CHINESE CHINESE
 |
 |
| Neoconfucianism by Geoff Rooke Copyright © 2009 All copyrights are reserved for the author. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic mechanical, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher or writer is an infringement of the copyright law. |
Collapse of the Han Confucian Synthesis
The problem was in time the Han government became in
the Confucian sense corrupt or, to put it another way, the
balance between good and bad moral behaviour became
disproportionate, which automatically damaged the
balance of the other qualities and led to a worsening of
social and economic conditions. Another difficulty was that
because the Five Classics needed commentaries to
explain the continually existing Confucian present, these
became increasingly complex and more difficult to put into
practice as circumstances changed. As the centralised
Han Empire collapsed the Confucian orthodoxy appeared
not to work anymore. Despite this the strength of
Confucianism was such that even during the T’ang
Dynasty (618-906) scholars continued to study the
Classics and loose themselves in evermore complex
commentaries while serving the government and by
extension the Chinese world. In doing so on a cultural
level they concentrated on calligraphy, history, painting,
prose and poetry.
There were however alternatives to Confucianism, not
only in the form of Taoism but also, from the first century,
Buddhism. It was Buddhism that began to capture the
attention of the educated elite through providing more
sophisticated answers to contemporary problems. Of the
likes of Karma, of how current conditions are the fruits of
earlier actions and which provided hope for change as
present actions and deeds would help future
circumstances; of the emptiness and lack of permanence
in things and the path of delivering from the suffering and
impermanence of this world. Chinese became disciples of
Buddhist missionaries from India and Central Asia.
Despite this Confucianism had certain advantages, it
was after all a Chinese belief system built upon the
activities of a series of sage, cultural hero figures that
created the Chinese, humanised, cosmic world and
which took rituals, family relationships, moral behaviour
and government into account. Given the difficulties of
using the Five Classics in this way, there were a
number of Confucian factions that competed for the best
explanation of the Chinese, moral, cosmic world. It was
in this context that Neo-Confucianism arose in the 11th
century. In doing so Confucianists reacted against the
textual studies of the Han Dynasty, the literary and
artistic pursuits of the T’ang and Buddhism.
Furthermore, there was an urgent need for social and
political reconstruction following the establishment of
the Sung Dynasty (960-1279). A new movement in
Confucianism arose that while still believing in personal
cultivation and other Confucian values, a ritual based
social order, in the unity of Chinese man and universe
(天 人 合 一), a humanised/sinified cosmic nature of
things (天 性) and a continually-existing, seasonal,
harmonious balance of qualities, found a new way of
thinking to take changing social and economic
relationships into account and compete with Buddhism.
To do this they had philosophically to depart from the
approach taken by Han and T’ang Confucianists.
Neo-Confucianism
The Confucian renaissance that developed into the
orthodoxy from the 14th century came about from
Sung Learning (宋 學) in which Sung Confucians used
the literary, institutional and classical studies of earlier
dynasties. One branch of this trend was the True Way
Learning (道 學) who were Sung Confucians committed
to a distinct way of life including their own institutional
centres, group rituals and an emphasis on ethical and
spiritual development, all of which gave the group
greater cohesion and attracted more members.
According to the work completed in 1239 the ‘Record
of the Destiny of the Tao’, it was the brothers Ch’eng
Hao (1032-86) and Ch’eng I (1033-1107) who began
illuminating 道 學 in the 1060s but the movement itself
dates from the mid-1080s. In the latter half of the 12th
century a new generation of True Way learning
members took advantage of an improved political
climate of which Chang Shih (1133-80) and Lü Tsu-
ch’ien (1137-81) were the most important. All of these
scholars had an impact on Chu Hsi (1130-1200) who
emerged as the symbol of the fellowship during the
13th century and it is his views that became the state
orthodoxy during the 14th. Scholars described Chu Hsi
as “gathering into a great completion”. There were at
least four tendencies within Confucianism during the
latter part of the 11th century of which Chu chose the
philosophy of Principle of the Ch’eng brothers. An
illustration of this is that Neo-Confucianism became
known as the Ch’eng-Chu school and the School of
Principle (理 學).
