Week 8

Video 1
We move on now to the second part of our exploration of Daoxue, Self-Cultivation and here
our guide will be Curie Virag, Self-cultivation as Praxis in Song Neo-Confucianism. Curie
Virag summarizes the Daoxue synthesis of Zhu Xi as constituting: one, a rejection of the
dualism of self and other characteristic of Tang Confucianism. Two, a return to origins with a
focus on Confucius and Mencius. Three, a recognition of the ethical significance of emotions
as a necessary facet of moral life. As we'll see, it's really the third point that she is most
interested in focusing on because it is there precisely that the rejection of the dualism of Tang
Confucianism becomes most clear. Self-cultivation is central to this synthesis because it is the
means to unite theory and practice. Remind you that the definition of religion that we've
given from the very beginning is the practice of structuring values. In the section on
Confucian thought, we've talked about those values, those structuring values as they
understood and described them. Now, we're talking about the practice that enables the
individual practitioner adherent of Daoxue to interiorize these truths. "Self-cultivation as
praxis," says Curie Virag, "Refers to the philosophical commitment on the part of Neo-
Confucians to an ethical ideal in which true understanding necessarily translates into action,
and action necessarily arises from and embodies true understanding." She goes back then to
Zheng Xuan. The great Han commentator on the classics whose dates are 127 to 200. She
suggests that the roots of Tang dualism go back to this great Han commentator, Zheng Xuan.
She quotes, "That man is still quiet, at birth is his heaven-endowed nature." Zheng Xuan
central these ideas heaven-endowed nature are to Daoxue. "That man is still at birth is his
heaven-endowed nature. That he is set into motion having been stirred by things [inaudible]
is his idea of arousal come back to it. He stirred, moved, by things are the desires of his
nature. When things arrive, there is knowing and when there is knowing, liking, and disliking
become manifest. When liking and disliking are not moderated within, and one's faculty of
knowing is enticed by what is outside, one cannot return to oneself [inaudible] , and heavenly
principle is destroyed. So, they're describing this fall from original heavenly nature, which is
still and not moved, not enticed, not seduced by the things outside. "Now, the things that stir
man are endless," says Zheng Xuan, "And if man's likes and dislikes are not moderated, then
when things arrive, man is transformed by the things." Zheng also talks about this. [inaudible]
to be thingified by things rather than to [inaudible] to thingify things. When things arrive, if
likes and dislikes are not moderated, man is transformed by things, and when man is
transformed by things, he destroys his heavenly principle and fully indulges in his desire.
After Zheng Xuan, the next great commentator on the classics is Kong Yingda whose dates
are 574 to 648, so early Tang. While in Zheng Xuan, both stillness and activity, emotions are
expressions of human nature, in the sub-commentary of Kong Yingda, they are distinguished
precisely as nature and feelings, xing-qing. Kong Yingda says, "When man is first born, he
does not yet possess feelings and desires. What is spontaneously so of itself is called nature,
xing. Coveting and desiring is called the feelings, qing." But now comes the key. "To counter
these feelings, concludes Kong, rites, music, punishments, and administrative measures are
necessary." Here, we have a kind of legalist, Fajia approach. Okay, the [inaudible] , the rights
do not go down to the people. For the people, there are the laws, and so this sociological
dualism is rooted also in this ethical dualism between the nature on the one hand and the
feelings. To counter these feelings, we need rites, music, punishments, and administrative
measures. The last pre-Song figure that we'll look at very quickly is Li Ao whose dates are
772 to 841. Li Ao radicalizes this basic duality, making it virtually ontological in nature. He
says, "That by which a person becomes a sage is his moral nature. That by which one's nature
becomes deluded is the feelings. Joy, anger, fear, sadness, love, hate, and desire are all
brought about by the feelings. When the feelings obscure it, the nature becomes hidden." All
of the feelings are lumped together as dangerous. When the feelings obscure it, the nature
becomes hidden and he even goes so far as to say, "Feelings are the corruption of the nature."
The word translated here corruption is [inaudible] , which is used to describe heterodoxy.
