Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song at Washington College to teach Ruism, global philosophies and religions.

We have used one session to introduce the thought of Zhu Xi as the reservoir of the Daoxue movement. As explained in that session, the term “reservoir” means that not only the thought of Daoxue prior to Zhu Xi confluenced into him, but that later thinkers may disagree with him after learning him. Therefore, in this session, we’ll introduce the thought of Wang Yangming (1472-1529 C.E), a major dissent from Zhu Xi in the later Daoxue movement.

A major historical context to understand the rising of Wang Yangming’s thought is that since being endorsed officially by Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), Zhu Xi’s philosophy, which emphasizes the intellectual investigation and analytic analysis of the principles (理) of things and affairs, had been misused by many Ru literati as an excuse of pedantry and formalism just for tactically making it through the civil examination. This engendered strong critiques from devoted Ru practitioners such as Wang Yangming. Moreover, after the defeat of Song Dynasty by the nomadic Mongols, the imperial regime became increasingly authoritarian, and the royal families headed by mercurial emperors were also more and more reluctant to accept the co-governing role of Ru governmental-officials. Since the top down approach of relying upon emperors’ support to realize Ruism being shut down, Ru activists had to pave an alternative path from the bottom up capable of propagating Ruism extensively among commoners. Wang Yangming advocates the attainment of the “conscientious knowing (良知, liangzhi),” an innate intuitive awareness of morality, as the sole and final pursuit of individuals’ self-cultivation, and hence, furnishes a new foundation for the changing ethos in the conclusive stage of the Daoxue movement.

No dissent of Wang Yangming from Zhu Xi is more visible than their varying interpretations of the spiritual steps of self-cultivation in the Great Learning. For Zhu Xi, whether one is able to authenticate their intentions so as to rectify their heartmind depends upon a cumulative process of investigating things to attain the knowledge of principles. The dimension of the heartmind which complies with principles comprises the innately good human nature endowed by Tian, whereas the one of the heartmind which does not entirely abide by principles is considered as human feelings, which include sensations, emotions, desires and other embodied human dispositions. Therefore, a dictum of Zhu Xi’s philosophy is “the heartmind encompasses (human) nature and feelings (心统性情).” (Chen 2000: 251-256) Self-cultivation is accordingly characterized as a process of perfecting human feelings via cumulatively investigating things so as to preserve the good human nature rooted in the cosmic principle of Tian. Nevertheless, for Wang, the authentication of intentions does not rest upon this outwardly oriented process of investigating principles of things. Traditional Ru virtues (such as humaneness, righteousness, ritual-propriety and wisdom) are thought of by Wang as being inherent to the heartmind. Consequently, the principles of these virtues, which speak to the ways how individuals co-flourish in nurturing human relationships integral to a sustainable civilization, are also inherent to the heartmind. Instead of considering the heartmind as encompassing the “nature” and “feelings” of which only the nature abides by principles, Wang insists that “the heartmind is the principle (心即理)” and “no principle outside the heartmind (心外无理).” (Wang 1992, 传习录 Instruction for Practical Living: 2)

Zhu’s insistence upon the necessity of investigating principles of things leads to his tendency of emphasizing the temporary priority of knowledge over action. However, since he advocates no principle outside the heartmind, Wang exhorts “the union of knowledge and action (知行合一),” which implies that the sheer awareness towards a concrete case of being moral leads immediately to one’s attitude of affirming as well as the action of executing it. (Wang 1992: 3-5) For instance, if one merely knows the virtue of filiety (孝) towards their parents without actually doing anything about it, this is for Wang not a genuine kind of moral knowledge. In the more mature stage of his thought, Wang furthermore developed the idea of genuine moral knowledge into one of “conscientious knowing (良知, liangzhi),” and pivoted his entire moral philosophy upon the action of “attaining conscientious knowing (致良知).” In other words, Wang believes that there is an innate dimension of the human heartmind which provides individuals with spontaneous and infallible moral intuitions to varying situations. Rather than construing zhizhi (致知) in the Great Learning as “attaining the knowledge” of principles which comes after investigating things (格物, gewu), Wang interpretes zhizhi as “attaining conscientious knowing” and gewu as “rectifying things.” Wang claims that the primary step of self-cultivation should be to recover one’s innate conscientious knowing which does not derive from empirical knowledge of the outside world, and then, to rectify outward things from evil to good using the standard of moral intuitions furnished by the conscientious knowing. (Wang 1992, 大学问 An Inquiry into the Great Learning: 967-973)

In the second before the last year of his life, Wang developed a “four-sentence teaching (四句教),” which crystallizes all the aforementioned major propositions of Wang’s moral philosophy and has engendered riveting debates and controversies among later Ru thinkers. Wang says “The fundamental state of heartmind is neither good nor evil. There are good and evil when intentions are aroused. The conscientious knowing knows good and evil. Doing good and eliminating evil is to rectify things.” (Wang 1992: 117) An exegesis is furnished as follows:

