The yin-yang circle above depicts the eternal harmony between light and dark, male and female, above and below, which is present in all of life, according to Chinese wisdom.  In this unit, we will review the roots of religion in ancient China, and then we will look at specific traditions on the Chinese landscape:  Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, Marxism, and Christianity.  This review relates especially to chapters 12-13 of Patrick S. Bresnan, Awakening:  An Introduction to the History of Eastern Thought, 3rd edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Prentice Hall, 2007).

ROOTS OF RELIGION IN ANCIENT CHINA

    "Buy Needya wrinkle cream -- guaranteed to put wrinkles on your face!"
    "Rub Oil of Old Age over your body!"
    "Add age spots to your hands with  Chang's Cosmetic Lotion!"

    These might be commercials in ancient China.  Old age was revered.  Old people could share the wisdom which had been gained through years of experience.  The most important "senior citizens" were of course members of your own family, such as your grandmother and grandfather, because they would have special concern for their descendants.  But if you lived in ancient China, you would also maintain a close relationship with family members who had died.

    You may have a family tree that lists your deceased relatives.  Ancestors played a key role in ancient Chinese religion.  The living family helped them to have a happy afterlife, through various ceremonies which honored them and kept their memories alive.  In turn, the ancestral spirits blessed their descendants.  Chinese religion was very much a family religion.

    On a larger scale, the Chinese honored a deity who was considered the ancestor of the whole people:  Shang Di, "The Lord Above."  He provided nature's blessings and protection from enemies.  As people's understanding developed, they expanded this image into Tian, "Heaven."  Tian represents the supreme power of the universe, looking down on earth and rewarding those who live upright lives.  A duke, king, or emperor had to govern in accordance with divine Providence.  If so, he was said to have the Mandate of Heaven.  Disasters in nature or in social relationships meant that the ruler had lost the Mandate of Heaven and should be replaced.

    In addition to ancestors and Heaven, a third supreme reality in ancient China was Earth.  Reverence for the land was natural among a farming people.  The harmony between Earth and Heaven also represented a balance between two great powers in the universe:  yin and yang.  Both are essential for all life, since they are complementary forces.  Yin is the receptive, feminine aspect -- dark, mysterious, and fertile.  In Earth, the yin force nurtures seeds and gives them the potential to become plants.  Yang is the assertive, masculine aspect -- bright and active.  In Heaven, the yang force provides the sunlight and rain which are essential for growth.  Men are predominantly yang; women are predominantly yin.  Both are as necessary for society as Heaven and Earth are for nature.

    You may be familiar with the Stoic teaching that all people have a little bit of the divine in them.  Divination, which is a set of techniques intended to "divine" or ascertain the will of "divinities" (gods), was part of ancient Chinese religion.  How so?  Each person had yang and yin in them.  The way that persons related to each other in society followed the same kinds of patterns which could be seen on a universal scale.  Since life is a constant process of changing, a book of divination should show some of the recurrent patterns in the changes.  The most famous Chinese book of divination was the Yi Jing (traditionally spelled I Ching and meaning "Book of Changes").  The Yi Jing shows us how all relationships between yin and yang fall into any of 64 different patterns, or hexagrams.  Over the years, the patterns came to be interpreted in certain standard ways.

CONFUCIANISM

    The Yi Jing was one of the Five Classics which provided a basis for a religious philosophy (or philosophical religion) in the 500's B.C.E.  The founder of that religious philosophy was a man whose name you must spell carefully, to avoid Confusion.  Kung Fu Zi, "Honored Philosopher Kung," is known in the English-speaking world as Confucius.  He studied the Five Classics his whole life long.  In addition to the Yi Jing, they are:

• Shi Jing, "Book of Poetry"
• Li Ji, "Book of Rites"
• Shu Jing, "Book of History"
• Chun Jiu, "Spring and Autumn Annals"

    Confucius was a person who recognized the value of Great Books and Eastern Tradition.  He trained his students in the wisdom of the past, so that they would be enabled to cope with problems of the present and future.  He also hoped the studies of books like the Book of Rites would help them to recognize the value of proper rituals.  Carrying out ceremonies correctly was a way to hold together the extended family, the community, and the entire nation.  

    Confucius came from a small country with a short name -- one of these three:  LI, LA, or LU.  Where was the home of Honored Philosopher Confucius?

    Not Li -- that Chinese word means "ritual" or "propriety," the right way to carry out ceremonies such as the rites to honor ancestors.

