Notes

China and the Search for Order:
-After the Zhou dynasty had substantially weakened, a period of disorder and turmoil followed. This led most of china to begin to think of an answer. There were many solutions thought of for this problem. Here are some of them:
-The Legalist Answer: One answer to the problem of disorder was a philosophy known as legalism. To legalist thinkers, the solution to china's problems layed in rules or laws enforced through a system of rewards and punishments. The legalists generally had a pessimistic view of human nature. They believed that most people were stupid and shortsighted. To them, only the state and its rulers could act in their long-term interests. Legalist thinking provided inspiration and methods for the harsh reunification of china under Shihuangdi.
-The Confucian Answer: A man by the name of Confucius believed that he had found the key to solving China's problem of disorder. He spent much of his adult life trying to identify a political position from which he could put his ideas into action, but he could not find such an opportunity. After his death, his students compiled his teachings into a short book called Analects to which later scholars commented endlessly on his ideas creating a body of thought that came to be known as Confucianism. The Confucian answer to China's problem was very different than that of the Legalists. Not laws and punishments, but the moral example of superiors was key to Confucianism. For Confucianists, human society consisted of primarily of unequal relationships: the father was superior to the son, the husband to the wife, the older to the younger brother. They believed that is the superior party behaved with sincerity, benevolence, and genuine concern for others, then the inferior party would aspire to become more like the superior. Rituals and ceremonies were also important because they conveyed the rules of appropriate behavior in the many and varying circumstances of life.
-The Daoist Answer: A legendary figure by the name of Laozi penned a short poetic volume before vanishing in the wilderness of China on his water buffalo. Daoist ideas were later expressed in a more explicit fashion by the philosopher Zhuangzi. Daoist thinking ran opposite to Confucianism. The Daoists encouraged behavior that was spontaneous, individualistic, and natural. They turned the spotlight on the immense realm of nature and its mysterious unfolding patterns. Yin Yang came from Daoism. Believed everything was solved with harmony and balance with nature.

Cultural Traditions of Classical India:
-The cultural development of India was far different than that of China.
-Indian elite culture mainly focused on the divine and all things spiritual with enthusiasm and generated elaborate philosophical visions about the nature of ultimate reality.
-Their religion, later called Hinduism, grew stronger and bigger over time eventually spreading to Southeast Asia.
-Hinduism was derived from outsiders (Greeks, Muslims, and later the British)
-Hinduism dissolved into a variety of gods, spirits, and beliefs.
-The Vedas were sacred texts of Hinduism which provided some commonality. They were compiled by priests called Brahmins. They were originally translated orally. They tell of small competing chiefdoms, of numerous gods rising and falling, and of the elaborate ritual sacrifices that Brahmin priests required.
-Performing these rituals with great precision allowed the Brahmins to acquire enormous power and wealth, sometimes exceeding even that of kings and warriors. Brahmins also generated growing criticism, as ritual became mechanical and formal and as Brahmins required heavy fees to perform them.
-After this, another set of sacred texts were created called Upanishads. They were composed by anonymous thinkers. These were mystical and philosophical
-Brahman was the idea of the World Soul, the final and ultimate reality. It was a primal ultimate energy or divine reality infusing all things, coming after the material objects, gods, and individual persons.
-Atman: The individual human soul.
-The atman was a part of Brahman. Union with Brahman was the final destination or goal in life.
-Moksha: Union with Brahman, an end to our illusory perception of a separate existence.
-Samsara: Rebirth or reincarnation.

The Buddhist Challenge:
-Hinduism was founded by a prince from a small north Indian state named Siddhartha Gautama, when he set out on a six-year spiritual quest to achieve insight or enlightenment, which he finally did at age 35. For the rest of his life, he taught others what he had learned during these 6 years.
-A small but growing community came to see him as the Buddha, the Enlightened One, a human being who had awakened.
-The Buddha taught about suffering and how to end suffering. To the Buddha, suffering or sorrow was the central and universal feature of human life.
-Dukkha: Experiencing life as imperfect, impermanent, and unsatisfactory, being a universal feature of life, derived from desire or craving for individual fulfillment, from attachment to that which inevitably changes, particularly to the notion of a core self or ego that is uniquely and solidly "me." The Cure for this came with leading a modest and moral life with meditation practice.
-Those who followed the Buddhist path could expect a to achieve enlightenment, or nirvana, a virtually indescribable state in which individual identity would be extinguished along with all greed, hatred, and delusion.
-Much of the Buddha's teaching reflected Hindu tradition which it originated from, although other elements of Buddhist teaching sharply contrasted with Hinduism.
-Buddhism challenged caste system. Possibility of reaching nirvana was available to all.
-By the early centuries of the common era, a modern form of Buddhism was created called Mahayana, proclaiming that help was available for the strenuous voyage to reaching nirvana.
-Buddhist thinkers developed the idea of bodhisattvas, which were spiritually developed people who postponed their journey to nirvana to assist those who were still suffering.
-Eventually, Buddhism, as a religious practice, died out in the land of its birth and it was reincorporated into a broader Hindu tradition. This may have occurred due to the monasteries increased wealth separating them from their followers.
-The most important reason why Buddhism may have declined was because of the rise of a new kind of popular Hinduism, which the masses found more accessible.
-By 1000 CE, Buddhism had largely dissappeared as a religious tradition within India, after being incorporated into Hinduism.

Toward Monotheism: The Search for God in the Middle East
-In the middle east, monotheistic religion found expression through Persian Zoroastrianism, and in Judaism. Neither of these had spread really far, but they became the foundation for Christianity and Islam.
-Zoroastrianism:
-Zoroastrian teaching usually placed importance on the idea of human free will and the necessity for each to choose between good and evil.
-Zoroastrianism survived through Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia after everything was burned down and destroyed, and flourished again during the Parthian and Sassanid dynasties.
-The arrival of Islam and the Arab empire occasioned the final decline of Zoroastrianism, although some believers fled to India, where they became known as Parsis (Persians), and they continued their faith into current times. Zoroastrianism echoed well on later due to the fact that many Jews were present in Persia and were impacted by Zoroastrian tradition and religion, and so some ideas were incorporated into Judaism.

Judaism:
-Monotheistic religion
-Born among less significant peoples, the Hebrews.
-Jews found in their god, whom they called Yahweh, a powerful and jealous deity, who demanded their exclusive loyalty.

The Cultural Tradition of Classical Greece:
The Search for a Rational Order:
-Greek thinkers generated no lasting religious tradition of the world historical importance. The religion of these city-states brought together the gods of Mount Olympus.
-Many Greek thinkers abandoned the religion, to affirm that the world was a physical reality governed by natural laws, and to assert that human rationality could both understand these laws and work out a system of moral and ethical life as well.
-Compared to the Confucian secularism in China since they separated conventional religion and science & philosophy.
The Greek Legacy:
-Greek rationalism persisted long after the glory days of Athens.

The Birth Of Christianity with Buddhist Comparisons:
-Gautama was born in a family background of wealth and royalty, while Jesus was a rural or small-town worker from a distinctly lower-class family. Both became spiritual seekers, mystics in their respective traditions.
-Both were 'wisdom teachers' challenging the conventional values of their time, urging renunciation of wealth, and emphasizing the supreme importance of love and compassion as the basis for a moral life.
-Jesus inherited, from his Jewish origins, a monotheistic belief, while Gautama ignored the supernatural, and involved no miracles, teaching a path of self effort to reach Nirvana.
-Jesus' public life was very brief, probably less than three years, compared to more than forty years for the Buddha. His teachings had so antagonized both Jewish and Roman authorities that he was crucified as a political rebel.