Tag: Confucianism

How To Make Sense of the Pandemic as a Ruist (Confucianist) ?

On By Bin SongIn Confucianism History & Philosophy3 Comments

Hallo, my name is Bin Song. I am a Ru scholar, therapist, and college professor in the disciplines of philosophy, religion, and theology. This audio is written and recorded by me to help make sense of the cause of this pandemic in light of the spiritual practice of Ru (Confucian) meditation.

Before you start to listen to my words, I recommend you to do a short breathing practice to calm our heart and illuminate our mind. So, please position yourself well, sit, incline, or simply lie down. Using your belly muscles, be aware of the minor movements of your body, and then, focus upon your breath. Breathe in, deeply, slowly, and comfortably. Breathe out, feel the release, and feel the relax. And a short pause. Again, breathe in, breathe out. remember, no matter how bad the pandemic is, how frustrated you feel about your situation, there is always air and oxygen flowing around. The fact that you can breathe in to reenergize and re-tranquilize yourself should be deeply appreciated. So, breathe in, breathe out. Release the anxiety, worry, and all feelings of uncertainty. We need to focus upon things that we can control and improve, not things that are out of our control; so all anxieties, worries, and the feeling of uncertainty caused by the uncontrollable facts of life should all be released. Take care of yourself, be kind to your family, do your duties of your work; these are what we can control, and what we can do well if we breathe and meditate in the place here and in the time now. After you breathe out, let’s feel the short pause before next breathe in. Yes, when you stay home because of the pandemic, this is just a short pause of your entire life. For everybody, this is a good moment to reflect, to slow down, and to learn and plan for a better future.

While I am speaking, please continue to enjoy your breathing. Breathe in, breathe out, and a short pause.

From a Ruist perspective, the pandemic is neither an ineluctable natural disaster such as hurricanes or earthquake, nor the punishment by a supreme deity to humans’ violation of preestablished divine laws. It is not a sign of an apocalyptic event predetermined by some divine plan either. Instead, regardless of the origin of the fatal virus which the best scientific minds in the world are still trying to figure out, the development of the original outbreak to the current pandemic is a completely human disaster. It is caused by the non-transparency, dishonesty, injustice, malfunction, and inhumaneness of human governance and social management in face of this unprecedented event of global health crisis.

Let’s use one of the canonical texts of Ruism, Zhong Yong, to explain why theism is not a model for Ruism to make sense of the pandemic. The title of the text can be translated as “centrality and normality” or “keeping centered in the everyday world”, and it is said to be written by the grandson of Confucius, Zi Si, who lived around the 5 century B.C.E.

According to this text, what creates this world is not a supreme personal deity, but an all-encompassing, constantly generating cosmic power, which is called Tian. It says Tian “has no goal other than creating, and its power of constant creativity is beyond fathom.” (為物不貳，生物不測). So, what is Tian? Tian is the breathed air when you meditate; Tian is the beautiful sunshine in a nice and warm spring afternoon; Tian is also the colorful flowers, your cute puppet, and everything you love and cherish to your heart. However, Tian is also your bad moods when you are hungry, and your feelings of envy and jealousy when your peers get promoted. Tian is also all the frequently arrived natural disasters on the earth: hurricane, earthquake, famine, drought, flooding. And Tian is also the birth, explosion, and even disappearance of a remote star in a galaxy we humans can never imagine to reach. Seen from this perspective, the greatest virtue of Tian, which Ruism calls 德, is to have each and everything in the universe exist, become and change together in the eternal temporal scale of all possible past, present and future moments. In other words, Tian is beyond which nothing greater can be imagined, and this is the reason why the Chinese character of Tian 天adds a small stroke upon a lower character read as “great”, and indicates that Tian is the greatest being that humans can ever imagine when referring to the evolving world and its origin.

While we ponder the unfathomable and all-encompassing creative power of the universe of Tian as such, a feeling of wonder and awe towards it will naturally arise in our heart. Also, we will feel released by the fact that although Tian’s awesome creative power reaches anything and everything in the universe, it is not centered and calibrated to human needs. So, even if it would be possible for human civilization to be completely wiped out from the universe one day perhaps because of some natural disaster, pandemic or other devastating events, Tian is still Tian. It is still changing, becoming and creating; perhaps generating another civilization in another planets, or perhaps not.

This brings at least two central points of Ru spirituality: one, if we understand the co-existence of each and everything in the universe of Tian as the broadest case of “harmony” humans can ever imagine, the humans’ efforts of building a human civilization so as to satisfy the human interests of existing, surviving, and thriving together with a non-human nature should take the unfathomable creativity power of Tian as an ideal. This means we shall try to love and nurture as many living and natural beings as possible; but second, whether humans can harmonize all interests of human beings and furthermore, harmonize and co-flourish both human civilization and the non-human nature, will entirely depend upon our own efforts. Translated in terms accessible to Ru meditation, I will say, Tian provides abundant energy flowing around for human individuals to breathe in and utilize, but whether human individuals can breathe in and utilize them in the most effective way entirely depend upon our discipline and practice.

But how humans can rely upon our own efforts to harmonize and co-flourish all involved beings in a civilization to try our best to manifest the all-encompassing creative and loving power of Tian in the human world? Here, the text of Zhong Yong gives us a crucial verse for guidance, and it is also highly helpful for us to make sense of the cause of the pandemic: the verse reads, “不誠無物”, which can be literally translated as “if humans are not honest, nothing exists in the human world.” Yes, that’s it! Let me read the verse again: “if humans are not honest, nothing exists in the human world.” Look at the world now: schools closed, restaurants shut down, cinemas cannot be walked into. Even when humans meet each other, we cannot see our faces, or we can only greet each other from a far distance. How sad this is! How bad this is! But who causes this? It is those dishonest people rightly in the epi-centers of this pandemic!

