Author: Bin Song

Orbis Books Publishes a Confucian Sacred Story

On By Bin SongIn News & InterviewsLeave a comment

Dr. Anna Sun (Duke University), Dr. Pauline Lee (Saint Louis University), and Dr. Bin Song (Washington College) have co-authored a play titled “When the Fire Came: A Retelling of the Confucian Sacred Story.” This work has just been published as a chapter in Retelling Sacred Stories: Our Journeys to a Shared Sacred Story, sponsored by the Fetzer Institute and published by Orbis Books in 2025!

With the guidance of two literary advisors and a panel of leading Confucian scholar-reviewers, this play represents the most literary and imaginative work I have participated in to date. The volume also features sacred stories from Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Religion and Science, Interspirituality, and more.

For readers seeking an inspiring and enjoyable exploration of sacred stories across diverse traditions—each reimagined by distinguished scholars and writers—this book is a must-read!

Sacred Story (Confucian)Download

Bin Song Interviewed by Journal of Contemplative Studies

On By Bin SongIn Meditation, News & InterviewsLeave a comment

Inspired by the ancient Confucian tradition, this conversation explores a timely question: How can we meditate as scholars, administrators, or modern professionals?

I also explain the misnomer of “Confucianism,” clarifying the Ruist (Confucian) tradition of contemplative practices and self-cultivation, and distinguishing it from other major ancient Asian traditions, such as Chinese Mahayana Buddhism.

Excerpt:

Contemplation in the Ru tradition is best understood as a state of heightened attention grounded in reverence. It means focusing your energy and aligning your consciousness with a guiding principle in order to gain insight into reality and engage with it.

What does heightened attention involve? It requires integrating all dimensions of the self, including understandings, feelings, emotions, actions, and more. This is traditionally described as sincerity or authenticity (cheng). You study ethical and metaphysical teachings, practice them, and cultivate a unified way of living. This coherence is what Ru thinkers mean by heightened attention.

And what about insights? As we see in Buddhism’s emphasis on mindfulness, many traditions seek direct, unclouded awareness of reality. Ruists (or Confucians) also aim for this: accessing reality free from prejudice and partiality. However, each tradition defines reality in its own way.

The full interview can be checked here.

Song Reviews “Lure of the Supreme Joy”

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Song Reviews “Lure of the Supreme Joy: Pedagogy and Environment in the Neo-Confucian Academies of Zhu Xi” (By Xin Conan-Wu. Brill 2024) in the 2025, No. 80 issue of Journal of Chinese Studies.

Excerpt:

If Tian (天) is translated as “nature,” the upper-case Nature designates the broadest realm of being—one beyond which human imagination cannot reach. It encompasses the ritualized human world as an integral part of its order. When Zeng Dian immerses himself in this Nature, his excursion is neither solitary (as he “assembles a company of five or six young people and six or seven children”) nor detached from the human world (since the group “enjoys the breeze upon the Rain Dance Altar and then returns singing to their residence”). Rather, the harmonious, dynamic, and spontaneous unfolding of cosmic unity between human individuals and the totality of being gives rise to a profound sense of joy, ecstasy, and mystery—an experience from which a distinctly Ruist form of “religious experience” emerges. (p.236)

A full version:

Song_Reviews_Lure_of_the_Supreme_Joy_PedDownload

Other book reviews by Bin Song linked here.