What do you know about God and afterlife?

[Angrboda]

Maya or Māyā in Indian religions, has multiple meanings, usually quoted as "illusion", centered on the fact that we do not experience the environment itself but rather a projection of it, created by us ... The word origin of māyā is derived from the Sanskrit roots ma ("not") and ya, generally translated as an indicative article meaning "that".

The mystic teachings in Vedanta are centered on a fundamental truth of the universe that cannot be reduced to a concept or word for the ordinary mind to manipulate due to the impossibility to create a complete, perfect and accurate semantic web. Rather, the human experience and mind are themselves a tiny fragment of this truth. In this tradition, no mind-object can be identified as absolute truth, such that one may say, "That's it." So, to keep the mind from attaching to incomplete fragments of reality, a speaker could use this term to indicate that truth is "Not that."

In Hinduism, māyā is to be seen through, like an epiphany, in order to achieve moksha (liberation of the soul from the cycle of samsara). Ahamkāra (ego-consciousness) and karma are seen as part of the binding forces of māyā. Māyā may be understood as the phenomenal Universe of perceived duality, a lesser reality-lens superimposed on the unity of Brahman. It is said to be created by the divine by the application of the Lilā (creative energy/material cycle, manifested as a veil—the basis of dualism). The sanskaras of perceived duality perpetuate samsara.

Shi-fei fills the space in Chinese philosophy occupied by the Western concept of 'judgment'. The differences illustrate some deep contrasts between the two traditions. The grammatical roles shi and fei have evolved drastically in modern Chinese. A typical modern dictionary entry for shi might be "Yes, Right, The verb 'to be." (We use 'to be' in far more grammatical contexts than modern Mandarin speakers use shi.) Fei would be "Wrong, bad, non- or without" in the dictionary. In modern Chinese it functions more as "non" than as "is not." The modern compound shi-fei (gossip) is far removed from its classical meaning.

Classical grammar never used shi (or any other verb) as a link between subject and predicate. Subjects were optional and a sentence might consist merely of a noun predicate followed by ye (an assertion marker) or a verbal predicate. Minimal strings would be "Horse ye" and "Runs." Fei negated only the noun predicates. Bu would normally negate verbal predicates (including adjectives). In classical use, shi was a simply a demonstrative pronoun or modifier. It was very much like 'this' except that, in verbal sentences, its could only occur bevore the main verb. It could act as the subject, the exposed topic or the object of an "instrumental" pre-verbal preposition (usually yi "with")...

...[S]trictly speaking, shi did not mean "right." Pragmatically, of course, they could say "(it is) this" in all situations in which we would say "this one is right."

One interpretive controversy swirls around shi because Chinese translators disagree about the best way to translate the Indo-European concept of 'being'. Some favored the you-wu (existence-nonexistence) pair and some the shi-fei pair. The envisioned translation project (translating Aristotle) makes this dispute too specialized for our interest. Angus Graham, however, revisited the argument from the opposite perspective asking "what does the option of two translations tell us about the differences in Chinese conceptual structure?" He argued that they actually divided Aristotle's concept of being in two. Aristotle famously distinguished between what we now call the "existential" and "predicative" uses of "to be." (Note, for example, the difference between saying "God is" and "God is good.") Roughly, Graham suggested, shi-fei corresponds to the predicative concept and you-wu to the existential. (See You-Wu for a further discussion of Graham's argument.)

Graham noted, however, that shi was never a copula in classical Chinese, but an indexical pronoun ("this") and that shi-fei did not fit together grammatically the way you-wu did. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that the key philosophical dispute in Ancient China is about "shi" and "fei." However, it was more an ethical dispute than a metaphysical one. Given its centrality to Classical thought, this analysis suggests Chinese thinkers structured philosophical issues in a radically different way. Translators typically translate shi-fei disputes as familiar sounding disputes about what judgments are right or wrong. However, there are important differences. We can explain them best by pausing to analyze how a dispute about dao (which way to follow) involves disputes about shi-fei.

The most concrete sense of dao is "path." We follow a path to get somewhere. Sometimes two paths lead to the same place, sometimes to different places. Disputes about which path to follow easily blur this distinction. We may think of ethics as a dispute about which path to follow. When we disagree about the end, we would say we had different moral theories. A dispute about which dao to follow is like a choice at a crossroads. I say shi (this) and you say fei (not)....

...This duality of shi-fei in classical Chinese explains why thinkers intimately link ethical issues to the question of distinction making. Essentially getting shi-fei right is making distinctions in the right place, carving the world at its normative joints. Technically, fei is the key to making distinctions and, in Daoism, it becomes a focus of its theory of language. We count as knowing a word in the language when we know that something does not count as "the thing in question" (fei). To know the word is more than simply knowing what counts as 'it' (shi).

Translators have no easy way to capture this analysis in English and mostly bury it behind idiomatic English. Sometimes they render shi as "this" (noun) sometimes as "right" (adjective) or "approve" (verb). Some translators, following Graham, translate fei as "not this" in more analytical contexts, but most stick with "wrong" (adjective) or "disapprove" (verb)....