    Not LA -- that is the home not of Honored Philosopher Confucius, but Honored Theologian Kellogg, who grew up on the Red River in Louisiana.  His son Mark now lives in the other LA, Los Angeles.  Confucius grew up on the Yellow River in China.  Fred < Red;  Confucius < Yellow. 

    The correct answer is Lu.  Confucius spent most of his life in the small Chinese country of Lu, holding a number of minor political appointments.  His real success, however, was as a teacher rather than as a politician.  Like any good teacher, Confucius helped his students learn basic concepts: 

• Xiao (filial piety) was a very important Confucian doctrine.  Confucius taught that by paying respect to one's elders while they were alive and after they were dead, a person was preserving harmony in the universe. 
• Li (ritual, custom, propriety, manners) was essential for the good life as taught by Confucius.  A leader in society should live by li as a model for other citizens. 
• Confucius helped his students to move toward the status of a junzi, a "superior person" or a "true gentleman or lady."  A junzi was a person of integrity, concerned for justice. 
• Ren (pronounced "run," meaning "humanity" or "humaneness") included compassion and benevolence, qualities like love without the emotional element in the Western concept of love.  Ren was one of the most important of all Confucius' teachings. 
• However, Confucius did not teach the concept of pen (pronounced "pun") -- the pun is a major flaw in the character of Honored Theologian Kellogg rather than Honored Philosopher Confucius.

    Please think of your first name.  This computer is part of the great HAL, centered in Kelly Library and in "2001:  A Space Odyssey."  It is so smart that it can read your brain waves, like the computer chip which has been implanted in the brain of a monkey by some scientists, enabling the monkey to move a robot arm just by thinking about it.  Your name is part of the essence of your very self, and you have just communicated to HAL and me in a tiny burst of electric energy. 

    Confucius taught his disciples that one important way to cope with life is to understand who you are.  If you can truly grasp the essential meaning of you-ness, you can relate to all of reality.  Confucius called this principle the rectification of names.  It includes knowing your place in your family heritage, your job, and your community.  You become aware of the harmony of yin and yang in your own life.  Confucius would agree with the motto of Socrates and the oracle at Delphi:  "Know yourself." 

    At times in China's history, Confucianism has been manipulated to form rigid bureaucracies.  But that was not Confucius' intent.  Rather, he was concerned that people recognize themselves as social animals, and organize their hierarchies so as to provide the greatest possible benefits.

DAOISM

    Alongside Confucianism, a second great religious philosophy which arose in China is Daoism.  It is based on the Dao De Jing (traditionally rendered as the Tao Te Ching, but pronounced dow duh jing).  There are several ways to translate the title of this book; my favorite is The Book of the Way and Its Power.  Since you've studied the Dao De Jing:  How would you define the Dao?

    The answer is easy:  you can't!  Dao literally means "way," "path," or "road."  But that's a translation, not a definition.  The Dao cannot be defined -- only experienced.

    The dao that can be spoken of
        is not the Dao;
    The name that can be named
        is not the Name.  
            [Dao De Jing 1]

    But we can use images for the Dao:  a path, an empty bowl, a valley, the feminine mystique, water that seeks the lowest level, a baby, a block of wood waiting to be carved.  We open ourselves up to life as it pours into us, and we go with the flow.  Through gentleness and yielding, we accomplish much more than we would achieve through exercising power over each other.  This method is called wu-wei, "nonstriving," and it permeates the Dao De Jing.

    The Dao De Jing was written by a man whose name means "The Old Philosopher."  That doesn't mean Ed Damer; he's a wise philosopher, although I wouldn't call him the Old Philosopher -- except maybe in contrast to Ben Letson, who would be the Young Philosopher.  Damer's book, Attacking Faulty Reasoning, helps us to find flaws in our logical arguments.  He uses examples and even names of persons in the Emory community.  So his book makes for interesting reading!  It's also very popular; it's now in a 6th edition.  But a different philosopher wrote the Dao De Jing.

    Nor should you think of Qoheleth, Hebrew for "The Philosopher" or "The Teacher," the author of Ecclesiastes.  He was a sage, wisdom teacher, preacher, or philosopher who collected and wrote down many wise sayings.  His book is attributed to King Solomon, another sage who lived many centuries earlier.  The sayings in Ecclesiastes resemble some of the teachings of the Dao De Jing, such as:

    "Cast your bread upon the waters,
     for you will find it after many days."  [Ecclesiastes 11:1]
 

    However, the book was given the title of the anonymous author's pen name, Ecclesiastes, and it was included in the Bible.  Another old philosopher wrote the Dao De Jing.

