CHAPTER 02
Eastern Thought & Religion
Explores how Indian, Chinese, and Korean traditions have understood life and death, reality and change, and vast cycles of time.
8 explorations- 08→
Why Does the Wheel of Samsara Turn?
Asks why life and death repeat, and why Indian traditions sought liberation from that cycle.
- 09→
Is the World We See Real?
Uses the Indian philosophical idea of maya to ask how the experienced world relates to ultimate reality.
- 10→
If There Is No Self, What Is Reborn?
Explores how Buddhist traditions explain rebirth and karmic continuity without an eternal self.
- 11→
Does the Mind Create the World?
Examines the relation between consciousness and the world we experience through Yogācāra thought.
- 12→
Why Is Returning the Movement of the Dao?
Explores Chinese views of generation, decline, change, and return through the phrase ‘returning is the movement of the Dao.’
- 13→
Was I Dreaming I Was a Butterfly?
Uses Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream to question the boundaries between dream and reality, self and transformation.
- 14→
Does the Cosmos Have Seasons?
Examines Shao Yong’s cosmic cycles and East Asian ways of understanding vast recurring periods of time.
- 15→
Why Did Gaebyeok Become Prophecy?
Traces how cyclical cosmology in Korea became a language of epochal change, gaebyeok, and prophecy.