....The other major Classical figure who discussed shi-fei was Zhuangzi. His analysis exploited the grammatical and the interpretive complexity we have developed. (The interpretation of Zhuangzi motivated much of Graham's analysis.) In the first step, Zhuangzi contrasts shi with it's indexical opposite bi (other) to emphasize their indexical character. Then he concludes that all shi-fei assignments (all judgment) reflect the position of the utterer rather than the nature of reality.

Judgments, in this tradition, were not propositions but indexical assignment of objects to social categories. The categories determine their role in action-guiding discourse. So Zhuangzi's position suggested semantic pluralism. There are many ways to assign terms from guiding discourse to objects in the world. Which assignment we use depends on our perspectives. A perspecive is the position we arrive at following a history of prior commitments and training.

A commitment, as the Later Mohists said, was a prior decision to use a term of some object. The process of infant and childhood language learning, inculcation of guiding attitudes, categories and so forth shape our perspectives. Each of us can elaborate our pattern of assigning terms from a guiding discourse guide application to new cases. In doing so, we still rely on prior decisions and guidance. Our justifications of shi-fei judgments rely on other shi-fei judgments and those on some our parents made and those on . . . .

Zhuangzi called the views that "accumulate" as we develop, "cheng" (complete). He used the term with such ironic overtones that translators frequently render the word in Zhuangzi's writings as "prejudice" or "bias." Past traditions, experiences, conclusions are constantly changing our "achieved angle of view" yet it always seems to us "complete." Those who disagree seem to have missed something.

Zhuangzi's paradigm example is the dispute of the Confucians and Mohists. Each has a different discourse dao. Accordingly, for key terms of moral discourse, they disagree on "what counts as "this" and "not-this" (shi-ing themselves and fei-ing their opponents). They disagreed about the extension or scope of terms like yi (moral), de (virtue) and ren (humane).

Zhuangzi also argued against Mencius' allegedly perspective-free conception of intuitive shi-fei judgment. Any assignment of shi-fei, Zhuangzi argued, presupposes some discourse content and acquired background perspective. We cannot get a shi-fei out of the heart-mind unless it has been instilled there by cheng. Mencius had to reach outside the intuitions of the heart-mind to justify relying on the heart-mind. He relied on something other than the heart-mind to conclude that some heart-minds make sages and others make fools.

We may imagine undoing our learning to arrive at a state prior to all shi-fei. From there, any pattern of assignment would be possible. However, no pattern would be shi. The cosmos has no "point of view." Thus, the appeal to nature or metaphysics cannot solve our disputes about what dao to follow. From this "axis" of dao," we would have nothing to say.

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Śūnyatā is frequently translated into English as emptiness or thusness ... The theme of emptiness (śūnyatā) emerged from the Buddhist doctrines of the nonexistence of the self (Pāli: anatta, Sanskrit: anātman) and dependent origination ... The exact definition and extent of emptiness varies from one Buddhist tradition to another.

Mādhyamaka
Mādhyamaka is a Mahāyāna Buddhist school of philosophy. In Madhyamaka, to say that an object is "empty" is synonymous with saying that it is dependently originated.

Madhyamaka states that impermanent collections of causes and conditions are designated by mere conceptual labels. This also applies to the principle of causality itself, since everything is dependently originated. If unaware of this, things may seem to arise as existents, remain for a time and then subsequently perish. In actuality, dependently originated phenomena do not arise as existents in the first place. Thus both existence and nihilism are ruled out.

Nagarjuna
Madhyamika is retroactively seen as being founded by the monk Nāgārjuna. Nāgārjuna's goal was to refute the essentialism of Abhidharma. His best-known work is the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, in which he used the reductio ad absurdum to show the non-substantiality of the perceived world.

Nāgārjuna equates emptiness with dependent origination:

On the basis of the Buddha's view that all experienced phenomena (dharma) are "dependently arisen" (pratitya-samutpanna), Nagarjuna insisted that such phenomena are empty (sunya). This did not mean that they are not experienced and, therefore, non-existent; only that they are devoid of a permanent and eternal substance (svabhava). Since they are experienced elements of existence, they are not mere names (prjnapti).

In his analysis, any enduring essential nature would prevent the process of dependent origination, or any kind of origination at all. For things would simply always have been, and will always continue to be, without any change.

In doing so, he restores the Middle way of the Buddha, which had become influenced by absolute tendencies:

Utilizing the Buddha's theory of "dependent arising" (pratitya-samutpanna) Nagarjuna demonstrated the futility of these metaphysical speculations. His method of dealing with such metaphysics is referred to as a "middle way" (madhyama pratipad). It is the middle way that avoided the substantialism of the Sarvastivadins as well as the nominalism of the Sautrantikas.

sleepwalking through the all-nite drugstore
baptized in fluorescent light
i found religion in the greeting card aisle
now i know hallmark was right
and every pop song on the radio
is suddenly speaking to me
yeah, art may imitate life
but life imitates t.v.

— Ani Difranco, Superhero