Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition

Western philosophy is a vast intellectual tradition, the product of thousands of years of revolutionary thought built up by a rich collection of brilliant minds. But to understand the Western intellectual tradition is to get only half the story. The Eastern intellectual tradition has made just as important a contribution - and is also the product of thousands of years of cumulative thought by a distinct group of brilliant thinkers. Their ideas demonstrate wholly different ways of approaching and solving the same fundamental issues that concerned the West's greatest thinkers, such as the existence of God, the meaning of life and the nature of truth and reality. This epic and comprehensive 36-lecture examination of the East's most influential philosophers and thinkers - from a much-honored teacher and scholar - offers a thought-provoking look at the surprising connections and differences between East and West. By introducing you to the people-including The Buddha, Ashoka, Prince Shotoku, Confucius, and Gandhi - responsible for molding Asian philosophy and for giving birth to a wide variety of spiritual and ideological systems, it will strengthen your knowledge of cultures that play increasingly important roles in our globalized 21st-century world.

All Lectures:
1. Life's Great Questions - Asian Perspectives
2. The Vedas and Upanishads - The Beginning
3. Mahavira and Jainism - Extreme Nonviolence
4. The Buddha - The Middle Way
5. The Bhagavad Gita - The Way of Action
6. Confucius - In Praise of Sage-Kings
7. Laozi and Daoism - The Way of Nature
8. The Hundred Schools of Pre-imperial China
9. Mencius and Xunzi - Confucius's Successors
10. Sunzi and Han Feizi - Strategy and Legalism
11. Zarathustra and Mani - Dualistic Religion
12. Kautilya and Ashoka - Buddhism and Empire
13. Ishvarakrishna and Patanjali - Yoga
14. Nagarjuna and Vasubandhu - Buddhist Theories
15. Sima Qian and Ban Zhao - History and Women
16. Dong Zhongshu and Ge Hong - Eclecticism
17. Xuanzang and Chinese Buddhism
18. Prince Shotoku, Lady Murasaki, Sei Shonagon
19. Saicho to Nichiren - Japanese Buddhism
20. Shankara, Ramanuja, Madhva - Hindu Vedanta
21. Al-Biruni - Islam in India
22. Nanak and Sirhindi - Sikhism and Sufism
23. Han Yu to Zhu Xi - Neo-Confucianism
24. Wang Yangming - The Study of Heart-Mind
25. Dogen and Hakuin - Zen Buddhism
26. Zeami and Sen no Rikyu - Japanese Aesthetics
27. Wonhyo to King Sejong - Korean Philosophy
28. Padmasambhava to Tsongkhapa - Tibetan Ideas
29. Science and Technology in Premodern Asia
30. Muhammad Iqbal and Rabindranath Tagore
31. Mohandas Gandhi - Satyagraha, or Soul-Force
32. Fukuzawa Yukichi and Han Yongun
33. Kang Youwei and Hu Shi
34. Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong
35. Modern Legacies
36. East and West