Heterodox teachings, heterodox religion that must be suppressed. "If one understands how
this corruption comes about, this corruption would have no basis. If the mind is still and
unmoving, corrupt thoughts would cease by themselves." So, his way is to stick to that still
and unmoving natural self and that's exactly what we will see Jushi overcoming this dualism
by his openness, his approval of gan of the being moved by things. Both Zhou Dunyi and
Cheng Yi basically concurred with the negative view of feelings. Cheng contrasted those who
imposed the nature upon the feelings, that's very nice in Chinese. [inaudible] , nature by their
feelings. Those are the enlightened, the [inaudible] , the awakened. With those who do the
opposite [inaudible] that is to say, "feeling nice" their nature, they are the stupid. You have
the enlightened versus the stupid. Although, Cheng Yi would later moderate his views. His
approach to self-cultivation remained dualistic. At least, in part because the cultural
institutions of antiquity had disappeared. Very interesting, this is what he says. "It was easy
for those who learned in antiquity, but difficult for those who learn today. The ancients
entered elementary school at age eight, and the school of great learning, Daoxue at age 15.
There were rich decorations to nurture their visual sense; sounds, music to nurture their
hearing, impressive rites to nurture the movements of their four limbs and moral principle to
nurture their minds. Now all of these things are lost and there is only moral principle to
nurture their minds. How can we not make an effort." So, a sense of loss, this ideal antiquity.
All of which was embodied in rites and music that have long since disappeared.
Video 2
Both Zhou Dunyi 周敦頤 and Cheng Yi 程頤 basically concurred with the negative view of
feelings.
Play video starting at ::7 and follow transcript0:07
Cheng contrasted those who "impose the nature upon the feelings" —that's very nice in
Chinese, xing qi qing 性其情, "naturify" their feelings. Those are the "enlightened,"
the juezhe 覺者, a Buddhist term, the enlightened, the awakened, with those who do
the opposite, and qing qi xing 情其性, that is to say "feelingize" their nature, they are
the "stupid." So you have: the enlightened vs. the stupid. "Although Cheng Yi would later
moderate his views," his approach to self-cultivation remained dualistic, at least in part
because the "cultural institutions" of antiquity had disappeared. Very interesting! This is what
he says: "It was easy for those who learned in antiquity, but difficult for those who learn
today. The ancients entered elementary school at age eight, and the school of great learning
(daxue 大學) at age fifteen. There were rich decorations to nurture their visual sense,
sounds (music) to nurture their hearing, impressive rites to nurture the movements of their
four limbs, and moral principle to nurture their minds. Now all of these things are lost, and
there is only moral principle to nurture their minds. How can we not make an effort!" So, the
sense of loss, this ideal antiquity, all of which was embodied in rites and music that have long
since disappeared.
Play video starting at :1:45 and follow transcript1:45
For Zhu Xi, the first step to undoing this dualism was to redefine the Canon and therefore
learning. "To guide students on their path of learning, Zhu devised a new curriculum based on
the Four Books." You've already seen them: Daxue, the Great Learning,
Analects of Confucius, the Lunyu 論語, the Mencius, Mengzi 孟子,
and finally the Doctrine of the Mean, Zhongyong 中庸.

"This substantially reduced curriculum, which replaced the traditional Five Classics that had
been emphasized in preceding dynasties, signified a basic shift in what Neo-Confucians
considered to be the foundation of learning itself. It was no longer the rites," as in the
Liji, "the history of past events," like in the Shangshu 尚書 or the
Zuozhuan 左傳, which is a commentary on the Chunqiu 春秋, one of the
Classics, or "poetry", the Shijing 詩經, the Book of Odes. So these were the
Classics, so there was "no longer the rites, the history of past events, or poetry that would
occupy the minds of students." Here we see the debate with Lü Zuqian 呂祖謙 coming to the
fore. "Instead, the focus was to be on cultivating oneself from the inside out and realizing
one's full moral potential." And the first step in Zhu's new program was the Daxue,
the Great Learning, which states: "From the Son of Heaven to the common people,
everyone should regard self-cultivation as the root," xiushen weiben 修身為本. Self-
cultivation as the root.
Given the centrality of books to his program —even if it's no longer the Five Classics, it's still
the Four Books—
given the centrality of books to his program, Zhu "developed a theory and methodology" of
reading, dushufa 讀書法, as a means to extend knowledge and investigate things,
gewu 格物, "activities described in the Great Learning as representing the
critical juncture at which the self encountered the world."
Seeking "oneness between the reader and the text."
So the text is the means to understand self in interaction with the world outside. That is, by
that understanding of self to investigate things in accordance with this basic good heart,
liangxin 良心. So that's the text then serves as a passageway from self to the outside.