Of course the True Way Learning branch of
Confucianism and Chu Hsi in particular, like all good
Confucianists, still believed in the unity of Chinese man
and universe (天 人 合 一) and a humanised/sinified
cosmic nature of things (天 性). The problem they faced
was how to take changing social and economic
circumstances into account without resorting to
increasingly lengthy and unwieldy commentaries. What
was needed was a new physical interpretation of the
Chinese universe and a new set of books both to explain
it and to use to govern China with. Chu also needed to
explicitly criticise not only Taoism and Buddhism but also
the Five Classics, which he did claiming their authorship
was not directly linked to Confucius.
Of course if you are going to de-emphasise the context
of rituals and other aspects of the social structure, given
the sense of 天 人 合 一 and 天 性, what you need to do
is give extra emphasis to the humanised nature of things,
the sage cultural heroes and the overall consequence of
a state of cosmic harmony, namely the underlying
seasonal, cyclical balance of qualities. What Chu did
was to define the creative process in terms of the virtue
of humanity (仁), for while Confucius and his disciples
gave a vaguer definition of 仁 linked to the qualities of
a moral gentleman (君子), Chu interpreted it on a
cosmic level. To quote Wing Tsit Chan: ‘In Chu’s words,
the phenomena of Heaven and Earth producing things
show the 仁 of Heaven and Earth. 仁 is unceasing
production and reproduction. 仁 is origination, which is
the starting point of creation. Because the mind of Heaven
and Earth is to produce things, man is 仁. Because of 仁,
all things form one body. He also defined 仁 as the
character of the mind and the principle of love. He
understood this principle to be the mind of Heaven
and Earth to produce things’.
Having put the virtue of Chinese humanity on a more
fundamentally cosmic, basic level, in order to give
cultural authority to his views, Chu used the term “The
tradition of the Way” (道 統) to emphasise certain key,
cultural hero, sage figures whose actions and thoughts
defined the continually existing Chinese world.
Beginning not with emperors Yao and Shun, as was
previously the case, but earlier figures: Fu Hsi, Shen-
nung and the Yellow Emperor and down from Mencius
to Chou Tun-i and the Ch’eng brothers, all of whom
figured in the development of Chu’s ideas. Chu Hsi
considered himself the direct heir of this tradition as
Mencius had done before and, by extension, a cultural
hero figure. He was later seen as the greatest Neo-
Confucianist who brought Confucianism to the highest
development. An illustration of this is in The History of
the Sung, quoting Chu’s famous pupil, Huang Kan
(1152-1221): ‘The Confucian Way (tao or 道) handed
down from Confucius and Mencius to Chou Tun-i
(1017-1073), Ch’eng Hao (1032-85), Ch’eng I (1033-
1107) and Chang Tsai (1022-77) did not become
prominent until Chu Hsi.’ As for the earlier cultural
figures, the implication of going back to Fu Hsi is that
he is considered to be the founder of the eight trigrams,
a series of combinations of broken and unbroken lines
that are symbols for changing traditional states, of
tendencies in movement, of natural processes and of
family relations consisting of a father, a mother, three
sons and three daughters and with the father and
mother imaging Heaven and Earth respectively, of
family kinship relations and a Chinese world in a state
of continual transformation. The embodiment of 天 人
合 一 and 天 性.
Of course having redefined the virtue of humanity in
terms of the humanised, cosmic nature of things and
the interrelationship between Chinese man and the
Chinese universe, what was needed was a physical
concept, namely principle (理) which was developed
by the Ch’eng brothers, as an underlying basis for
Chu’s Confucian, cosmic order. Principle (理) being
something that has always existed, even before the
coming into being of the Chinese Heaven and Earth;
cannot be seen or distinguished between that which is
natural and originally so and is the reason why things
are like they are. Principle is more fundamental than
the animating power of material force (氣) because it
relates to the Way (道), which is above physical form
and the root from which all things are produced. It is
also called the moral or right principle (義 理) and
Heaven’s principle (天 理). The material force (氣)
animates the Chinese world and so explains the
physical existence of things. The point being, without
material force principle would have nothing to attach to.