The term xinti (心體) in the first sentence reminds of Mengzi’s contemplative practice of oceanic vital-energy conducive to the unitary feeling of one body with the universe, and signifies the ontological bond of humanity with Tian. The fundamental state of human existence is neither good nor evil because Tian has its mysterious power to have everything exist and change together in the broadest cosmic scale. From the perspective of Tian, any created thing is ipso facto good since it manifests Tian’s sublime creativity by default. This sort of “goodness,” characterized by Wang also as “utterly good (至善),” has no dialectical relationship with “evil,” and is thus nondualist par excellence. (Wang 1992: 29, 119) More importantly, if the fundamental state of heartmind endowed by Tian is well maintained, the way one does good and eliminates evil in the human world would be just as spontaneous and non-contrived as how Tian’s creativity proceeds in the cosmic realm. Such a naturally flowing state of being moral appears to be “as if there is neither good nor evil.” (Wang 1992: 29) Wang highlights this ideal state of morality in order to prevent humans from being mired into dualistic or oppositional moralistic wars, in which they may fight each other using one limited perception of goodness against another.

Wang construes the yi (意) in the second sentence as “the arousal of heartmind,” viz., the affective reaction of heartmind to external things, such as the feelings of love towards benefits and of hate towards harms. (Wang 1992: 6)Therefore, it means intentions. One’s intentions towards concrete things could be good and evil because it is not the case that every intention complies with the utter goodness of Tian’s all-encompassing and spontaneous creativity, and is able to respond to things appropriately so as to create evolving harmonies in the human world. Instead, one’s “habitual dispositions (習氣)” and “selfish desires (私慾)” (Wang 1992: 2, 984) obscure the original good state of heartmind, and force them to intend benefits and avoid harms not according to the cosmic principle of Tian, but per their possessive, divisive and combative needs. One’s perceptions and pursuits of good and evil would consequently lose the nondualist nature of the fundamental state of heartmind, and inevitably lead to disharmonies in society.

However, despite the potential of intentions to go astray from the fundamental state of heartmind, there always remains a consciousness integral to the state, which can pull back the strayed intentions and reorient them towards the right path. Wang terms the consciousness as conscientious knowing (liangzhi), and believes it has an innate epistemic ability of knowing morals as stated in the third sentence. Since liangzhi belongs to the fundamental state of heartmind continuous with Tian’s creativity, moral judgements made by liangzhi are also spontaneous and natural, as Wang says, “The heartmind can naturally know, … as one naturally knows to be commiserate with a baby about to fall into a well. This is what I mean by ‘conscientious knowing.’” (Wang 1992: 2) Finally, since the liangzhi spontaneously and perfectly knows good and evil, one just needs to invest efforts maintaining it while rectifying things into good per the injunction of liangzhi.

Among the four sentences, the first one has been the most controversial because devoted Ru after Wang opposed the seemingly Buddhist language using which Wang described the cosmic root of human nature as with no good nor evil. Ru scholars more prone to Zhu Xi’s thought also reemphasized the role of empirical knowledge in one’s moral pursuit, and hence, disapproved of the apparently anti-intellectual moral intuitionism hinted by Wang’s teaching of liangzhi. The origin of evil as rooted in one’s selfish desires is also frequently challenged, since these desires, as being integral to human heartmind, are also supposed to be manifestations of the utterly good cosmic creative power of Tian. In a historical hindsight, Wang Yangming’s four- sentence teaching is a potent catalyst for the conclusive stage of the Daoxue movement, which has continually stimulated the innovation of Ru thought in its modern and contemporary forms.

Metaphysics, as a discipline beyond physics, concerns itself with something more abstract than the concrete stuff of the world. It includes two major sections: cosmology and ontology. Cosmology, as the logos (science) of cosmos, investigates how the cosmos originates and evolves. Ontology, as the logos (science) of ‘being’, probes the most generic features of entities in so far as they ‘are.’ In western philosophy, these two parts of metaphysics can be discussed together, such as in Plato’s Timaeus. Or, they may be elaborated separately. For instance, Aristotle’s De Caelo prioritizes cosmology, while his Metaphysics prioritizes ontology.

Today, a rumor has been circulating among scholars that Ruism pays too much attention to ethics and statecraft to show much, or even any, interest in metaphysics. These scholars include New Age orientalists: they are dismayed by classical western thought for a variety of reasons, and are trying to find a total alternative in ancient Chinese thought. Similar ideas are entertained by some begrudging Daoists: they strive to usurp every sentence mentioning ‘Dao’ in ancient Chinese texts and to assert, therefore, that Ruism has nothing distinctive to contribute to ancient Chinese metaphysics. There are also some East Asian scholars, who are so obsessed with the agenda of post-modernism that they tend to be opposed to investigating the deepest, grandest and most imperishable concerns of ancient Chinese thought. Regardless, all these scholars commit a common error: they see in Ruism what they want to see even before they turned their eyes to it. Using the words of Xunzi (313-238 BCE), a great Ru philosopher in classical Ruism, these scholars’ minds are all ‘narrowed by one particular angle and thus become ignorant of the complete truth’ (蔽於一曲而暗於大理）.

