty, which was ruled under a legalist system, fell, the Han dynasty replaced the Qin and brought along Confucian ideology with it. However, they needed a way to satisfy the power-hungry emperor, so they created state Confucianism

Key details

• Emperor Wu established a national university for training officials in Confucian classics and promoted Confucian learning in government.

• Dong Zhongshu connected Confucian morality with Heaven, Earth, and humanity.

• He also used Yin and Yang and the Five Agents to explain the relationship between nature, humanity, and political rule.

• The emperor occupied a central position linking the three realms.

• Natural disasters, such as floods or earthquakes, could indicate that the emperor had failed to govern properly.

• Imperial rituals reinforced the emperor's special position.

Significance

• State Confucianism gave the emperor religious and moral legitimacy, while also establishing expectations for responsible government.

• It connected social order, politics, and the cosmos.

• Confucianism became deeply influential in Chinese education, government, and political culture.

  
  

Celestial Masters Daoism

Definition

- Celestial Masters Daoism was an organized religious movement that combined Daoist beliefs with communal religious practice, moral rules, healing rituals, and a hierarchy of religious authorities.

Historical context

• Emerged in the second century CE, in what is now Sichuan, China.

• Associated with Zhang Daoling, who claimed to receive a revelation from Lord Lao, a divine manifestation connected with Laozi.

• The movement established a religious community led by the Celestial Masters.

Key details

• Members believed demons and supernatural forces could cause illness, suffering, and disorder.

• Religious specialists helped protect people through rituals, sacred texts, repentance, and knowledge of supernatural beings.

• The movement developed an organized religious hierarchy, comparable in certain ways to a celestial bureaucracy.

• The Demon Statutes of Lady Blue describes demons, moral regulations, and punishments for violating religious rules.

• Your notes emphasize the priest's role as an intermediary between humans and divine beings.

• Some teachings warned of coming disasters and offered religious practices as a means of protection.

Significance

• It helped transform Daoism into an organized communal religion, rather than simply a collection of philosophical teachings.

• Its hierarchy, rituals, and moral rules shaped later forms of religious Daoism.

• It also illustrates the close relationship between religion, healing, and everyday concerns in Chinese society.

Internal Alchemy

Definition

- A form of Daoist internal cultivation focused on transforming and refining the body and spirit through religious practices aimed at longevity, purification, and spiritual transcendence.

Historical context

Daoist traditions explored different methods of overcoming ordinary human limitations. In the Shangqing tradition, bodily visualization is a way to encounter divine beings and celestial realms. Practitioners imagined divine beings and celestial realms through inner vision, treating the body as a landscape that could be explored through disciplined religious practice. Shangqing practitioners described higher celestial realms and used visualization to encounter divine beings and sacred landscapes. These practices present the body as a microcosm of the cosmos rather than merely a physical object

Key details

• The human body was understood as a microcosm reflecting the larger universe (macrocosm).

• Practitioners believed divine beings or spirits resided within different parts of the body.

• The Scripture of the Yellow Court discusses spirits connected to the internal organs, including the heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys.

• Practitioners used inner visualization, recitation, and other cultivation techniques to harmonize and nourish the body and its spirits.

• The text describes spiritual purification and the possibility of attaining a refined, immortal existence.

Significance

• These practices show how Daoists understood the human body as connected to the divine cosmos.

• They offered a method of religious cultivation focused on transformation within oneself.

• Unlike communal rituals performed by priests for others, these practices emphasized the individual's internal spiritual development.

Karma

Definition

- Karma is the Buddhist principle that intentional actions have consequences that can affect an individual's present experiences and future rebirths.

Historical context

• An important concept in Buddhism that originated in India and later spread throughout East Asia.

• Closely connected to samsara, the ongoing cycle of death and rebirth.

Key details

• Good and bad actions can produce favorable or unfavorable karmic consequences.

• Rebirth can take place in different realms, including human, heavenly, animal, hungry ghost, and hell realms.

• Your notes describe elaborate Buddhist hells where beings experience suffering connected to their past actions.

• In the story of Mulian, his mother suffers a terrible rebirth because of her past misdeeds.

• Buddhist rituals and offerings to monks could generate merit, which could be dedicated to deceased relatives to benefit them.

Significance

• Karma connects morality with the consequences of one's actions, including consequences extending beyond death.

• It helps explain why Buddhists emphasize ethical conduct, compassion, and religious practice.

• Beliefs about karma also influenced East Asian funerals, ancestor rituals, and the relationship between laypeople and Buddhist monasteries.

Siddhartha Gautama

Definition

- Siddhartha Gautama was the historical Buddha, whose teachings became the foundation of Buddhism.

Historical context

• Your lecture notes place his birth around the mid-fifth century BCE in Lumbini, in present-day Nepal.

• He came from a warrior-class family belonging to the Shakya clan.

• Also known as Shakyamuni, meaning the sage of the Shakyas.

Key details

• He pursued a spiritual path seeking liberation from suffering.

• His experiences included severe ascetic practices, involving extreme self-denial.

• He eventually rejected both self-indulgence and extreme self-mortification in favor of the Middle Way.

• After attaining enlightenment, he began teaching others how to overcome suffering.

• His first sermon, Setting the Wheel of Dharma in Motion, introduced the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path.

• His teachings became known as the Dharma.

