Chinese religion and philosophy
Ancestor Cult:
Mandate of Heaven:
Confucianism:
Taoism:
Legalism:
Buddhism:
Shang Dynasty:
The Shang worshipped many gods, including gods of the sun, the moon,
wind, rain, and other natural forces and places. But they also had a
more important god, Shang-Ti, who ruled over the other gods – his name
means “Lord on High”. Shang-Ti also ruled over living people.
The Shang also believed that their ancestors went to heaven when they
died, and that they wanted to be worshipped when they were in heaven,
as sort of minor gods. If you didn’t take good care of your ancestors
at the right times, all sorts of bad luck would come to you and your
family.
The Shang sacrificed both animals and people to their gods. Under the
Shang, slaves and prisoners of war were often sacrificed, sometimes
hundreds of them at a time, when a king died. Smaller numbers of people
and animals were sacrificed when a palace or temple was going to be
built.
Chou Dynasty –
Western Chou -1122-771 BC
Chou religion was a lot like Shang religion, but instead of Shang-Ti,
the Chou worshipped a more abstract spiritual force called t’ien or
Heaven, which like Shang-Ti ruled over the other gods and also over
living people. Because they had usurped the throne, the Chou emperors
were very interested in the question of how you could legitimize your
rule. They believed that Heaven decided who the king should be; the
king ruled only so long as he had the “Mandate of Heaven” (t’ien ming)
, and you could tell when he had lost it because somebody else would
succeed in usurping the throne. Kings were to act as intermediaries
between Heaven and their people, providing everything the people
needed. Chinese character “ti” means king: three horizontal lines with
a vertical line connecting them.
was philosophers of this
period who first enunciated the doctrine of the "mandate of
heaven," the notion that the ruler (the "son of heaven") governed
by divine right but his dethronement would mean that he had lost
his mandate.
They did still worship Shang-Ti though; in the Chou Dynasty, only kings
could sacrifice to Shang-Ti – he was their special god.
Eastern ChouSpring and Autumn period -771-481 BC
Warring States period -481-221 BC
This era of the Eastern Chou would also see the most energetic
flowering of Chinese thought and culture in Chinese history. For it is
during the reign of the Eastern Chou that the greatest philosophers
established the rudiments of Chinese philosophy, ethics, political
theory, and culture.
All the major schools of Chinese thought were laid out in this
incredible period of Chinese culture; the Chinese historians refer to
this cultural flowering as "The Period of The One Hundred Schools"
(551-233 BC). The most important figure in this period is Kung Fu Tzu,
or Confucius , who lived in the middle of the sixth century BC. He
established a rigorously ethical philosophy that eschewed speculative
thinking on metaphysics. His goal was to reform government so that it
could better take care of the welfare of the people.
Confucius (born Kong Qiu, styled Zhong Ni) was born in the village
of Zou in the country of Lu in 551 B.C., a poor descendant of
a deposed noble family. As a child, he held make-believe temple
rituals; as a young adult, he quickly earned a reputation for
fairness, politeness and love of learning, and he was reputed
to be quite tall. He traveled extensively and studied at the
imperial capital, Zhou, where he is said to have met and spoke
with Lao Zi, the founder of Daoism.
One tale may be taken as an illustration
of his
consideration of differences. Zi Lu asked him a question,
"When we hear a good proposal, should we put it into practice
at once?" "You should always first ask someone with more experience,"
Confucius answered the same question. To him Confucius replied,
"Of course you should put it into practice at once." A third
student who had heard both answers, puzzled by their apparent
contradiction, asked Confucius about it.
"Ran You always hesitates when making a
decision,"
the sage said. "Therefore he should be encouraged
to be bolder. Zi Lu tends to make hasty decisions. Therefore
he should be reminded to be cautious. It's only natural that
different people should get different answers.
Another philosopher, Lao Tzu, also sought to reform government, but his
was a less practical philosophy. He is credited with being the founder
of Taoism , which was a much more passive and metaphysical approach to
the ethical universe. As in Confucianism, its central tenet is living
according to the Way (Tao) of Heaven; Confucianism, however, construed
the Way of Heaven as involving an active moral life; Lao Tzu on the
other hand advised non-interference and non-striving. While there may
not actually have been a real person called Lao Tzu, the second founder
of Taoism, Chuang Tzu, certainly did exist. He taught largely the same
philosophy. The two, however, did not believe that the Tao could be
spoken of in language; therefore their writing is paradoxical and often
impenetrable.