Ruism, as a comprehensive way of life which has had so deep an influence upon virtually every facet of ancient East and South Asian civilization, cannot have failed to have a deep interest in metaphysics. Its well-known strong emphasis upon ethics was actually always grounded in its systematic thinking about the origin of cosmos and the regulative principles of cosmic realities. For me, this is the major reason why I once portrayed Ruism as a religious humanism, rather than simply humanism per se.

Interestingly enough, for a Ru learner, Ru metaphysics is even easier to find than its western partner since cosmology and ontology were almost always discussed together in the same texts. In the remaining part of this essay, I will try to illustrate, in the most succinct way, where, how and what is Ru metaphysics.

Firstly, where did Ruist metaphysics come from?

Two seminal texts, together with their commentaries, define Ru metaphysics. One is the Appended Texts (繫辭), also called the Great Commentary (大傳), part of the Classic of Change (易經). This text was perhaps compiled between Mencius (372-289 BCE) and Xunzi; even so, the Ru tradition ascribed its authorship to Confucius himself. Although this ascription is continually debated, I tend to believe, relying on all evidence that we can gather today, that even if it was not actually written by Confucius, it is certain that this text was heavily influenced by Confucius’s thought. Among commentaries on the Great Commentary, the most influential for the Ru metaphysical tradition were composed by Ru scholars between the Han and Tang Dynasties: Zheng Xuan (鄭玄, 127-200 CE), Wang Bi (王弼, 226-249 CE), Han Kang-bo (韓康伯, 332-380 CE), and Kong Ying-da (孔穎達, 574-648 CE), for instance. For English readers, Richard J. Lynn’s translation of the Classic of Changes is a good start for learning both the seminal text and its commentaries.

The other fundamental text is the Diagram of Ultimate Polarity (太極圖) and its Illustration of the Diagram of Ultimate Polarity (太極圖說), which was composed by Zhou Dun-yi (周敦颐, 1017-1073 CE). Based upon Confucius’s insights in the Great Commentary, Zhou Dun-yi presented the densest and most vivid illustration of Ru metaphysics for Song and Ming Neo-Ruism. After Zhou Dun-yi, it was Zhu Xi’s commentaries and essays on Zhou Dun-Yi’s seminal text that systematized and deepened the Neo-Ruist metaphysics. Although there were exemplary thinkers later, such as Cao Duan (曹端, 1376-1434 CE) and Luo Qin-shun (羅欽順, 1465-1547 CE), who revised Zhu Xi’s metaphysics quite a bit, the basic metaphysical structure of Neo-Ruism remained definitive in Zhou Dun-yi’s and Zhu Xi’s thought. For English readers, the best starting-point for appreciating this tradition is Joseph A. Adler’s translation and study of the concerned texts.

Secondly, how metaphysical is Ruism?

The short answer is, very. To prove this, I only need to point out that Ru spirituality in some of its historical periods was even thought to be too metaphysical by later Ru scholars so that they needed to launch a movement to counteract it. One example is Han Yu (768-824 CE)’s ‘Movement of Ancient Prose.’ In the face of the Tang Dynasty’s decline, triggered by the An-Shi Rebellion (安史之亂, 755-763 CE) , Han Yu thought that the major reason leading to this crisis had been that the Ru literati in his time had learned too much metaphysics from pre-Tang dynasties’ metaphysicians and that these literati’s genre of writing was accordingly too decorative and flowery. Instead, in order to stop the dynastic decline, Han Yu urged a plainer genre of literary writing and required Ru literati to focus more on ethics and statecraft, rather than metaphysics. On similar grounds, the challenge brought by Lu Jiu-yuan (1139-1193 CE) and Wang Yang-ming’s School of Mind-Heart in opposition to Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi’s School of Principle within Neo-Ruism is another great example. What happened was that, since he was one of the most metaphysical minds in the Ru tradition, Zhu Xi’s teaching encouraged a tendency among Ru literati which emphasized the meticulous study of Ru literature along with metaphysical speculations concerning the outside world. Instead, Lu Xiang-shan and Wang Yang-ming urged the literati to concentrate more upon one’s own inner personality so that one’s Ru knowledge could be of more practical use in the actual human world. Unsurprisingly, since these reform movements within Ruism were not very friendly to metaphysical thinking, their contribution to Ru spirituality was mainly about ethics, spiritual formation and statecraft. In other words, if nowadays people want to learn the basics of Ru metaphysics, they still need to look for it in the Ru schools that these movements were opposing: Wang Bi’s and Han Kang-bo’s commentaries of the Great Commentary, and Zhou Dun-yi’s and Zhu Xi’s thoughts on Ultimate Polarity.

Finally, what exactly is Ru metaphysics?

It is impossible to present a full profile of Ru metaphysics in one Huff-Post essay. However, in order to glimpse at the depth of Ru metaphysics, it would be helpful to address one of its key issues: the relationship between the ultimate reality, Tian (天, Heaven), and derived realities, the myriad things under Tian (天下萬物, tian-xia-wan-wu). Apparently, this issue is similar to the one of the relationship between God and the world in the Greek-Christian tradition.