• He became one of the Three Jewels of Buddhism, alongside the Dharma and the Sangha (the Buddhist community).

Significance

• His teachings established the central Buddhist goal of overcoming suffering and escaping the cycle of rebirth.

• His life and enlightenment became models for Buddhist religious practice.

• His teachings eventually spread throughout China, Korea, Japan, and other regions.

Mahāyāna Buddhism

Definition

- Mahāyāna Buddhism is a major Buddhist tradition emphasizing compassion, the bodhisattva ideal, and the possibility of liberation for a broad range of practitioners.

Historical context

• Developed from earlier Buddhist traditions and became highly influential throughout China, Korea, and Japan.

• Your lecture notes contrast it with more restrictive forms of monastic Buddhism that emphasized leaving family life to pursue religious cultivation.

Key details

• Mahāyāna expanded opportunities for lay believers to participate in Buddhist practices without becoming monks or nuns.

• It emphasizes the bodhisattva, someone who seeks Buddhahood while helping other beings achieve liberation.

• Your notes contrast this with the arhat, who has achieved individual liberation.

• Important bodhisattvas in your notes include:

  • Mañjuśrī: wisdom.

  • Guanyin / Avalokiteśvara: compassion and mercy.

  • Jizang / Kṣitigarbha: associated with helping beings in suffering realms.

• Monasteries increasingly served and interacted with lay communities.

Significance

• Mahāyāna helped Buddhism become more accessible to ordinary people.

• Its emphasis on compassion and bodhisattvas supported a wide variety of devotional practices.

• It became a major foundation for East Asian forms of Buddhism, including Pure Land and other traditions.

Mulian

Definition

- Mulian (Maudgalyāyana) was a disciple of the Buddha famous for his supernatural powers and his efforts to rescue his deceased mother from suffering.

Historical context

• His story became especially important as Buddhism spread into China.

• Chinese society strongly emphasized filial piety, but Buddhist monastic life involved leaving one's family and renouncing marriage.

• This created tension between Buddhist religious obligations and Confucian family values.

Key details

• Mulian discovers that his mother has been reborn as a hungry ghost because of her past actions.

• He tries to feed her, but the food turns into burning coals.

• His supernatural powers alone cannot save her.

• The Buddha instructs him to make offerings to the Sangha, the Buddhist monastic community.

• The monks can generate and transfer religious merit to help his mother.

• The ritual involves offerings on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month.

• The story became associated with the Ghost Festival and rituals honoring deceased relatives.

Significance

• The story connects Buddhism with Chinese filial piety.

• It shows that Buddhist monks could fulfill family obligations through religious practices rather than traditional family life alone.

• It also demonstrates the importance of merit transfer and the mutually beneficial relationship between laypeople and Buddhist monasteries.

The Shingon School

Definition

- Shingon is a Japanese school of esoteric Buddhism established by Kūkai, emphasizing sacred rituals and practices that allow practitioners to participate in the cosmic reality of Buddhahood.

Historical context

• Developed in Japan during the Heian period.

• Kūkai established Shingon as an important form of Japanese Buddhist practice.

• Your notes emphasize that practitioners had to receive proper initiation to learn certain sacred teachings and techniques.

Key details

• Shingon centers on Mahāvairocana, the cosmic or primordial Buddha.

• Your notes describe Mahāvairocana's body as consisting of six elements: earth, water, fire, wind, space, and consciousness.

• The ultimate goal involves aligning oneself with and embodying Buddhahood.

• Three extremely important ritual techniques:

Mudras

Sacred hand and body gestures representing cosmic and spiritual realities.

Mantras

Sacred sounds or phrases recited as part of ritual practice.

Mandalas

Sacred visual representations of the Buddhist cosmos used in meditation and rituals.

Significance

• Shingon introduced an influential form of esoteric Buddhist practice in Japan.

• It emphasized that sacred gestures, speech, and visualization could connect the practitioner with the cosmic Buddha.

• It became an important religious tradition in Japanese Buddhism.

Pojo Chinul

Definition

- Pojo Chinul was an influential Korean Buddhist monk who helped reform and systematize Sŏn Buddhism, the Korean form of Chan/Zen Buddhism.

Historical context

• Lived from 1158 to 1210, during Korea's Koryŏ dynasty.

• Korean Buddhism had been influenced by Chinese Buddhist traditions.

• Chinul sought to make Buddhist practice more systematic and accessible while strengthening monastic discipline.

Key details

• His most important teaching was sudden awakening followed by gradual cultivation.

• Sudden awakening: A practitioner realizes that Buddha-nature is already present within oneself.

• Gradual cultivation: Even after awakening, continued discipline, meditation, and practice are necessary to overcome deeply established habits.

• Chinul emphasized the compatibility of Sŏn meditation and Hwaŏm doctrinal teachings.

• His own experiences of awakening through reading scriptures helped shape his approach.

• He wrote Secrets on Cultivating the Mind and Admonitions to Beginning Students.

• The Admonitions established standards of monastic conduct and emphasized the importance of religious discipline.

Significance

• Chinul helped bring meditation, scripture, and disciplined religious practice together.

• His teachings made enlightenment less dependent on exclusive or mysterious encounters with masters.

• His reforms profoundly influenced the development of Korean Sŏn Buddhism and continue to shape Korean Buddhist monastic practices.