So seeking "oneness between the reader and the text," Zhu Xi advocated "entering,"
ru 入, the text and immersing oneself deeply in it, shenchen 深沉, literally the
plunge inside it.
This was to be done in the same way Buddhists and Daoists did it— once again incorporating
elements of Buddhism and Daoism. How so? By reciting the text over and over. I quote: "For
it was through recitation that the mind 'spontaneously harmonizes with the physical nature,
opens up and becomes free, and can securely remember the text'."
Zhu compared the "penetration" of a text to the famous passage of Zhuangzi's Butcher Ding,
who was "so skillful at wielding his knife that he carved up oxen for nineteen years without
(ever) dulling his blade." He also compared it to "exploring a house." I quote: "You need to
go inside and look at everything, such as how much space there is in the framework, how
much latticework there is. Look at it once and then over and over again. Only when you
remember all of it together have you gotten it."
So here we see this emphasis on coherence, on finding a profound rationality that can be
completely interiorized, mastered,
is seen in this idea that through this method of penetration, of entering deeply into the text,
one can possess the text. It becomes a part of oneself.
In order to achieve the thoroughgoing subjective appropriation of the text, Zhu even "advises
against reading too much at one sitting." This is quite extraordinary, because modern science
tells us that we shouldn't stay sitting for more than 20 minutes, you should get up, walk
around in order to get the blood flowing, the brain more active, okay? So: he "advises against
reading too much at one sitting" or "when one's mind is preoccupied with other matters."
One knows that one has read well when one is transformed by the reading. I quote: "There
are those who, upon reading the Analects, have nothing whatsoever happen to them.
There are those who, after reading it, are pleased with one or two sentences. There are those
who, after reading it, know how to love it. And (then) there are those who, upon reading it,
'unconsciously dance it with their arms and tap it with their feet'."
Thus "strong emotions" are not necessarily waves that "disturb the stillness of the water."
I quote: "Like Confucius," says Curie Virág, "Zhu Xi emphasizes the spontaneous joy and
total emotional transport of the fully realized individual." So it's through the reading and the
process by means of which one comes into possession of the text, its basic meaning, its
coherence with one's own liangxin, that the strong emotions are good emotions, rather
than xie 邪 or evil. So learning how to read, a method for reading, is his first strategy.
The second strategy is, following many of his predecessors, the return to Confucius and
Mencius.
Here it must be said that the other great Confucian of the pre-imperial period, Xunzi 荀子,
had been the most characteristic representative of Confucianism through the Han and the
Tang, and especially in the Tang. Whereas now this return to Mencius—precisely it's Mencius
who believes that there is this good heart, whereas Xunzi thinks that human nature is
basically evil and therefore must be controlled by rites and laws, okay. So: the return to
Confucius and Mencius, the redefinition of the Canon. Already in the Analects of
Confucius, "Ren is the supreme virtue of a human being and the ultimate mark of
the junzi 君子—a person of superior virtue." Ren in turn is explained— and
this is an absolutely key phrase taken from the Lunyu by the Daoxue people as the
perfect summary of their program— it's keji fuli 克己復禮,

"overcoming the self and returning to ritual propriety." There's a wonderful, very short
biographical account that Confucius gives in the Lunyu of his own life, beginning at
age 15 with his "setting his mind upon self-cultivation" and finally at the age of 70, when "I
could follow my heart's desires without overstepping the bounds of propriety." So a perfect
summary in the view of the Daoxue people, of what it meant to be a junzi, a moral
person, a person of superior virtue. And Virág summarizes as follows: "Such references to the
spontaneity and delight of the fully realized person in the Analects suggest that living
properly is not simply about abiding by norms dictated from above, but also about being true
to one's natural human condition."
And then building on this concept of the junzi, the gentlemen, and his core virtue of
ren or benevolence, compassion, humanity, we have this idea of Mencius—we've
already referred to— the siduan 四端, translated here the "four sprouts." For a fuller
description of that human nature, Zhu Xi turns to Mencius. "Mencius argued that the virtues
of humaneness (ren 仁), rightness (yi 義), ritual propriety (li 禮), and
wisdom (zhi 智) represented the extension of the basic human feelings of compassion,
shame, courtesy and modesty, and a sense of right and wrong." He also insisted that, while
the eyes and ears could be "misled by things… the function of the heart is to reflect" and
therefore not be seduced, not be "thingified" by things outside.
