REL 510 - Daoist Dao versus Buddhist Śūnyatā

The Daoist Dao is an argument about nondualism, about the ineffable blackness beyond our conventional A/not-A distinctions and definitions. Buddhist Śūnyatā or “emptiness” is an argument about impermanence, about all things ultimately being empty of independence in space and constancy in time. Are the Dao and Śūnyatā two separate ideas or one? In Chinese history, these ideas definitely talked to one another, Buddhism upon its arrival first using Daoist understandings to express itself; in Chinese religion, Laozi and the Buddha were (and still are) literally worshipped side by side. Yet their first axioms about the nature of reality are differently nuanced. They’re like two trees that have naturally grafted into one another in places (“inosculation”), becoming a single organism and yet maintaining separate roots at the same time. This course will examine the two ideas individually using their respective masterpieces in Chinese philosophy - the Dao via Laozi and Zhuangzi and Śūnyatā via The Platform and Vimalakīrti sutras - but our goal is to foster a dialogue between them, using each to crystallize the other.

Unit(s): 0.5
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Notes: Graduate course. Offered spring 2025.