The third major school of the period was founded by Mo Tzu , who also
sought to reform government so that it guaranteed the welfare of the
people. He, however, believed that the root cause of human misery was
"selective love," and so he preached a "universal love." By that he did
not mean some 1960's emotionalism; rather, he believed that humans
should regard their obligations to other humans as universal. Normally,
we believe that we owe our close relations a level of courtesy and help
that we would not ordinarily afford to perfect strangers. Mo Tzu
believed that we owe all humans the same obligations we owe to our
closest relations. If we all observe those obligations, such things as
warfare and starvation would disappear. Finally, the last of the major
schools were the Legalists. In reality an off-shoot of Confucianism,
the Legalists believed that humans were basically evil and selfish. The
best form of government, that is, the government that best contributed
to the welfare of the people, would be one that strictly held
humankind's base instincts in check. This government would be ruled by
strict and harsh laws; punishment would be severe and swift. This
belief in rule by law is why this school is called "Legalist." None of
these schools of thought, which all had government reform as their
target, ever influenced the Chou government.
Ch'in (Qin) Dynasty -221-206 BC
The Ch’in followed the Legalist school. The Legalists also believed in
centralization of thinking, fearful that any non-Legalist ways of
thinking could lead to disruption and revolution. So all the other
schools of philosophy were outlawed, especially Confucianism, and their
books were burned and their teachers were executed.
Han Dynasty -206 BC-AD 220
The official policy of the new Han government was to renounce
Legalism.
The reality, however, is that the Han government, though
outwardly repudiating Legalism and Ch'in government, continued largely
in the same vein. The Han "Confucianized" the Legalist government of
the Ch'in, eventually adopting Confucianism as the state philosophy.
The first emperor of the Han, Kao Tsu, despised Confucius and
philosophers in general; the later emperors would take to Confucianism
as a lifeline. The essence of Confucianism is that government should be
in the hands of moral people; the purpose of government is the welfare
of the people. People, according to Confucius, are born good and can be
taught all the moral virtues necessary for government. Since morality
can be taught, it follows that only people who have been educated in
morality should rule over others. At first, government officials were
appointed on the recommendation of other government officials, but in
165 BC, the Han instituted the first examination. This examination
primarily concerned Confucius, the Five Classics, and moral questions;
admission into government service was possible only through this
examination. The Chinese had invented something brand new: rule by
merit.
Confucianism became the center of this new rule by merit, and the
Confucian principle of "jen," or "benevolence, humanity," became the
ideological center of Han government. At the capital in Ch'ang-an, a
school was created specifically for teaching Confucian government. This
school became the ideological center of the Later Han dynasty. The Han,
however, combined Confucian philosophy with Legalist government
structures, such as a regimented populace, standardization, and a
centralized government. The combination of Confucianism and Legalism in
practical governing during the Han is called State Confucianism .
This ideology of central government, along with the Legalists' attempts
to standardize Chinese culture and Chinese philosophy, led thinkers of
the Han to attempt to unify all the rival schools of Chinese thought
and philosophy that had developed over the previous three hundred
years. This unification of Chinese into a single coherent system is the
most lasting legacy of the Han dynasty. Earlier, the Legalists
attempted to standardize Chinese thought by burning the books of rival
schools and by making it a capital crime to speak of Confucius ,Lao Tzu
, or Mo Tzu . The Han thinkers, who thoroughly despised the Legalists
and their methods while adopting many of their goals, took a different
approach. Rather than reject alternate ways of thinking, they took a
syncretic approach and attempted to fuse all the rival schools of
thought into a single system. This syncretic project of the early Han
is known as the Han synthesis . In many ways it was similar to the
larger project of unifying Chinese government.
The Han philosophers concentrated specifically on the Five Classics
, attempting to derive from them, particularly the I ching , or Book of
Changes, the principle of the workings of the universe, or Tao . This
new theory of the universe they appended to the I ching ; this appendix
explains the metaphysical workings of the entire universe. Once the
overall workings of the unverse were understood, then every form of
thought could be directly related to each other by appealing to the
basic principles of the universe.
The essentials of the Han synthesis are as follows: the universe is
run by a single principle, the Tao, or Great Ultimate. This principle
is divided into two opposite principles, or two principles which oppose
one another in their actions, yin and yang . All the opposites one
perceives in the universe can be reduced to one of the opposite forces.
In general, these forces are distinguished by their role in producing
creation and producing degeneration: yang is the force of creation and
yin the force of completion and degeneration. The yin and yang are
further differentiated into five material agents, or wu hsing , which
both produce one another and overcome one another. All change in the
universe can be explained by the workings of yin and yang and the
progress of the five material agents as they either produce one another
or overcome one another. This is a universal explanatory principle .