Video 3
So the understanding that there are these feelings which are also a part of nature and can be
developed is the way out of seeing the feelings as purely negative, to be controlled.
This is where that cosmology of Qi plays an important role.
Before looking at the place of the heart in self-cultivation, we need to examine the role
cosmology played in enabling Zhu Xi to overcome the dualism of the Tang Confucians. And
to this end, Virág turns to "Zhang Zai and the Ethics of Qi." She says, "Zhang's conviction
that all things were composed of Qi, and therefore shared a common underlying substance,
effectively dissolved the boundary between self and world"—self and things— "that had been
a prominent feature of the Tang commentarial perspective." Above all, and I underline, above
all, as Qi could alternately have and not have form, "the hidden," when it has no form, "and
the manifest," when it does have form, were part of a single ongoing process. So you see here
what's at stake. We just saw the idea of the four seasons, the cycle of the four seasons as all
rooted in springtime and the vitality of origination, which is compared to the ethical value of
ren. So when it's not an opposition between two ontological entities, two things, but
rather an alternation precisely of the hidden and the manifest, that is to say of yin,
which is hidden, and yang, which is manifest —the two worlds of yinjian 陰
間 and yangjian 陽間 in Chinese— it's an alternating and the Qi is always there as a
substrate even when it is invisible.
So to have form and to have no form. "When Qi collects together, differentiation is manifest
and there is form," the ten thousand things that we see in the world lit by the sun. "When Qi
does not collect together": usually it does not collect together but it san 散, so when it
disperses. So now it collects and now it disperses. When it collects, there is form; when it
disperses, there is no form.
"When it has collected together," since thereafter it's going to be without form, when it has
formed, "can we not call it temporary?" In other words, it's not a permanent state, it's a
temporary state. "And when it has dispersed (san), how can we call it non-existence?"
That it's disappeared, that it's dead, gone. No, it's just gone back into that alternating state of
yin, of kanbujian 看不見, that is you cannot see it, cannot hear it, because it does not
have form. So it is not non-existent, it's simply gone back into the phase of dispersal of Qi of,
prior to, well, the invisible, that without form. "Therefore, when the sage looks around
himself and investigates the world, he says, 'I know the cause of hiddenness and
manifestation'; he does not say, 'I know the cause of existence and nonexistence'."
You 有 and wu 無; you 幽 and ming 明. We come now to the
crucial concept of gan, where we see the contrast between the idea of Su Shi 蘇軾,
that the encounter with things produces inspiration and so the inspiration really comes from
the impact of outside things on the inside world. And that is exactly the opposite of the point
of view of Zhu Xi. So crucially, rather than emotions, feelings, and knowledge being the
result of the impact of the outside world on the inner self, in Zhu Xi's view, they were an
expression of the constant state of arousal. In a world with the inherent dynamic of two
beginnings, yin and yang, Earth and Heaven, no form and having form,
congealing, collecting, and then dispersing in this alternating two beginnings of yin
and yang, Earth and Heaven. I quote: "Arousal is the marvelous quality of the nature,"
the inner nature, "and the nature is the substance of arousal…
contracting and stretching, motion and stillness, ending and beginning can be unified" by
precisely this process of seeing it as an alternating, ongoing process. "Thus, what
marvelously animates the myriad things is called 'marvelous'," divine in fact, shen 神;
"what penetrates the myriad things is called 'Dao'; and what comprises the substance (the
body) of the myriad things is called 'the nature'."
Virág cites Zhu Xi's own account of "the conceptual breakthrough occasioned by his reading
of Zhang Zai's statement, 'The mind unites the nature and feelings'." Again, not the
ontological division between inner and outer, nature and feelings, but that they are united by
the mind. And that this occasion, reading this statement, a simple statement from Zhang Zai,
is the basis for a conceptual breakthrough for Zhu Xi. "Earlier," says Zhu Xi, "I (had) read
(Hu Hong's) 胡宏 theories, but he only spoke of the mind vis-à-vis the nature, and
didn't utter a word about the feelings. Afterwards, when I read Zhang Zai's statement, 'The
mind unites the nature and feelings', I realized that it was a great theoretical achievement, and
only then did I find the character qing (emotions) being mentioned— one that was
consistent with the ideas of Mencius. Mencius said, 'The feeling of compassion is the
beginning of humaneness'.