In the Greek-Christian tradition, according to how God or God’s existence is conceived, theological discourses are divided into theism, polytheism, henotheism, and atheism, etc. According to how the relationship between God and the created world is conceived, theological discourse could be further categorized as pantheism (God is equal to everything in the world), panentheism (God permeates while simultaneously transcending everything in the world), deism, or acosmism (the world is not real but an illusion), etc. Keeping all these terms in mind, and relying upon my knowledge of the Ru metaphysics implied by the aforementioned seminal texts and commentaries, I will try my best to characterize Ruism as a Mono-Pan-En-Non-Theism. Yes, you read it right! I indeed wrote, ‘monopanennontheism’, which term’s complexity may sound awkward enough to require the following explanations.

Firstly, why ‘mono-‘? As I have explained several times before, ultimate reality in Ruism is Tian, an all-encompassing, constantly creative cosmic power which permeates everything. However, within this all-inclusive cap phenomenon, Ru metaphysics investigates further various ontological principles that can explain both the origin and the order of cosmic changes. For example, these principles include ‘the five phases’ (water, wood, metal, fire, earth), the interaction of which explains how things emerge and become. These five phases are thought of as functioning in the temporal framework of ‘the four seasons’ (spring, summer, autumn and winter), whose generative power is periodic but not cyclic. In other words, the creative force symbolized by the periodic movement of ‘the four seasons’ realizes the entire cosmos as an endless process advancing into novelty. Further, all the creative powers of ‘the five phases’ and ‘the four seasons’ are a manifestation of the one of ‘Yin and Yang vital-energies’ (氣, qi) , which are the most generic and determinate pair of categories that the traditional Chinese mindset ever invented for explaining the world. Yet, the story doesn’t stop there. Even beyond ‘Yin and Yang vital-energies’, Ru metaphysics believes that there is one singular, ontologically unconditional creative act, Ultimate Polarity (太極), which creates the entire world, including the Yin and Yang vital-energies, the four seasons, and the five phases, etc. In so far as Ru metaphysics avers that there is one singular principle that accounts for both the origin and the order of the entire created world, it is a ‘mono-‘ tradition.

Secondly, why ‘pan-‘ ? This is because of the Ru metaphysical view that the changing-and-becoming process experienced by each determinate thing within Tian is a manifestation of Tian’s creative power. Not only does Tian create, but everything within Tian also strives for being, becoming and growing. Because Tian’s creativity is ultimately grounded in the one of Ultimate Polarity, this ‘pan-‘ mode of Ru metaphysics is nicely captured by the Neo-Ruist motto that ‘Each thing has its own Ultimate Polarity’ (物物一太極) .

Thirdly, why ‘en-‘? All the creative powers that are embodied and brought about in the becomings of all concrete things cannot exhaust Ultimate Polarity’s creativity. In other words, Tian is not equal to the myriad things under Tian, and as a result, Tian’s creativity always has the potential to break through and challenge any status quo of cosmic realities which may have already been safely grasped by an established set of human knowledge. In the words of the Great Commentary, this inexhaustible and unfathomable creative power of Tian is termed as the one of ‘birth birth’ (生生, sheng-sheng), or ‘continual creation’.

Fourthly, why ‘non-theism’? First, Ruism is not atheism. Atheism, as it is particularly meant by Marxism in today’s China, is anti-religious and thus, denies any kind of ‘divine reality.’ However, for Ruism, Tian is ultimate. Its creative power ‘grounds’ all derived realities, and hence, its sublime creativity is taken to be an ideal that Ru learners (士, shi) try to emulate and realize in the human world. In this sense, Tian is holy and sacred. Ruism’s commitment to Tian’s creativity has a distinctively religious character.

On the other hand, Ruism is not theism, either. As described above, the deepest dimension of Tian’s creativity, Ultimate Polarity, is an unconditional ontological creative act without an actor or creator standing behind the scene. Because of Ultimate Polarity’s non-theistic and unconditional features, the process by means of which Tian creates the myriad of things under itself is incongruent with what the mainstream Greek-Christian idea of divine creation tries to convey. In particular, it is not that Tian puts intelligible forms into an amorphous matter so that concrete things are created. Instead, in the Ruist case, ultimate reality and derived realities maintain a tricky relationship of ‘two-fold asymmetry’. On the one hand, Ultimate Polarity is ontologically prior to all concrete cosmic realities, and therefore, Ruism believes that, as the singular ontological principle, Ultimate Polarity creates the entire world. On the other hand, since Ultimate Polarity is ontologically prior to anything in the world, including human intelligence and knowledge, anything we can know about how Ultimate Polarity creates must be drawn out 100% from our investigation about the de facto statuses of derived realities. In other words, derived realities are epistemologically prior to ultimate reality, and therefore, there is just no way for Ruism to assert that there might be any purpose, plan, or anthropomorphic telos which is inserted into the created world by Ultimate Polarity prior to its creative act actually taking place. As a consequence, Ruism’s standard conception of the cosmos is that this is a natural process of spontaneous emergence, which has no theistic telos to guide it.