He significantly also identified principle with the Great
Ultimate, which is: “but the principle of heaven and
earth and the ten thousand things”. To quote Wing Tsit
Chan: ‘For since principle is universal and everything
has principle, the Great Ultimate is at once the one and
the many. It involves all things as a whole and all
individual things involve the Great Ultimate. The
universe is a macrocosm while everything is a
microcosm for fundamentally there is one Great
Ultimate.’ Or as Chu stated: “Each of the myriad of
things is endowed with it and possesses the Great
Ultimate in its entirety.” He used the example of there
being “one moon in the sky but when its light is
scattered upon lakes and rivers it can be seen
everywhere,” It is the source of the unceasing,
seasonal, natural creativity, the totality of all things but
material force (氣) is still necessary to give things a
physical existence.
This emphasis on cultural heroes, the humanised,
moral, cosmic nature of things and the physical
existence and nature of the Chinese world needed to
be explained in a new Confucian canon that could be
used to guide future generations. It was in 1190 that
Chu Hsi published the Four Books (四書) as the Four
Masters (四子), which were full of commentaries
expressing Chu’s own philosophy. These classics, the
Great Learning, the Analects, the work of Mencius and
the Doctrine of the Mean, were from 1313-1911, or at
least until 1905, the basic texts in Civil Service
examinations and school education. Chu had been
working on these texts writing commentaries for 30
years and the effect was to narrow the scope of
sources for Neo-Confucian ideas, the final removal of
the Five Classics as the legitimising texts and a direct
return to Confucius and Mencius for basic philosophical
teachings. The Four Masters were a systematic
methodology and the basis for Chu’s ideas. He placed
them in a particular order: Great Learning, Analects,
Mencius and the Doctrine of the Mean because they
respectively offer: a pattern, the foundation, an
elaboration and subtly and profundity. What they also
did was follow his physical ideas of principle, material
force and the Great Ultimate, but in terms of moral
cultural hero figures, ritual and ceremonies and the
consequences of Chu’s physical, description of the
Chinese universe.
This pattern in the Great Learning is given legitimacy
by the moral behaviour of the sage figures of old, to
quote from Chapter 4 from the translation by James
Legge: ‘Ancients wished to show illustrious virtue
through the kingdom.’ They did this by keeping: ‘An
ordered harmonious state’, which was achieved
through the regulation of the family or kinship structure
by cultivation in themselves correct behaviour through
being sincere and the way of being sincere was to
investigate and understand things. Chu Hsi explains in
a commentary on Chapter 5 what is achieved by
studying principles and investigation of things. ‘After
exerting himself in this way for a long time, he will
suddenly find himself possessed of a wider and far-
reaching penetration. Then the qualities of all things,
whether external or internal, the subtle or the coarse,
will be apprehended, and the mind, in its entire
substance and its relations to things will be perfectly
intelligent. This is called the investigation of things. This
is called the perfection of knowledge.’ Given that what
is being described is a continually-existing, cosmic
social order, the knowledge being achieved means that
the Four Books are being used correctly, namely in a
given situation the result is a harmonious society, which
is interpreted in terms of its underlying qualities being in
a state of continual, harmonious balance according to
the seasons and social relations. A further illustration of
this is in Chu’s commentary on the Analects in his
interpretation of the character 學, which Chu considers
means “to imitate” and “the understanding of all
excellence and the bringing back of original goodness”.