All phenomena can be understood using yin-yang and the five agents: the
movements of the stars, the workings of the body, the nature of foods,
the qualities of music, the ethical qualities of humans, the progress
of time, the operations of government, and even the nature of
historical change. All things follow this order so that all things can
be related to one another in some way: one can use the stars to
determine what kind of policy to pursue in government, for instance.
In government, the Han thinkers essentially adopted the Legalist
attitude that human beings fundamentally behave badly, but they changed
the doctrine significantly. The Han thinkers believed that people
behaved in a depraved way because they had no choice; economic and
social conditions forced them to behave badly. For at heart, all human
beings desire only material well-being; in order to make people behave
virtuously, the government should make it possible that the ends of
virtue (the well-being of others) and the pursuit of individual wellbeing should be coterminous, that is, material benefits should accrue
to virtuous acts (that's one-half of the Legalist formula). The emperor
would bring this about through two means. First, the emperor and the
government is responsible for setting up conditions in which people can
derive material benefit from productive labor; the stress on
productivity, of course, is derived from the Legalists and Mo Tzu.
Second, the emperor can provide an example. It is the job of the
emperor to care for the welfare of his people (Confucianism), yet at
the same time, the Emperor should withdraw from active rule (Taoism).
How did the Emperor rule then? By providing a living example of
benevolence.
Three Kingdoms - 220-581 AD
Buddhism comes to China from India.
During the period of The Three Kingdoms , Chinese scholarship and
thought slowly faded into insignificance. In its place arose a
widespread growth of two religions, Neo-Taoism , a native religion
forged from philosophical Taoism, and Buddhism , a foreign import from
India.
Neo-Taoism, which was called "the mysterious learning" in early
China, had grown during the waning years of the Later Han. Neo-Taoism
had both a scholarly and a popular form. The scholarly form
concentrated on discussing the Taoist classics, as well as general
conversations and a search for immortality. It was the popular form,
however, that spread like wildfire and changed Chinese history. The
folk Neo-Taoism was a pantheistic, moral and salvation religion; all
human acts, both good and evil, would be punished or rewarded in an
afterlife. The Neo-Taoist religions had priests, curing shamans, and
even churches. These religions also inspired secret societies; two of
these societies, the Yellow Turbans and the Five Pecks of Rice, were
mainly responsible for overthrowing Wang Mang and the remnants of the
Later Han dynasty.
Buddhism entered China in the first century AD; an Indian religion
that was initially a radical form of Hinduism, the dominant religion in
ancient India, it was accepted with open arms in China. This is largely
due to the fact that the early Chinese initially thought that Buddhism
was another form of Taoism, particularly since the translators used
Taoist terms to translate Buddhist doctrines. The early Chinese, in
fact, believed that Lao Tzu had traveled to India and that the Buddha
was his disciple. Despite this, Buddhism never really took off during
the Later Han period. However, when the Han government collapsed and
China fell into chaos, Buddhism caught fire all over the former empire,
primarily among the common population. Like folk Neo-Taoism, it offered
salvation and was a moral religion. By the time of the rise of the
Northern Wei in 384, Buddhism had spread over the whole of China.
Although Buddhists were occasionally persecuted, on the whole they were
tolerated. Some emperors even converted to Buddhism.
Sui Dynasty - 581-618 AD
unlike the founders of the Han dynasties, Sui Wen-ti did not adopt
Confucianism as the state philosophy, but rather embraced Buddhism and
Taoism, both of which had spread so rapidly during the Three Kingdoms
period. Sui Wen-ti employed a cadre of Buddhist advisors in his program
to unify the country, and Buddhism would become the government
philosophy until the founding of the Sung dynasty several centuries
later.
T'ang Dynasty - 618-907 AD
Empress Wu was a devout Buddhist, and she contributed greatly to a
flowering of Buddhist culture in the T'ang period, especially through
her vigorous founding of Buddhist monasteries. She was the first
emperor of China to assume a Buddhist title, "Divine Empress Who Rules
the Universe," but she also contributed to the ascendancy of state
Taoism.
Because of massive, dynamic trade with other cultures, Chang-an became
a meeting place of many cultures and religions: Christianity,
Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Islam, all of which entered China during
the T'ang and especially influenced Chinese culture in the heyday of
Chang-an. Syrians, Jews, Arabs, Persians, Koreans, Tibetans, and
Japanese all lived side by side with the Chinese of Chang-an. In 636,
Nestorian Christians from Syria were allowed to build a church and hold
Christian services barely six hundred years after the founding of
Christianity and less than three hundred years after Christianity had
become the state religion of Rome. The foreigners not only brought in
new religions, but new clothes, cuisine, literature, and music as well.