In a word, Tian’s creativity is sublime. It is constant and all-encompassing. Nevertheless, ultimately, Tian’s creativity is not human. In Ruism’s view, only humans have visions and responsibilities to manifest Tian’s creativity in the human world and in a particularly human, that is, humane (仁, ren), way. At the conclusion of this essay, we can see that the religious commitment of Ruism towards the ‘non-theism’ of Tian’s creativity lays down a firm ground for its equally unflinching emphasis upon humanistic thinking and practices.

(This article is originally published in Huffpost.)

If there is anything of which the Chinese Ru (Confucian) Tradition should feel guilty about, it is the past practice of female foot-binding in late imperial China. This does not mean that it was Ruism alone that caused the perpetuation of this awful custom that had wrought so much pain and suffering to women. Neither does it mean that Ruism does not have its own resources to correct itself in order to avoid anything similar in the future. In this essay, I will write down basic facts that contemporary Ruists should know in order to reflect, at first, and then, keep vigilant.

Q: When did the practice of foot-binding start?

A: The origin of female foot-binding had nothing to do with Ruism. According to a well-accepted view among historians, foot-binding began in the period of Wu Dai (907-979 C.E), which was more than one thousand years later after the life of Confucius (551-479 B.C.E). A frequently told story is about Li Yu (937-978C.E), the corrupted emperor of Nan Tang (937-975 C.E) who was more able to compose poetry than govern his state. He bound the feet of a court dancer called Yao Niang using silks so as to create a particular type of postures and movements for Yao Niang’s body to appear supple and sexually attractive. Since this kind of foot-binding was initially created for dancing, it had not yet evolved into the painful mutilation of women’s feet as seen later in the Ming (1368-1644 C.E) and Qing (1644-1911 C.E) Dynasties.

Q: How did the practice of foot-finding get developed?

A: There are three stages for the development of the foot-binding custom. From Wu Dai to Northern Song (960-1127 C.E) was the first stage, when foot-binding was visible mainly in the royal families, in the class called “Shi Da Fu” (senior scholar-officials) and other associated social elite’s circles. The practice was mostly seen in the cities. From Southern Song (1127-1279 C.E) to Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368 C.E) was the second stage, when the practice of foot-binding spread to ordinary households, and even young girls of 4 or 5 years old were sometimes required to bind their feet in order to have a fortunate marriage prospect. Ming and Qing Dynasties were the last stage when foot-binding became a ubiquitous social norm, and the way to bind feet was also becoming the most abusive: women did not only need to bind their feet, they, from a very young age, also needed to mutilate, or even cut away part of their feet in order that their grown feet could look like a “three-inch golden lotus.”

As how most social norms spread to the general populace, a pattern can be discerned concerning the development of the foot-binding custom: the poor people imitated what the rich people did, the rural imitated the urban, the rich and urban imitated the politically powerful and the politically powerful imitated the royal families.

Q: What is the relationship between the practice of foot-binding and Ruism?

A: Even though it is difficult to find statements in Ruist classics that explicitly promoted the practice of foot-binding in those specific historical periods, the sociological and philosophical foundation of Ruism did provide rich soil that allowed foot-binding to flourish.

The membership of the aforementioned social class “senior scholar-officials” depended upon whether one can pass the civil examination and then, be officially appointed in a governmental position by the emperor. The major content of the civil examination is Ruist canons. In this way, since those “senior scholar-officials” were one of the most powerful social engines that spread the aesthetics associated with foot-binding, these officials, as well as the Ru Tradition they sustained, cannot be exonerated from the blame of condoning or even actually perpetuating this brutal practice of foot-binding.

One of the aims of the political philosophy of Ruism is to create harmony and stability within a justifiable hierarchy of social classes. The mainstream Ruist teaching in those time periods understood the marital relationship between husband and wife as hierarchical: the husband needs to be a model taking a leading role in his family, and the wife is expected to be an able assistant to her spouse. Although Ruism does not support wives to be mindlessly subservient to their husbands, the basic formation of Ruist family ethics risked a facile alliance with the patriarchal abuse of power with a result that some inhumane social rites, such as foot-binding, cannot be easily hurdled. As a consequence, as early as Yuan Dynasty, the increasingly popular practice of foot-binding was seen as aiming to cultivate women’s Ruist virtues, such as chastity and feminine propriety.

Q: Were there Ruists opposing the practice of foot-binding?