Humaneness is the nature and compassion is the feeling." And both of them are there from
the beginning. "This is the mind as regarded from (the point of view of) the feelings. He also
said, 'Humaneness, rightness, ritual propriety, and wisdom (the four) are rooted in the mind',
and this is the mind as regarded from the (point of view of its) nature." So "the mind
encompasses the nature and feelings: the nature is the substance and the feelings the
function." Ti 體, yong 用, two absolutely fundamental categories for
analyzing the coherence of the world at all levels in the Daoxue tradition. So "the nature is
the substance (the body) and the feelings are the function." So what you have here again is
the practice of structuring values: the feelings, the function, the practice, the expression,
when they take form, youxing 有形, as opposed to the nature, is that which is there
before there's movement.
So "the character 'mind'," he says, "is simply the etymological root and therefore the terms
'nature' and 'feelings' share the same radical, 'mind'." Now that doesn't make any sense unless
you look at the Chinese characters and then you see that the character for xin 心 or
the character for mind and heart is to be found on the left side of both the character for nature
and the character for emotions. So that's what he means, it's the etymological root and both
nature and feeling share that same radical for mind.
And as I've already suggested, this is also about before and after movement. Nature and
feelings are not the only polarities unified within the heart. I quote: "The nature is the state
before movement,"
weidong 未動, hasn't yet moved, "and the feelings are the state after movement.

The mind encompasses both the states before and after movement":
both of them, the nature and the emotions. "This blurring of absolute distinctions" or even
oppositions derives from the Doctrine of the Mean, the Zhongyong, which
says, "The state before joy and anger, sadness and happiness, have been aroused is called
'equilibrium' and when they are aroused and all hit their proper measure, it is called
'harmony'." zhonghe 中和. So if the nature is expressing itself, has been cultivated
and is expressing itself, then when one shifts from prior to movement to movement,
the movement expresses naturally that which is there in the nature. The feeling of compassion
expresses the nature of ren.
Zhu Xi summarizes the contrast as between the human mind, renxin 人心, as opposed
to the Dao mind, the mind of the Dao. So the alternating states of "hidden" and "manifest"
carried over into an analysis of the dynamics of human nature and shows that emotions need
not be "tumultuous waves" of "bad desires."
I quote: "When Mencius said that the feelings could be considered good, he meant that proper
emotions were those that flowed out from the nature and originally possessed nothing that
was not good."
For Zhu Xi, bad desires come from the "human mind," good from the "Dao mind." The
former—the human mind— derived from "the selfishness of the physical body." Very
interesting! Once again that term si 私, private, private interests as opposed to public
interest, but here the opposition is not between private and public, but between the private
and that which is correct: the latter, the mind of the Dao, derives from the "correctness of the
innate nature and destiny." Learning, therefore, could not be only book learning; it had also to
be self-reflection and nurture of the Dao mind. So how do we nurture that inner mind, that
inner nature, that liangxin, that good heart? One of the key concepts is jing 敬,
which we've already seen again in the Warring States' versions of Confucian self-cultivation:
not just cheng 誠, sincerity, but also jing, translated as reverence. Curie Virág
gives it a more of a paraphrase than a translation: she calls it "inner mental attentiveness." A
very nice paraphrase for getting us to think outside of the strictly religious box of, "oh,
reverence is reverence with respect to God": inner mental attentiveness. Since the "mind is
originally clear" and simply "concealed by things and affairs," outside things, "if we summon
this mind," the original mind, "it will spontaneously and of itself know right from wrong
(and) good from bad."
The conscience of this good heart is innate,
as long as one is attentive to it and cultivates it. To recover the Dao mind, Zhu Xi called for
"fixing one's mental energy." Mental energy here translates the Chinese jingshen 精神,
which is often translated as spirit, this, yes, one's spirit, [she] translates mental energy. How
do you do it? By means of jing, inner mental attentiveness. That Zhu Xi saw this
activity as "overcoming the self," keji 克己, "and returning to ritual propriety,"
fuli 復禮, is clear from passages such as the following:

"To explain 'holding on to inner mental attentiveness' doesn't require many words. Just
appreciate fully the flavor of these phrases from Cheng Yi: 'be ordered and solemn', 'be
dignified and grave', 'change your countenance', 'set your thoughts in order', 'regulate your
dress and dignify your gaze'." So all of these phrases from Cheng Yi.