In terms of the profundity of the Doctrine of the Mean,
in Chapter 1, paragraph five Legge translates: ‘Let the
states of equilibrium and harmony exist in perfection
and a happy order will prevail throughout heaven and
earth, and all things will flourish.’ This state is
described in Chapter 17 paragraph three: ‘Thus it is
that Heaven, in the production of things, is sure to be
bountiful to them, according to their qualities. Hence the
tree that is flourishing, it nourishes, while that which is
ready to fall, it overthrows.’V So linking the
consequences of Chu’s physical description of the
Chinese universe, namely the Great Ultimate, with the
consequences as described in the Four Books, the
texts for Civil Service examinations and the guide used
to govern China. A harmonious, ritual-based Chinese,
cosmic order, of 天 人 合 一 and 天 性, with a ritual
priest, Son of Heaven emperor (天 子) at the centre of
the Chinese world and whose social structure would
stay harmonious as long as society existed in a state of
balance as defined by a continually existing balance of
cosmic qualities. A unity between Chinese as individuals
and the Chinese world and universe around them, of the
microcosm and the macrocosm. This was the Confucian
orthodoxy that was accepted in not only China but also
Japan, Korea and Vietnam. Its longevity was such that it
lasted in China and Korea until the beginning of the 20th
century and in Japan and Vietnam to towards the end of
the 19th and was only destroyed by overt force by
and/or fear of the Western colonial powers.
Despite the orthodoxy having been established, this
was not the end of the matter. Han Dynasty learning
was at times still popular, Buddhism, and especially
Ch’an Buddhism, was still practiced and another strand
of Confucianism, the Confucian School of Mind,
became fashionable during the Ming Dynasty (1368-
1644). Ch’an Buddhists believed that all things are
constructed by the mind and the Confucian School of
Mind, most significantly developed by Wang Yang-ming
(1472-1529), considered that the solution of things and
the quest for sage-hood lay in the self-awareness of the
inner mind and therefore subordinated principle to mind
control. It was a theory that united the Confucian and
Buddhist schools of mind by emphasising the individual,
the micro, over the wider world and universe, the
macrocosm, and by extension impacting on the nature
of the sense of unity between Chinese man and his
universe. However, because the Four Books were used
for civil service examinations they continued to be used
to explain the Chinese, cosmic world, which ensured the
Ch’eng-Chu School of Principle remained the Neo-
Confucian orthodoxy and the overwhelmingly significant
influence in the Confucian world.
The problem was in time the Han government became in
the Confucian sense corrupt or, to put it another way, the
balance between good and bad moral behaviour became
disproportionate, which automatically damaged the
balance of the other qualities and led to a worsening of
social and economic conditions. Another difficulty was that
because the Five Classics needed commentaries to
explain the continually existing Confucian present, these
became increasingly complex and more difficult to put into
practice as circumstances changed. As the centralised
Han Empire collapsed the Confucian orthodoxy appeared
not to work anymore. Despite this the strength of
Confucianism was such that even during the T’ang
Dynasty (618-906) scholars continued to study the
Classics and loose themselves in evermore complex
commentaries while serving the government and by
extension the Chinese world. In doing so on a cultural
level they concentrated on calligraphy, history, painting,
prose and poetry.
There were however alternatives to Confucianism, not
only in the form of Taoism but also, from the first century,
Buddhism. It was Buddhism that began to capture the
attention of the educated elite through providing more
sophisticated answers to contemporary problems. Of the
likes of Karma, of how current conditions are the fruits of
earlier actions and which provided hope for change as
present actions and deeds would help future
circumstances; of the emptiness and lack of permanence
in things and the path of delivering from the suffering and
impermanence of this world. Chinese became disciples of
Buddhist missionaries from India and Central Asia.
Despite this Confucianism had certain advantages, it
was after all a Chinese belief system built upon the
activities of a series of sage, cultural hero figures that
created the Chinese, humanised, cosmic world and
which took rituals, family relationships, moral behaviour
and government into account. Given the difficulties of
using the Five Classics in this way, there were a
number of Confucian factions that competed for the best
explanation of the Chinese, moral, cosmic world. It was
in this context that Neo-Confucianism arose in the 11th
century. In doing so Confucianists reacted against the
textual studies of the Han Dynasty, the literary and
artistic pursuits of the T’ang and Buddhism.
Furthermore, there was an urgent need for social and
political reconstruction following the establishment of
the Sung Dynasty (960-1279). A new movement in
Confucianism arose that while still believing in personal
cultivation and other Confucian values, a ritual based
social order, in the unity of Chinese man and universe
(天 人 合 一), a humanised/sinified cosmic nature of
things (天 性) and a continually-existing, seasonal,
harmonious balance of qualities, found a new way of
thinking to take changing social and economic
relationships into account and compete with Buddhism.