A: Yes! The practice of foot-binding ran counter to the central principle of Ru spirituality: the cardinal virtue of Ren (humaneness), which longs for the full-flourishing of all humans’ life in their dynamic and harmonious relationships, as well as the virtue of Xiao (filiality), which takes “not injuring one’s body” as one’s first duty. Throughout all the three stages of the foot-binding custom, there were Ruists standing up and voicing their dissent against the custom using Ruist principles. In its latest stage, Ruists even became a major reformative social group campaigning for the custom’s repeal. Some examples can be seen as following:

In the first stage, when the practice of foot-binding had not yet been spread to rural areas and ordinary households, Xu Ji (1023-1103 C.E), one of the pioneering Ruists in the so-called “Dao Xue” (“learning of Dao,” usually translated as “neo-Confucianism”) movement, denounced it in a poignant manner: when Xu Ji wrote a poem praising one virtuous woman who, through years, made great efforts to organize a decent funeral ritual for each of her 18 passed family members, he said: “She planted the pine-trees by her own hands, and then, all her body was stained with mud. Did she have any vain time to bind her two feet? She only knew how to work diligently using her four limbs.” [1] Here, unbinding one’s feet was seen by Xu Ji as a condition to fulfill a woman’s family obligation, while the upper-class fashion of women’s foot-binding, due to its associated aesthetics of vanity and indolence, is lampooned.

In the second stage, when the foot-binding custom gradually infiltrated ordinary households and even toddlers began to be required to do so, Che Ruoshui (1210-1275 C.E), who was well-known as a Ruist “being deeply convinced by Zhu Xi’s Collective Commentary of Four Books”, boycotted the custom using a compassionate heart: “To bind women’s feet, I do not know when this practice started. My little daughter is only four or five years old. Since she is so innocent, should we torture her with so much pain? If we bound her feet to such a small size, of what use was it?” Because these words were said in the context of Che Ruoshui’s discussion of Mencius’ thought on “accumulating one’s rightful deeds” (集義), Che was implicitly employing Mencius’ famous teaching about the incipient sprout of the innately good human nature to arouse people’s compassion to stop the inhuman practice of foot-binding: if people cannot help having a feeling of alarm and commiseration when they see a baby falling into a well, can we not help having exactly the same feeling when we see our young daughters have to bind their feet?

Again, during the Yuan Dynasty in the second stage when the foot-binding practice continued to gather its popularity, Bai Ting (1248-1328 C.E), an officially appointed Ruist teacher traveling and lecturing in various local schools, forcefully opposed it. The way Bai voiced his dissent was to cite the story of Cheng Yi’s family. Cheng Yi (1033-1107 C.E) was one definitive figure of the Dao Xue movement in Northern Song. His grandson was called Cheng Huai. According to Bai Ting’s record, “the extensive family of Cheng Huai lived in Chi Yang. No women bound their feet. Neither did any of them pierce her ears. Cheng’s family followed this rule until now.” [3]. This record does not only speak to the protesting stance of Bai Ting against foot-binding, it also tells us that Cheng Yi, the founding Ruist for the Dao Xue movement actually did not approve of foot-binding, and Cheng Yi took it as a family rule that no women within his extensive family, including his offsprings, can bind their feet.

In the third stage, when the practice of foot-binding turned into a social routine, Ruists became a powerful social group campaigning for its repeal. In this regard, two examples can let us get a glimpse into this historical trend.

Qian Yong (1759-1844 C.E), among many other contemporaneous Ruists sharing a reformative ethos in early and middle Qing dynasty, argued: “if women’s feet are bound, the being of two modes will not be perfected. If the being of two modes is not perfected, their male and female offsprings will be weak and feeble. If all men and women are weak and feeble, everything in human society will fall apart!” [4] Here, the phrase of “two modes” (两儀) was borrowed from one of the Ruist canon, the Classic of Change, and referred to man and woman.

Also, among all reformative Ruists in the third stage, Kang You-wei (1858-1927 C.E) was one of the most active. He did not only argue for the cruelty of the foot-binding custom, he also launched social movements and established organizations to implement his critical ideas. He once adamantly urged to repeal the custom in such a way: “In the view of a state’s government, it (the practice of foot-binding) abuses power to punish innocent women; In the view of the virtue of parental kindness, it hurts parents’ feelings of humaneness and love; in the view of hygiene, it breaks women’s bones and causes their diseases; in the view of military competition, generations of weak people will be born; in the view of aesthetics and culture, it will make a barbarian country mocked by its neighbors. If we can bear this, what else can we not bear?” [5] Here, as for other similar examples, we find underlying Ruist principles for Kang’s argument, and therefore, although it was only after the end of the imperial China (1911 C.E) that the practice of foot-binding was finally eliminated in China, we need to know that Ruists were once major contributors helping this day to come earlier.

Q: What can we learn from the shown complex relationship between the foot-binding practice and Ruism?

A: At least two important lessons contemporary Ruists must learn from the concerned relationship:

First, even though hierarchical systems are still a worthy ideal for the development of human civilization due to efficiency and meritocratic justice, there is no need to sustain such a standard in some interpersonal relationships such as marriage. Married couples can cooperate in various ways depending upon their different personalities, abilities, and expertise. In some circumstances, men may play a leading role. In others, it may be women who go to take the lead. Regardless, contemporary Ruism must make a maximal use of its own resources to support the full-flourishing of women’s life in both domestic and non-domestic contexts. The role of women in family should neither be confined in assisting a leading patriarch nor giving birth to and taking care of offsprings. Women should have the opportunity to flourish, giving them a chance to build a legacy which could be equally as memorable as any man.