"Appreciate fully the flavor of these phrases," he [Zhu Xi] says, "and make a concrete effort
at doing what they say. Then what is called by Cheng Yi 'correcting ourselves within',"
zhinei 直內, literally making yourself straight, "and 'concentrating on one thing',"
zhuyi 主一, "naturally will entail no additional measures. The mind and body will
become reverent, and the outer and inner, one."
So it's about in fact ritual training, keji fuli, ritual training.
"Sit as though you were impersonating an ancestor," the ancient rituals of sacrifice to the
ancestors, "sit as though you were impersonating an ancestor, stand as though you were
performing a sacrifice." "The head should be upright, the eyes looking straight ahead, the feet
steady, the hands respectful, the mouth quiet and composed, the bearing solemn"— these are
all aspects of inner mental attentiveness, of reverence.
"Reverence, he adds, is like standing or having the eyes closed: when one opens the eyes or
starts moving, one will see and act with "rightness." So we see ren associated with
yi. Ren is the weidong, as long as you are standing motionless, eyes
closed, standing in this liangxin, in this good heart, this heart of the Dao, then when
you open your eyes and move in the outside world, come back into the outside world, you
will act with "rightness," correctness. So the relationship between the two states of stillness
and activity,
weidong and yidong, is like "breathing, in which inhaling and exhaling simply
give way one to another": Expression that goes again back to the Daoist statement in Laozi,
tugu naxin 吐故納新, to spit out the old, exhale, breathe in the new, naxin. So,
this is the ritual training.
And here I would like to look for a moment with you at a contemporary account of ritual
training so that we can see that what he is describing here may not be so impossible for us to
understand in our contemporary world. And here I would like to just quote from a very recent
article that appeared in the Atlantic,
after the Las Vegas shootings.
"Neuroscientific research conducted over the past few decades has found that prayer can
radically reshape the human brain, leading to increased focus and peace. In the 1990s,
neuroscientist Andrew Newberg famously studied the brain scans of 150 people from
different religions, from Franciscan nuns to Buddhist monks. He found that those who
engaged deeply in prayer for 12 minutes a day over a couple of months had activated frontal
lobes and quiet parietal lobes. The result? Those who prayed regularly were more focused,
less anxious, and felt more connected to other people. Sara Lazar (Harvard) expanded on
Newberg's findings in 2014. A Harvard neuroscientist, Lazar had been surprised to find how
much her life improved as a result of meditating for a few minutes during yoga classes, which
she initially attended purely as a form of physical therapy. So she conducted several studies
and found that a half-hour of meditation each day yielded differences in brain volume after
just eight weeks. Brain scans showed thickening in four areas: the posterior cingulate
involved in mind wandering, the left hippocampus involved in learning, cognition, memory,
and emotional regulation, the temporoparietal junction involved in empathy and compassion
(ah!), and the pons involved in the production of regulatory neurotransmitters. The scans also
showed that the amygdala involved in anxiety, fear, and stress got smaller." And if you go and
find this article on the Internet and you click on the video where Sarah Lazar explains this
for, in a TED talk, you will see that she shows how this is the exact opposite of what happens
in animals. So that it's the human being's capacity to act on, through his mind or through his
heart, to act on events that can transform them and transform the brain through this ritual
practice, whether it's meditation or prayer.
So what we can say in summary is that Zhu Xi is looking for a middle path: "Probing
principle through the investigation of things" is the active pole of still reverence. I quote:
"Those who devote themselves to seeking it within think that broad investigation is to rush
towards the external realm. Those who devote themselves towards broad investigation" —
he's thinking of Lü Zuqian— "think that inner examination is a narrow endeavor. Both are
instances of degenerating into one-sidedness. This is the great shortcoming of all students."
So find the middle path between Lü Zuqian and Lu Jiuyuan— that's what he is saying.
en
video 4
So we've looked at the process of self-cultivation, of work on the inner self. Now let's look at
the other side, the community responsibility that is also a part of the localist strategy of Zhu
Xi as opposed to the statism of Wang Anshi.