To do this they had philosophically to depart from the
approach taken by Han and T’ang Confucianists.
Neo-Confucianism
The Confucian renaissance that developed into the
orthodoxy from the 14th century came about from
Sung Learning (宋 學) in which Sung Confucians used
the literary, institutional and classical studies of earlier
dynasties. One branch of this trend was the True Way
Learning (道 學) who were Sung Confucians committed
to a distinct way of life including their own institutional
centres, group rituals and an emphasis on ethical and
spiritual development, all of which gave the group
greater cohesion and attracted more members.
According to the work completed in 1239 the ‘Record
of the Destiny of the Tao’, it was the brothers Ch’eng
Hao (1032-86) and Ch’eng I (1033-1107) who began
illuminating 道 學 in the 1060s but the movement itself
dates from the mid-1080s. In the latter half of the 12th
century a new generation of True Way learning
members took advantage of an improved political
climate of which Chang Shih (1133-80) and Lü Tsu-
ch’ien (1137-81) were the most important. All of these
scholars had an impact on Chu Hsi (1130-1200) who
emerged as the symbol of the fellowship during the
13th century and it is his views that became the state
orthodoxy during the 14th. Scholars described Chu Hsi
as “gathering into a great completion”. There were at
least four tendencies within Confucianism during the
latter part of the 11th century of which Chu chose the
philosophy of Principle of the Ch’eng brothers. An
illustration of this is that Neo-Confucianism became
known as the Ch’eng-Chu school and the School of
Principle (理 學).
Of course the True Way Learning branch of
Confucianism and Chu Hsi in particular, like all good
Confucianists, still believed in the unity of Chinese man
and universe (天 人 合 一) and a humanised/sinified
cosmic nature of things (天 性). The problem they faced
was how to take changing social and economic
circumstances into account without resorting to
increasingly lengthy and unwieldy commentaries. What
was needed was a new physical interpretation of the
Chinese universe and a new set of books both to explain
it and to use to govern China with. Chu also needed to
explicitly criticise not only Taoism and Buddhism but also
the Five Classics, which he did claiming their authorship
was not directly linked to Confucius.
Of course if you are going to de-emphasise the context
of rituals and other aspects of the social structure, given
the sense of 天 人 合 一 and 天 性, what you need to do
is give extra emphasis to the humanised nature of things,
the sage cultural heroes and the overall consequence of
a state of cosmic harmony, namely the underlying
seasonal, cyclical balance of qualities. What Chu did
was to define the creative process in terms of the virtue
of humanity (仁), for while Confucius and his disciples
gave a vaguer definition of 仁 linked to the qualities of
a moral gentleman (君子), Chu interpreted it on a
cosmic level. To quote Wing Tsit Chan: ‘In Chu’s words,
the phenomena of Heaven and Earth producing things
show the 仁 of Heaven and Earth. 仁 is unceasing
production and reproduction. 仁 is origination, which is
the starting point of creation. Because the mind of Heaven
and Earth is to produce things, man is 仁. Because of 仁,
all things form one body. He also defined 仁 as the
character of the mind and the principle of love. He
understood this principle to be the mind of Heaven
and Earth to produce things’.
Having put the virtue of Chinese humanity on a more
fundamentally cosmic, basic level, in order to give
cultural authority to his views, Chu used the term “The
tradition of the Way” (道 統) to emphasise certain key,
cultural hero, sage figures whose actions and thoughts
defined the continually existing Chinese world.