Second, one idiosyncratic feature of Ru spirituality is its persistent emphasis upon the role of li (禮, cultural symbols and facilities, usually translated as “rituals” or “rites” ) in the process of creating and sustaining high human civilization. However, good li leads to high civilization, but bad li can destroy it. Informed by the intricate relationship between the tragic custom of foot-binding and historical Ruism, contemporary Ruists should be on a constant alert to any degenerating tendency of established cultural systems and social norms, and thus, be prepared to use our full strengths to fix any new problems on the horizon. In this regard, we should keep Lao Zi’s Daoist criticism (the Dao De Jing, Chapter 38) of the Ru project of social construction and Confucius’ Ruist self-criticism (the Analects, 3.3) of the same project constantly in mind: being a Ru is to believe that li demarcates the humanistic feature of humanity; however, if misused, li can become inhumane.

Notes:

[1] 徐积, 節孝集, 卷十四. Translations are my own, including the following.

[2] 车若水, 脚氣集, 卷一.

[3] 白珽, 湛淵静語, 卷一.

[4] 錢泳, 履園叢話, 卷二三.

[5] 康有為政論集，北京：中華書局, 1981: 335-336.

Further Readings:

[1] A video on foot-binding made by KANOJIA and D’SOUZA

[2] “Why Footbinding Persisted in China for a Millennium”

[3] “The Art of Social Change”

[4] Levy, Howard S. Chinese Footbinding: The History of a Curious Erotic Custom. Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1966.

[5] Wang Ping, Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China. NY: Anchor Books, 2000.

(This article has been published in Huffpost, April 4th, 2016)

According to China’s Lunar Calendar, the Clear and Bright Day (清明節) will be on April 4 this year (2016). Traditionally, this is the time for families to visit their ancestors’ tombs to perform a ritual of ‘ancestor devotion’ (祭祖). For this reason, Clear and Bright Day is also translated into English as ‘Tomb Sweeping Day.’

If there is a single ritual which speaks to the resilience of the Ruist tradition, it is ‘ancestor devotion.’ Its history began long before the time of Confucius [551-479 BCE], although the role of Confucius and his Ruist school may be seen as having educated people about the spiritual and ethical importance of this ritual and thus to having transformed people’s minds in this regard. Even during the hardest times for Ruism, the early 20th century when Ruism was accused by China’s westernized intellectuals of being culpable for the backwardness of Chinese society, the performance of this ritual remained ubiquitous. This is the case, not only in China, but also for the greater part of South and East Asia which were influenced by Ruism, and also to a certain degree for the Chinese diaspora throughout Western societies. Today, some sociologists have even argued that if the performance of ‘ancestor devotion’ can be seen as a sign that the devotees have affiliated themselves to Ruism, Ruism may be counted as the largest religion in the world with the largest number of adherents.

So, why is this ritual so powerful? The reason is clearly related to ‘the Ruist view of death.’ In a succinct way, I can summarize this view as follows: a Ru lives every moment of life under the shadow of death and is continually trying his or her best to create a condition of dynamic harmony within evolving life situations. There is no doubt that, from a human perspective, disharmonious factors are always present in the world. But the ideal of continually realizing dynamic harmony always stands front and center. That’s the reason I use the phrase ‘continually trying one’s best.’ In this sense, the image of ‘a non-violent warrior’ who fights for harmony up until death may be seen as a portrait of the ‘vertical’ dimension of a Ru’s life, since it announces a sort of existential constant during each moment of life. In this vertical view, “If one hears the Dao in the morning, one can die at ease in the evening” (Analects, 4:8), since every moment of a Ru’s life is virtually the same as every other. However, in a horizontal view, the target of a Ru’s life is to achieve ‘cultural immortality.’ Through an arduous process of moral self-cultivation, a Ru tries to accumulate his or her merits in his or her words (立言), works (立功) and moral worths (立德) so that he or she will be able to make a great contribution to human civilization, and thus to yield cultural influences which after death do not decay over time. Understood in this horizontal way, the ritual of ‘ancestor devotion’ is a distinctly Ruist way for ordinary people in their households, in their family clans and in their local communities to practice the Ruist teaching concerning cultural immortality.

Three key points still need to be explained in order to avoid any possible misunderstanding about the purpose of this ritual. First, solidarity and order to be brought to one’s family, and agreeable effects to be brought to every individual’s moral self-cultivation, are the aspects of this ritual which are most emphasized by Ruism. For instance, during a performance of the ritual, certain rules must be followed, which demand appropriate reciprocal interactions among family members based upon their ages and status differences. One’s ancestors’ deeds and virtues must be memorialized and appreciated, as they will have set moral examples for their descendants to follow. The eldest in each family, especially, must perform the ritual sincerely so as to demonstrate the virtue of ‘filial piety’ (孝) toward the ancestors; doing so is essential if these elders intend that other family members continue to practice this virtue towards themselves. Furthermore, a cultural consciousness deep within the ritual performers is the hope that their own lives will also be memorialized by their offspring, generation after generation. Accordingly, everyone must try their best to become ‘good guys’ to protect against a case in which nothing about their life turns out to be worth memorializing.