Because this demanding combination of work on the inner self and the "external realm" was
arduous and success was not assured, those who did succeed had a responsibility toward the
larger community that Zhu sought to fill with his "guidebooks for ritual practice such as the
Family Rituals," Zhuzi jiali 朱子家禮, that we've already referred to, but also
"by issuing public proclamations (bang 榜) and community compacts
(xiangyue 鄉約) that enjoined upon individuals to practice mutual responsibility and
surveillance." The proclamations, the bang 榜, concerned basic moral behavior like
"being filial to one's parents," while the compacts, the xiangyue, "include conserving
water, guarding against fires, investigating thefts and robberies, and preventing fights. People
are also urged to not engage in privatized salt trade," one of the typical forms of illegal
economic activity, "(to) kill plow oxen, (to) gamble with their property, (or) practice occult
religions. Members of the community are instructed to 'keep watch over each other', and
those who knowingly fail to report a violation are likewise to receive punishment."
The high moral standards Zhu imposed on his disciples had a corollary found already in
Mencius, who distinguished between men of mind and men of muscle. But in Zhu Xi this
sociological distinction —men of mind and men of muscle: the one rules, the others are ruled
—
now had an ontological foundation. I quote: "While those of more refined Qi could focus on
attending to the mind, those with more turbid (confused) Qi needed to work more diligently
and also be subject to disciplinary forces from without." So here we find back that
sociological division that keeps coming back in the Confucian tradition: the rites are for the
elite, the laws and their punishments are for the lower classes or the people who are outside
of the elite.
"This integrated theory implied that the cultivation of the mind involved a transformation at
the level of one's physical constitution," at the level of one's Qi.
"It also assumed that different individuals had different levels of aptitude in cultivating and
transforming themselves in accordance with the normative patterns:
the quality of one's mind depended on the quality of one's physical endowment Qi, and there
existed inequalities among individuals in terms of this Qi endowment.
But it also highlighted the fact that self-cultivation depended not only upon practice, but also
on learning, which (of course) was strongly geared towards conceptualization and
understanding." That is, it was designed for and produced an educated elite.
Not surprisingly, this elite very quickly lost the Zhu Xi balance—the middle path— and
returned to Tang-style ethical dualism. The example given by Curie Virág is Zhen Dexiu 真德
秀, whose dates are 1178 to 1235, so the end of the Song, who writes: "The surging of the
physical nature is more powerful than galloping horses. Inner mental attentiveness is the reins
that control them. Emotions unleashed are deeper than a flooding river. Inner mental
attentiveness (or reverence) is the dike that holds them back." Not surprisingly, Zhen has
recourse to Han and Tang commentators "to support his convictions." "Fanqing 返
情," that is to say, returning qing, emotions, "is driving back and doing away with
feelings and desires… The junzi delights in attaining the Dao, the small man delights
in attaining his desires." Who are we quoting? Kong Yingda 孔穎達 of the Tang. Virág sees
"Zhen's extreme moral rigidity" "a function of the institutionalization of Neo-Confucianism
and its greater propagation among broader and less literate audiences." At the same time,
Zhen Dexiu addresses his commentary on the Daxue, on the Great Learning,
to Lizong, the emperor who is the one who in fact recognizes Zhu Xi's learning, or Daoxue,
as orthodoxy. I quote from Zhen Dexiu's commentary addressed to Lizong: "The kinds of
desires that the ruler must curb include the propensity for drunkenness, lechery, frivolous
entertainment, and luxurious spending, and the details of these and the negative example set
by past emperors are further outlined in the text. The Daxue yanyi (this commentary)
ends with an exhortation to the ruler to manage his household properly and to ensure that he
does not fall into the ensnaring power of members of his palace, including his wives (of
course), concubines (even more of course) and eunuchs." And Virág concludes: "Zhen's
writings are a particularly clear example of how the discourse of self-cultivation forms part of
the negotiation of political and moral authority between Neo-Confucian court scholars (like
Zhen Dexiu) and the emperor, thus continuing the long-standing political struggle and
symbiosis between ruler and subject that has shaped ethical inquiry in China since its early
beginnings." "Political and moral authority" are of course none other than zhengtong
and daotong, or state and church.