    The Old Philosopher who wrote the Dao De Jing was Lao Zi (also spelled Lao Tzu or Laotse, and pronounced lao tsuh).  Have you ever seen a picture of what you looked like right after you were born?  You were probably as bald as a billiard ball, or if you had hair, it was dark.  Legend has it that a little Chinese baby had a full head of white hair as soon as he was born!  This showed that he already had the wisdom which normally comes with old age.  So he was named Lao Zi, "The Old Philosopher."  He didn't write down all that wisdom, however, until he was eighty years old.  Then he produced the Dao De Jing.

    Daoism was developed further by Zhuang Zi (often spelled Chuang Tzu, and pronounced Jwahng-tsuh), who moved almost to an absolute relativism.  He even said that after an especially vivid dream, he wasn't sure whether he had dreamed that he was a butterfly, or whether he was really a butterfly dreaming that he was a human being. 

    Daoism blurred the lines between imagination and reality so much that it came to emphasize parapsychology, alchemy, magic, and various immortal beings.  Yet in some ways it functioned as a standard religion.  Monasteries were established for study and meditation.  Priests took on roles somewhat like the shamans of ancient China.  Still today, many Chinese paintings reflect Daoist influence.

CHINESE BUDDHISM

    Buddhism, the third major Chinese religion, came from India during the Han Dynasty, probably around the first century C.E.  You remember that in the unit on Buddhism, we studied three major groups.  Theravada Buddhism is the predominant religion of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia:  Myanmar (Burma), Cambodia, and Thailand.  Vajrayana is the blending of Buddhism with the indigenous Tibetan beliefs and practices.  It was the Mahayana branch of Buddhism that flourished in China.  

    In China the Mahayana scripture known as the Lotus Sutra became widely read.  It had originally been written in Sanskrit, but the Chinese version made it popular.  The Lotus Sutra, which was not in the original Three Baskets, taught a doctrine of universal salvation.  It used elaborate descriptions of great gatherings of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, who declared that all creatures would be saved.  It also included a story that resembles Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son.  It is named for the lotus plant, which produces a beautiful flower than can float on top of a muddy swamp.

    The concept of salvation by grace is elaborated in the Chinese and Japanese school known as Pure Land Buddhism.  The school of meditation (Chan in Chinese or Zen in Japanese) is another important group.  We'll save our review of these two schools until the unit on Japan.

CHRISTIANITY & MARXISM

    Christianity has also had a place in Chinese culture, especially due to the efforts of Catholic and Protestant missionaries in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Christianity has been most successful when it has been able to establish itself as a truly Chinese religion, rather than a movement dependent on foreigners.  Christian missionaries have tried to be sensitive to this concern.  They have had a tremendous impact on China through the establishment of hospitals, children's homes, educational institutions, and other agencies for service and training of China's future leaders.

    You may know that an American woman named Lottie Moon grew up near Charlottesville and spent forty years in China as a Baptist missionary in the 1800's.  Her commitment and dedication were so strong that she has inspired many Baptists over the years to give their lives or money to the cause of missions.

    We have seen in this course how Marxism has served in many ways as a kind of religion in the People's Republic of China for the past half-century.  During the Cultural Revolution, Christianity in China faced some very hard times, and most churches were closed.  But courageous individuals and small groups kept the Christian faith alive.  A number of churches have now been reopened.  Even though past experience calls for caution, and setbacks to freedom such as the events at Tiananmen Square are frightening, many Chinese are optimistic about the future.  Sometimes just one courageous individual can face down a whole row of tanks! 

    The Chinese culture is a rich culture, with a fascinating blend of traditions.  It can offer the world a way to find balance and harmony -- between yang and yin, Heaven and Earth, society and nature, the individual and the people.  China is rightly called the Middle Kingdom!

    I hope that you have found this review helpful for your understanding of Chinese religion.  If you wish, you can send me e-mail: fkellogg@ehc.edu

    To look at one of my other syllabi, go to my Home Page.

    To review a different unit in this course, go directly to one of the following:

    Unit 1, Hinduism
    Unit 2, Buddhism
    Unit 4, Japan

    If you prefer, you may return to the Emory & Henry College Home Page.

Last updated:  April 07, 2008