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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nivenus" data-source="post: 6382933" data-attributes="member: 71756">Well, it's a little bit more complicated than that (and condensing all of Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Korean, etc. philosophies into one amorphous blob is probably ill-advised). But basically, both interpretations are kind of correct.Some Eastern traditions, like Taoism, don't really believe in good and evil per se. Yin and yang are not good vs. evil, but neither's really wholly good either. Additionally, one of the primary principles of Taoist philosophy is non-action or "effortless doing," which basically advocates acting naturally and spontaneously, without planning or any kind of effort to control consequences. According to Laozi, the founder of Taoism, all actions result in negative and positive consequences no matter what we do so it's best not to stress/struggle over it to much; just do what comes naturally, because you can't really shift the cosmic balance one way or the other anyway - you can only fundamentally affect yourself.On the other hand, Confucianism, which emerged about the same time as Taoism, has a radically different view of things. According to Kongfuzi (Confucius), there is a natural order and harmony to things, which people are best served by adhering to. The universe is hierarchical in nature; you respect and obey your parents, who respect and obey your rulers, who respect and obey your gods. The relationship is also reciprocal - in return for the obedience of their social inferiors, rulers (or parents) are expected to act justly and charitably, or else the legitimacy of their rule comes into question and can be overturned (the Mandate of Heaven is the best-known example of this). In this sense, good is equated with order and social harmony and is opposed by discord and selfishness.Buddhism meanwhile basically says evil is the world's default, not good. Life is suffering and all pleasure is basically the (temporary) absence of suffering, rather than an independent experience. The goal of life then is to reduce suffering (but not to eliminate it) by recognizing the impermanence of all things, detaching oneself from the material world, and denying the ego which is (in Buddhist philosophy) an illusory concept with no bearing on the fundamental metaphysics of reality. The core ethos of Buddhist is actually kind of annihilationist in nature - the ultimate goal is to have no ego and to basically fade from existence into the cosmos (Nietzschie actually accused Buddhism of nihilism).And then you have polytheistic religions like Hinduism and Shinto, which don't really have the same concept of good or evil that religions like Christianity or Islam do. Sure, Hindus believe in karma and Shintoists believe in ritual impurity, but neither religion has a central conflict of good vs. evil or even really order vs. chaos. A destructive god like Kali is certainly dangerous and someone you don't want to attract unnecessary attention from, but they're not really evil either - they just serve a particular purpose in the cosmic order that happens to be at times quite vicious (and indeed, Kali's one of Hinduism's most popular goddesses). Likewise, there's not really a distinction in Shinto between benevolent and malevolent kami - they're both spirits and/or gods and both require veneration in the proper circumstances.Complicating all of this is that a lot of people in Asia (East Asia in particular) adhere to more than one philosophy at a time. The focus may change at different points in a person's life (in China, Confucianism is stereotypically for the young, while Taoism is for the old; likewise Shinto is for the living and Buddhism for the dead in Japan), but the fact that all philosophies are considered somewhat valuable by a majority of people is something we don't really do as much in the West (although I expect that's changing).</blockquote>

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