So if Yu Ying-shih is right to see Daoxue as a "result of secularization"— that's where we
began our whole trip through the Song-Liao-Jin-Yuan period— so if he is right to see Daoxue
as a result of a kind of secularization, it also and just as clearly came ever more to resemble a
church: by virtue of its elaboration of a metaphysics —the metaphysics of Qi and li—
and a "strict, doctrinaire program of self-control," as well as its creation of separate
institutions, ritual practices, and (and!) an elite corps with pastoral, prophetic, and priestly
functions. What do I mean, "pastoral"? Well, we just saw him advising the emperor, telling
him what it means concretely to control the emotions and the private desires, so a pastoral
role. A prophetic role: that is to say, if you do not follow this path, then this will be the result,
the disaster, the example of bad emperors who came to disastrous ends. And finally priestly,
that is to say the performance of the rituals described in the Family Rituals of Zhu Xi.
So they had pastoral, prophetic, and priestly functions, this elite core of Daoxue people. And
so we see then that, okay, a secularization, yes, a humanization, a renhua 人化 or
rengehua 人格化, that is part of it, but also the community of Daoxue itself
functioning more and more like the other religions, the other, two other religions, that is to
say Daoism and Buddhism in Song China.
Video 5
So there's one last topic that we cannot not talk about when you talk about Daoxue and that is
the Daoxue academies, the shuyuan 書院 that were set up by the Daoxue people from
the very beginning and embody this new approach to education rooted in its vision of the
moral nature and the moral responsibilities of a member of this Daoxue church. We'll be
relying on a chapter by Linda Walton, "Academies in the Changing Religious Landscape."
The Daoxue movement in the Song distinguished itself institutionally above all by the
foundation of academies outside the public school system.
Their Chan-like lecture halls and rules of conduct have already been mentioned. That's
exactly where that idea of secularization comes in that Yu Ying-shih discusses, that they've
taken over these elements from Chan and secularized them.
As well as their temple-like shrines and sacrifices. In Walton's words, "The attention paid to
ritual and sacrifice in academy life is testimony to the religiosity of Neo-Confucian practice."
Academies were often "erected on the foundations of shrines to Confucian scholars…
Shrines, and later academies built around them, became sites on a Neo-Confucian pilgrimage
route."
In the Academy of the Illumined Way (明道書院), for example, the central shrine was
dedicated to Cheng Hao. I quote: "The pedagogical role of the shrine hall image of Cheng
Hao was coupled with the reading of his works, which were also printed at Illumined Way. In
the words of Prefect Ma Guangzu 馬光祖, 'When one enters Master Cheng's hall, one must
read his writings. Only when one reads his writings can one understand his Way, keep it in
one's heart, and put it into practice'."
In 1286, beginning of the Yuan, the Green Fields Academy (青田書院) was built to honor Lu
Jiuyuan and his two brothers, three of them, "using the Lu family shrine at their residence as
the foundation. In his inscription, the Yuan scholar Cheng Jufu 程鉅夫," whose dates are
1249 to 1318, "wrote," I quote, 'the Way is not attached to a place, but it is from the traces
that we know things, and by means of these things, we see the men, enabling scholars of later
times to observe and emulate them, and express their feelings. Thus it is as though they are
present in this place'." And when you read that, you think of Confucius: how are you to
worship the gods or the ancestors? Jishen rushenzai 祭神如神在, "worship them as
though they were present." "Thus it is as though they are present in this place," that's what a
pilgrimage in any religion is all about: they're dead and gone and yet they're somehow present
because they've left tracks, they've left traces, they've left relics, "and such is the reason for
the creation of Green Fields academy."
In a 1269 inscription for an academy shrine dedicated to Han Yu 韓愈, we read: "Daily
viewing the images, how can we not know what to respect and honor?" So there were images
of the heroes of the Daoxue movement in these shrines, just like in the temples of the popular
religion or in the Buddhist temples or the Daoist temples. So, "Daily viewing the images,
how can we not know what to respect and honor?"
As of 1291, official Yuan policy "permitted the establishment of academies in 'places where
former Confucians had taught, famous worthies had been active, and family philanthropy
provided the means to support education'. Similar phrases are repeated in academy
inscriptions, such as the one composed for the Mount Mao 貿山 academy in his home county,
Yin 鄞, by Yuan Jue 袁桷, whose dates are 1266 to 1327. And I quote from Yuan Jue: "In the
past 100 years, we have begun to serve former teachers. In each place where they have
resided, taught, held office and studied, they are revered and looked up to."
And another inscription by the same Yuan Jue, and this will be our last phrase from the Song-
Liao-Jin-Yuan period: "Today in the commanderies and counties the shrines to Zhu Xi are
most widespread."
en

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