Secondly, if we take these factors into consideration, we can understand that the ‘blessing’ which people hope to receive during the ritual is not from some kind of ‘petitionary prayer,’ which thereby must assume a certain degree of deification of the ancestors. Offering a petitionary prayer would indicate that people think that if they have provided outstanding offerings to the spirits or ghosts of the ancestors and have behaved well during the ritual, that then they will be rewarded; otherwise, the ancestors might punish them. This sort of ‘ancestor worship,’ which is not the same as ‘ancestor devotion,’ may have been prevalent before the time of Confucius and even among uneducated people today. However, by the time Confucius’ Ruist school had become the most powerful educational engine of ancient China, the ritual was no longer construed as ‘worship,’ but rather as ‘devotion.’ In this regard, the chapter, ‘Ji Tong’ (祭統, the regulation of sacrifice), in the Book of Rites (禮記) is edifying. It says,

“When a worthy (賢者) pursues the ritual of ancestor devotion (祭), he will be blessed. However, this blessing is not what the vulgar people call a blessing. Here, blessing means perfection. And perfection means the complete and natural discharge of all one’s duties.”

In other words, Ruists believe that people can be blessed through the ritual of ‘ancestor devotion’ because they have attuned themselves to all the patterns and principles which make an entire family fit together in the way in which it was historically understood: as following the virtues of the ancestors, expressing feelings of gratitude and filial piety, cultivating oneself well here and now, and expecting cultural immortality in the future. We can now understand that realizing ‘dynamic harmony’ within a household refers to performing this ritual par excellence.

Third, these insights remind us to clarify one important question which people usually ask when they read the Analects and begin to approach Ruism for the first time: Did early Ruists believe in ghosts, spirits, or any other sort of supernatural beings who possessed some disembodied form of consciousness? If we read the Analects along with other major Ruist classics compiled around the same period, the answer is a definite ‘No.’ For in Confucius’ time, people believed that human beings had two souls. When a human died, one soul called hun ascended to heaven, and the other soul called po descended to earth. Accordingly, a special ritual needed to be performed following a person’s death in order to call the ascending hun back to the buried body and bring final peace to the deceased. However, as described in the chapter called ‘Ji Yi’ (祭義) in the Book of Rites, when Confucius was asked his opinion of hun and po, he said these are just two different forms of the cosmic matter-energy called Qi (氣). The one is stretching and ascending, and the other is returning and descending. In other words, when people die, their life force was thought to be transformed into two portions of Qi and thereby merged into the entire natural process of cosmic changes. Accordingly, no supernatural being need be posited to exist.

Cognitively, then, Ruism does not believe in any sort of afterlife. Emotionally, however, Ruists acknowledge that people express intrinsic feelings of gratitude and devotion towards their ancestors. In this sense, the ritual of ‘ancestor devotion,’ as construed by Ruism, is to create a distinctive ‘subjunctive’ space in which people are able to express their feelings and cultivate their morals without being required to assume any ontological misconceptions about what these feelings and morals ought to be devoted to. In other words, the ritual harmonizes people’s emotional and moral needs along with their cognitive awareness in just the way described by Confucius: “When I perform the ritual of ‘ancestor devotion,’ I act as if the spirits of the ancestors were present” (Analects, 3:12). By the same token, Confucius also teaches us to “revere spirits and ghosts, but stay away from them” (Analects, 6:22). Both verses enlighten us by pointing out that we need to sincerely perform the ritual of ‘ancestor devotion’ as if these ancestors were alive for all the reasons mentioned above. Even so, we ought not to commit a cognitive error by allowing the idea of spirits and ghosts to interfere inappropriately with our lives.

In a word, although the Clear and Bright Day ritual is devoted to ancestors, it is mainly for the sake of living people and their futures. If we have correctly understood this ritual, we still have to wonder, especially in the case of Westerners, how should the ritual be performed in a contemporary context?

As for the more general question of how Westerners can adopt Eastern rituals in order to practice Ruism, I endorse a minimalist re-interpretive approach. This means that Westerners ought first to understand the Ruist teachings which underlie Eastern rituals, and then reformulate current Western rituals using the least effort which will yield an optimal Ruist meaning.

In this regard, my friend Benjamin Butina has done an unprecedented job of designing a ‘Tomb Sweeping Ritual’ (click here to see details) based upon Ruist philosophy as well as Western customs. Alternately, Westerners might choose some Western festival such as Father’s Day or Mother’s Day as their opportunity to perform the ritual. Different families could also design their own way to visit the tomb or burial site of their beloved ancestors on a regular basis. Or a national holiday, such as Veteran’s Day in the United States, could be used as a way for local communities to pay tribute to deceased public figures.

In a word, the overall message of the Ruist ritual of ancestor devotion is that humans ought not to forget their family history. Only through learning, remembering and re-forming history throughout all its interrelated levels (personal, family, community, state, etc.) can people become part of history, thereby allowing human society continue to flourish in the future. Thus, as long as Westerners are able to understand and practice this message in whatever form of ritual feels comfortable and convenient, then they will be Ruist.