The Sociology of Philosophies

second is ether, space, or the void.^15 A third kind of favorite element is prana, or breath, which frequently figures in creati ...

Through the main period of the Upanishadic sages, there is little or nothing on the karmic consequences of one’s actions chainin ...

Other famous contemporary philosophers made their reputations by deny- ing karma. Pakudha Kaccayana, who espoused a cosmology of ...

Inside the attention space of the competing sages, a high degree of overcrowding had been reached. The law of small numbers hol ...

cally simplifies intellectual space to well within the bounds of the law of small numbers. Buddhism’s content was shaped by the ...

karma and fate. The Buddha developed this conception into a system-ground- ing category of dependent origination, drawing out th ...

“Middle Path,” explicitly avoiding the extremes of asceticism as well as the indulgence of ordinary life. Meditation was turned ...

for secular morality, as well as a motivation for monastic life. Buddhism became successful by filling the moral vacuum in the n ...

permeated meditation with an ethicized philosophy. Mysticism emerges now in the sense of a philosophy of those who practice medi ...

heaval, that is not so much because mysticism is a compensation as because state and religious regimentation have lost their gri ...

traditions of magic, now enhanced by the scale of the mass movements of wanderers, whose concentration in great assemblies like ...

Upanishads continued to be written even later: for instance, Yoga-Upanishads were eventually appended to the Yogasutra, compiled ...

FIGURE 5.2. INDIA, 400 B.C.E.–400 C.E.: AGE OF ANONYMOUS TEXTS ...

revenue, with a key transition perhaps at the downfall of the Guptas and coming fully into place only around 1000–1200 (OHI, 198 ...

gions, Hinduism spread most successfully where there was a large-scale migra- tion and cultural influx into a previously unorgan ...

Partitioning the Intellectual Attention Space Upon these slowly shifting social bases arose the long-term networks which constit ...

FIGURE 5.3. LINEAGES OF BUDDHIST SECTS, 400 B.C.E.–900 C.E. 214 • (^) Intellectual Communities: Asian Paths ...

tional splits were much the more numerous, and that divergence among intel- lectual positions is about what one would expect fro ...

are the Sarvastivadins, among the most philosophically oriented sects. Their name itself is philosophical, meaning “everything-e ...

stances. Even unmanifested karma is regarded as a type of matter. This omni- realism probably developed from epistemological arg ...