Sung Dynasty - 960-1279 AD
Confucianism had never really died out, but it began a resurgence in
the latter half of the T'ang dynasty. It was during the Sung, however,
that Confucianism was revived and reinstalled as the state philosophy.
The new Confucianists fused centuries of Chinese culture and thought
onto the old forms. In particular, they fused Buddhist principles onto
Confucian studies. Hu Yüan, one of the principle forces behind the
Confucian revival, believed that the Classics were more than
repositories of ancient knowledge. He believed also that they were
repositories of universal truths or principles and that it was the job
of scholarship to ferret out those universal principles. Once those
universal principles were grasped, then one could use them to solve any
moral or political problem–any approach to moral or political problems
not grounded in universal principles was doomed to failure. The
Buddhists had a concept of Three Treasures: Buddha (Truth), Dharma
(Law), and Sangha (the Discipline of the Monk). The Sung Confucianists
constructed their own version of this set-up, the Three Treasures of
Confucianism: Substance (T'i), Function (Yung), and Literary Expression
(Wen). Substance corresponds more or less with the universal principles
the scholar studies; function is putting those principles into action;
and literary expression is the form in which these principles are
articulated.
The Confucian revival eventually split into two central Confucian
schools, the School of Mind or Intuition , whose greatest thinker was
Wang Yang-ming, and the School of Principle , which culminated in the
thought of Chu Hsi (1130-1200). These two schools make up what is
called Neo-Confucianism , which would dominate Chinese (and later
Japanese) thought for the next several centuries. Both schools agreed
that the world consisted of two realms: the realm of principle (li )
(which we might call "laws") and the realm of material force (ch'i ).
Principle, ultimately derived from the Sung Confucian concern with
universal principles embedded in the classics, governs material force
and material force makes manifest principle; the ultimate origin of
principle is a single, unifying principle, called the Great Ultimate
(tao ch'i ), which emanates from Heaven . The School of Mind, founded
by Ch'eng Hao (1032-1085), emphasized that the human mind is completely
unified and reflects perfectly in itself the principle of the universe.
Since the human mind is perfectly identical with the Universal Mind or
the Ultimate Principle, the duty of any philosopher is to investigate
the nature of the human mind to the exclusion of all other
investigations. The School of Principle believed that there was an
immaterial and immutable principle or law that inheres in all things,
giving them form, motion, and change. The mind of humanity is
essentially the same as the mind of the universe and can be perfected
to reflect that higher mind; however, the principle inhering in the
human mind applied to everything, so that any investigation into any
phenomenon whatsoever would reveal the principle of the human and the
Universal mind. Studying the heavens or an insect will lead you
eventually to that same principle which characterizes the human mind
and the Universal mind. The scholars of the School of Principle
believed in empirical investigation, for they believed that to find the
principle of any material process was to find the principle inherent in
all material and intellectual processes.
Mongols - 1279-1368 AD
the Mongols chose not to impose their own pastoral lifestyle, social
structure, or religion on the Chinese.
The traditional philosophies and religions of China continued
unabated under Mongol rule. Buddhism in particular found a welcome home
among the Mongols who had in part adopted it. Taoism remained vital
throughout China, and Confucianism continued. However, the foreign rule
of the Mongols allowed for a certain amount of revolution and renewal
in Chinese thought. Because the Mongols held Confucianism in contempt
in the early years of their rule, the new philosophy of Neo-Confucians,
founded in the last century of Sung rule, took hold in China and
eventually eclipsed the older forms of Confucianism. The new
examination system of 1315 was based entirely on Neo-Confucianism, thus
enshrining it as the state philosophy for many centuries.
Curiously, the Mongols, though Buddhist, did not really support or
patronize Buddhism, which was largely left to its own devices. They
favored Tibetan Buddhism but really did not financially support the
monasteries. When the Mongol rulers decided that too many Buddhists
were escaping military service, they instituted a literacy test on
Buddhist scriptures. Anyone who couldn't demonstrate literacy in the
scriptures lost their military exemption. This put the Mongol rulers in
direct conflict with the major Buddhist masters; the central school of
Buddhism was Ch'an , or "Meditation" Buddhism. It stressed the primacy
of the master over scripture and the silent transmission of religious
truth. For that reason, Ch'an Buddhism had no written doctrine. Under
pressure from the Mongols, the Ch'an Buddhists began to record their
doctrine in a series formulations called kung-an or, in Japanese, the
koan .
Nonetheless, the Mongol rulers were very preoccupied with religions.
Kublai Khan in particular invited all sorts of faiths to debate at his
court. He allowed Nestorian Christians and Roman Catholics to set up
missions, as well as Tibetan lamas, Muslims, and Hindus.
Ming Dynasty -1368-1644 AD