Culture and Religion in Eurasia/ North Africa
The first main section this reading opens with is "China and the search for order". This reading was interesting. Through this I learned that China was one of the first civilizations and that their royal court was weakening. This reading stems from Chinas downfall of power and from that emerged classical traditions. One of the solutions to Chinas fall is legalism. Legalism provided inspiration that would help with the reunification of the civilization. The next solution to emerge was with Confucius. Confucius' answer to Chinas problem was a moral example of superiors. Confucius watched many relationships of superiority and saw that if the superior could act with sincerity and had concern then the inferior would be obedient. In opposition to Confucius, the Daoist idea made fun of Confucius ways and encouraged behavior that was spontaneous, individualistic, and natural. The central concept of Daoism was nature. Though many ideas were not shared between the two, both daoism and confucianism viewed family life as central to Chinese society.
The next civilization to be addressed in this chapter was India. Indian civilization was far different from Chinese and embraces the divine and all thing spiritual. Something interesting talked about in this part of the chapter was the Indian sacred texts known as Vedas. The vedas were collections of poems, hymns, and prayers and were transmitted orally for the longest time. The religion of the Indian civilization was Buddhism and unlike Hinduism, it had a founder, Siddhartha. In Buddhism, experiencing life and imperfection was the central and universal feature of the human life. A lot of Buddhism teachings showed Hindu traditions. An idea developed by the Buddhists was the idea of Bodhisattvas. The idea reflected spiritually developed people who held themselves from nirvana to help those who were still suffering. Sadly, Buddhism died out in the land of its birth and declined because of the mounting wealth of monasteries.
Just like the evolution of Chinese and Indian traditions, the Middle East started to make their rise. The middle east followed a very distinctive monotheistic religion, Zoroastrianism and Judaism. Unlike other religions, Zoroastrianism never became a missionary religion and did not spread beyond its region. Similar to Buddhism, Zoroastrianism died where it originated. Their second religion, Judaism, was born into the hands of the less significant people, the Hebrews. They recorded their traditions which showed early migration under the leader of Abraham. The Jewish God was a powerful and jealous God who wanted all loyalty of the people. The Jewish religion showed the world of nature as real and positively valued unlike some other religions.
The next cultural tradition was that of the Greeks. The Greeks to me were very interesting and my favorite of all cultures. The Greek thinkers had no lasting religious tradition but developed a very special way of thinking and had a large role of law in their political life. Greek rationalism emerged in three centuries between 600 and 300 B.C. The Greek thinkers put their focus on argument, logic and questioning and that is how Athenian philosopher, Socrates, taught his students. Socrates and Greek tradition questioned the importance of wealth and urged wisdom instead. Unlike Zoroastrianism and Judaism, Greek rationalism, art, literature, and theater had a long lasting impact long after Athens glory days.
The last section discussed in the chapter was Christianity with some Buddhist comparisons. The lives of founders, Jesus and Gautama, were very different. Jesus was born into a rural and small town family whereas Gautama was born into luxury and royalty. Despite many family differences both became spiritual seekers and were wisdom teachers challenging everyday values. Then came the comparisons of religion. Both leaders has no intentions of creating a religion, both just wanted to revitalize the traditions in which they had come from. Also, by both teachers doing that, both were transformed into gods. Besides differences between leaders and religions, there religion of christianity posed its own problems. Christianity was everything but unified and a single focus on christianity was hard to develop. Another factor to the difficulties of christian tradition was in the doctrinal differences. Doctrinal differences created controversy over the nature of Jesus and his relationship to God and the concept of the holy trinity.
The chapter closes by bringing recognition to the fact that religion has always been a sensitive subject. Religion poses questions that create hardships with historians and make the thought of divine experience hard to believe.
The next civilization to be addressed in this chapter was India. Indian civilization was far different from Chinese and embraces the divine and all thing spiritual. Something interesting talked about in this part of the chapter was the Indian sacred texts known as Vedas. The vedas were collections of poems, hymns, and prayers and were transmitted orally for the longest time. The religion of the Indian civilization was Buddhism and unlike Hinduism, it had a founder, Siddhartha. In Buddhism, experiencing life and imperfection was the central and universal feature of the human life. A lot of Buddhism teachings showed Hindu traditions. An idea developed by the Buddhists was the idea of Bodhisattvas. The idea reflected spiritually developed people who held themselves from nirvana to help those who were still suffering. Sadly, Buddhism died out in the land of its birth and declined because of the mounting wealth of monasteries.
Just like the evolution of Chinese and Indian traditions, the Middle East started to make their rise. The middle east followed a very distinctive monotheistic religion, Zoroastrianism and Judaism. Unlike other religions, Zoroastrianism never became a missionary religion and did not spread beyond its region. Similar to Buddhism, Zoroastrianism died where it originated. Their second religion, Judaism, was born into the hands of the less significant people, the Hebrews. They recorded their traditions which showed early migration under the leader of Abraham. The Jewish God was a powerful and jealous God who wanted all loyalty of the people. The Jewish religion showed the world of nature as real and positively valued unlike some other religions.
The next cultural tradition was that of the Greeks. The Greeks to me were very interesting and my favorite of all cultures. The Greek thinkers had no lasting religious tradition but developed a very special way of thinking and had a large role of law in their political life. Greek rationalism emerged in three centuries between 600 and 300 B.C. The Greek thinkers put their focus on argument, logic and questioning and that is how Athenian philosopher, Socrates, taught his students. Socrates and Greek tradition questioned the importance of wealth and urged wisdom instead. Unlike Zoroastrianism and Judaism, Greek rationalism, art, literature, and theater had a long lasting impact long after Athens glory days.
The last section discussed in the chapter was Christianity with some Buddhist comparisons. The lives of founders, Jesus and Gautama, were very different. Jesus was born into a rural and small town family whereas Gautama was born into luxury and royalty. Despite many family differences both became spiritual seekers and were wisdom teachers challenging everyday values. Then came the comparisons of religion. Both leaders has no intentions of creating a religion, both just wanted to revitalize the traditions in which they had come from. Also, by both teachers doing that, both were transformed into gods. Besides differences between leaders and religions, there religion of christianity posed its own problems. Christianity was everything but unified and a single focus on christianity was hard to develop. Another factor to the difficulties of christian tradition was in the doctrinal differences. Doctrinal differences created controversy over the nature of Jesus and his relationship to God and the concept of the holy trinity.
The chapter closes by bringing recognition to the fact that religion has always been a sensitive subject. Religion poses questions that create hardships with historians and make the thought of divine experience hard to believe.
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