Beginning not with emperors Yao and Shun, as was
previously the case, but earlier figures: Fu Hsi, Shen-
nung and the Yellow Emperor and down from Mencius
to Chou Tun-i and the Ch’eng brothers, all of whom
figured in the development of Chu’s ideas. Chu Hsi
considered himself the direct heir of this tradition as
Mencius had done before and, by extension, a cultural
hero figure. He was later seen as the greatest Neo-
Confucianist who brought Confucianism to the highest
development. An illustration of this is in The History of
the Sung, quoting Chu’s famous pupil, Huang Kan
(1152-1221): ‘The Confucian Way (tao or 道) handed
down from Confucius and Mencius to Chou Tun-i
(1017-1073), Ch’eng Hao (1032-85), Ch’eng I (1033-
1107) and Chang Tsai (1022-77) did not become
prominent until Chu Hsi.’ As for the earlier cultural
figures, the implication of going back to Fu Hsi is that
he is considered to be the founder of the eight trigrams,
a series of combinations of broken and unbroken lines
that are symbols for changing traditional states, of
tendencies in movement, of natural processes and of
family relations consisting of a father, a mother, three
sons and three daughters and with the father and
mother imaging Heaven and Earth respectively, of
family kinship relations and a Chinese world in a state
of continual transformation. The embodiment of 天 人
合 一 and 天 性.
Of course having redefined the virtue of humanity in
terms of the humanised, cosmic nature of things and
the interrelationship between Chinese man and the
Chinese universe, what was needed was a physical
concept, namely principle (理) which was developed
by the Ch’eng brothers, as an underlying basis for
Chu’s Confucian, cosmic order. Principle (理) being
something that has always existed, even before the
coming into being of the Chinese Heaven and Earth;
cannot be seen or distinguished between that which is
natural and originally so and is the reason why things
are like they are. Principle is more fundamental than
the animating power of material force (氣) because it
relates to the Way (道), which is above physical form
and the root from which all things are produced. It is
also called the moral or right principle (義 理) and
Heaven’s principle (天 理). The material force (氣)
animates the Chinese world and so explains the
physical existence of things. The point being, without
material force principle would have nothing to attach to.
He significantly also identified principle with the Great
Ultimate, which is: “but the principle of heaven and
earth and the ten thousand things”. To quote Wing Tsit
Chan: ‘For since principle is universal and everything
has principle, the Great Ultimate is at once the one and
the many. It involves all things as a whole and all
individual things involve the Great Ultimate. The
universe is a macrocosm while everything is a
microcosm for fundamentally there is one Great
Ultimate.’ Or as Chu stated: “Each of the myriad of
things is endowed with it and possesses the Great
Ultimate in its entirety.” He used the example of there
being “one moon in the sky but when its light is
scattered upon lakes and rivers it can be seen
everywhere,” It is the source of the unceasing,
seasonal, natural creativity, the totality of all things but
material force (氣) is still necessary to give things a
physical existence.
This emphasis on cultural heroes, the humanised,
moral, cosmic nature of things and the physical
existence and nature of the Chinese world needed to
be explained in a new Confucian canon that could be
used to guide future generations. It was in 1190 that
Chu Hsi published the Four Books (四書) as the Four
Masters (四子), which were full of commentaries
expressing Chu’s own philosophy. These classics, the
Great Learning, the Analects, the work of Mencius and
the Doctrine of the Mean, were from 1313-1911, or at
least until 1905, the basic texts in Civil Service
examinations and school education. Chu had been
working on these texts writing commentaries for 30
years and the effect was to narrow the scope of
sources for Neo-Confucian ideas, the final removal of
the Five Classics as the legitimising texts and a direct
return to Confucius and Mencius for basic philosophical
teachings. The Four Masters were a systematic
methodology and the basis for Chu’s ideas. He placed
them in a particular order: Great Learning, Analects,
Mencius and the Doctrine of the Mean because they
respectively offer: a pattern, the foundation, an
elaboration and subtly and profundity. What they also
did was follow his physical ideas of principle, material
force and the Great Ultimate, but in terms of moral
cultural hero figures, ritual and ceremonies and the
consequences of Chu’s physical, description of the
Chinese universe.
This pattern in the Great Learning is given legitimacy
by the moral behaviour of the sage figures of old, to
quote from Chapter 4 from the translation by James
Legge: ‘Ancients wished to show illustrious virtue
through the kingdom.’ They did this by keeping: ‘An
ordered harmonious state’, which was achieved
through the regulation of the family or kinship structure
by cultivation in themselves correct behaviour through
being sincere and the way of being sincere was to
investigate and understand things. Chu Hsi explains in
a commentary on Chapter 5 what is achieved by
studying principles and investigation of things. ‘After
exerting himself in this way for a long time, he will
suddenly find himself possessed of a wider and far-
reaching penetration. Then the qualities of all things,
whether external or internal, the subtle or the coarse,
will be apprehended, and the mind, in its entire
substance and its relations to things will be perfectly
intelligent. This is called the investigation of things. This
is called the perfection of knowledge.’ Given that what
is being described is a continually-existing, cosmic
social order, the knowledge being achieved means that
the Four Books are being used correctly, namely in a
given situation the result is a harmonious society, which
is interpreted in terms of its underlying qualities being in
a state of continual, harmonious balance according to
the seasons and social relations. A further illustration of
this is in Chu’s commentary on the Analects in his
interpretation of the character 學, which Chu considers
means “to imitate” and “the understanding of all
excellence and the bringing back of original goodness”.
In terms of the profundity of the Doctrine of the Mean,
in Chapter 1, paragraph five Legge translates: ‘Let the
states of equilibrium and harmony exist in perfection
and a happy order will prevail throughout heaven and
earth, and all things will flourish.’ This state is
described in Chapter 17 paragraph three: ‘Thus it is
that Heaven, in the production of things, is sure to be
bountiful to them, according to their qualities. Hence the
tree that is flourishing, it nourishes, while that which is
ready to fall, it overthrows.’V So linking the
consequences of Chu’s physical description of the
Chinese universe, namely the Great Ultimate, with the
consequences as described in the Four Books, the
texts for Civil Service examinations and the guide used
to govern China. A harmonious, ritual-based Chinese,
cosmic order, of 天 人 合 一 and 天 性, with a ritual
priest, Son of Heaven emperor (天 子) at the centre of
the Chinese world and whose social structure would
stay harmonious as long as society existed in a state of
balance as defined by a continually existing balance of
cosmic qualities. A unity between Chinese as individuals
and the Chinese world and universe around them, of the
microcosm and the macrocosm. This was the Confucian
orthodoxy that was accepted in not only China but also
Japan, Korea and Vietnam. Its longevity was such that it
lasted in China and Korea until the beginning of the 20th
century and in Japan and Vietnam to towards the end of
the 19th and was only destroyed by overt force by
and/or fear of the Western colonial powers.
Despite the orthodoxy having been established, this
was not the end of the matter. Han Dynasty learning
was at times still popular, Buddhism, and especially
Ch’an Buddhism, was still practiced and another strand
of Confucianism, the Confucian School of Mind,
became fashionable during the Ming Dynasty (1368-
1644). Ch’an Buddhists believed that all things are
constructed by the mind and the Confucian School of
Mind, most significantly developed by Wang Yang-ming
(1472-1529), considered that the solution of things and
the quest for sage-hood lay in the self-awareness of the
inner mind and therefore subordinated principle to mind
control. It was a theory that united the Confucian and
Buddhist schools of mind by emphasising the individual,
the micro, over the wider world and universe, the
macrocosm, and by extension impacting on the nature
of the sense of unity between Chinese man and his
universe. However, because the Four Books were used
for civil service examinations they continued to be used
to explain the Chinese, cosmic world, which ensured the
Ch’eng-Chu School of Principle remained the Neo-
Confucian orthodoxy and the overwhelmingly significant
influence in the Confucian world.
A remarkable woman
A lustful woman
Chinese beauties
Chinese threatening
myths
Female emperor
Martial art story
Home cooking recipes
Chinese legends
"Thunderstorm"
Chinese music
Panda in motion
Fairylands in China
Chinese opera
Powerful sisters
Yang Yu-Huan
China
Link to
orientalwomentalk.net
A lustful woman
Chinese beauties
Chinese threatening
myths
Female emperor
Martial art story
Home cooking recipes
Chinese legends
"Thunderstorm"
Chinese music
Panda in motion
Fairylands in China
Chinese opera
Powerful sisters
Yang Yu-Huan
China
Link to
orientalwomentalk.net