There are three meanings of the Chinese character Cheng in this verse, each meaning is deeper than its prior one, and it also includes but is not limited by the prior meaning.

Firstly, Cheng means simply honesty. Human words and deeds must be in line with each other. And this is the bottom-line principles of human interaction. If parents are not honest to children, husband is not honest to wife, a government is not honest to its citizens, nothing remains to sustain these human relationships.

Secondly, Cheng means sincerity. The correspondence between words and deeds may not endure if an individual is not sincerely believing the value of what they are pursuing. In this case, the apparent correspondence may derive from blind thought habit, or just pretend to be so to fulfill some strategic, utilitarian needs. On the other hand, extreme situations may require humans to temporarily break their promise of words to accommodate emergency needs, and in these unusual situations, it is still the indicated sincere good intention of those individuals to account for why they need break their promises and hence, induce some dishonesty in their deeds. In other words, a deeper meaning of Cheng refers to the devotional dimension of inner sincerity of human heart when we are saying words and doing deeds.

Thirdly, Cheng means authenticity. If one’s devotion to a certain cause of life does not line up with principles about how individuals thrive themselves in an all-interconnected human society, their devotion may be sincere, but not authentic. So, according to the text of Zhong Yong, what is the most important for each individual to manifest the all-encompassing creativity of Tian in the human world is to remain authentic to their enduring, irreplaceable and genuine self, and thus, harmonize the needs of their self with other human and natural beings, so as to realize harmonies in its varying forms and in evolving life situations. If we humans can achieve this, we will “assistant the transformation and nurturing of heaven and earth”, and thus become one of the triadic, divine powers: heaven, earth and human beings, within the universe of Tian.

So, in light of this crucial verse of Zhong Yong, how can we make sense of the cause of the pandemic? I think we just need to ask these questions to all those involved human fellows who are responsible to monitor, plan, and execute policies of public health: are they honest in their words and deeds? Are they sincerely devoted to what their responsibilities require to? And are their personalities or the institutions where they work in authentic to principles of the sustainability of human civilization and the co-thriving harmonization of all involved living beings? If not, then, the result has already been mandated by the text: “ if not Cheng, nothing exists in the human world.” Yes, “if not Cheng, nothing exists in the human world.”

Then, since we can make sense of it, the last question we need to ask is that, in order for things in the human world to exist and flourish again, how can we make our human life continually honest, sincere and authentic? In the context of Ru meditation, a disciplined practice of re-centering ourselves in evolving moments of our everyday life is definitely a starting point for each individual. As Mencius said, if each of us can have a good sleep, practice meditative breathing in a daily basis, and thus, nurture the oceanic Qi within our bodies, we will be more ready to feel the interconnection of all living beings in the universe, and thus, be more honest, sincere and authentic to do what is right, to live out what is meaningful and valuable. So, let’s continue to breathe in, breathe out, and enjoy the incoming peaceful and temporary rest.

Meditation for Sleep

On By Bin SongIn MeditationLeave a comment

Hallo, my name is Bin Song. I am a Ru scholar, and a college professor in the disciplines of philosophy, religion and theology. This audio is written and recorded by me to guide your Ru meditation using the posture of sleeping.

Sleeping meditation takes a very important role in Ru meditation. Rightly at the beginning of the Ru tradition, Mencius lived around 3 century B.C.E and was a staunch follower and wise interpreter of Confucius’s thought. He wrote beautiful passages about “night vital-energies.” （夜气）. He likens human body to a mountain, and says that a daily good sleep for a human being will be like a regular amount of sunshine, air, rain, and other necessary natural elements to nourish a mountain. As a result, the mountain will become lush, vital and fertile, and it is going to grow, feed and bring joy to the life of many living beings. However, if humans are deprived of sleep, that will be like hunters and peasants who dare to use axes and hatchets to exploit the mountain every day. In this case, the mountain will eventually become bald and barren, and is completely stripped of any ability to nurture other beings. What is distinctive about Mencius’s thought on sleeping meditation is that he says when people get a good sleep, and have a clear, calm, and sensitive mind in the morning as a consequence, this will help us to be more moral. This is because it will become easier for us to feel the interconnection of all beings in the world, and when a baby is about to fall into a well, or any other similar distress happens to our human fellows, we will be more likely to have a feeling of empathy and try to care and help them. In other words, if we have a good sleep to continually nurture the vital-energies within our body day and night, we will become more moral. I do not know how many classes of ethics in modern universities and colleges are teaching how to sleep, but as inspired by Mencius’ thought and practice, I definitely believe they should.

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In the period of neo-Confucianism, Ru masters’ writings about meditative sleep became more abundant.

There are beautiful poems written by Ru masters such as Chen Baisha (1428-1500 C.E), who described his sleep as “thousands-of-meters-high clouds float under my pillow.” (千丈雲根枕底眠) It was also said that when Wang Yangming (1472-1529 B.C) stayed in the army as a general and lead a troop for a military expedition , using the method of meditative sleep, he could have no normal sleep and thus, remained to be awake for about 40 days. In general, for these Ru masters in the period of neo-Confucianism, they understood meditative sleep from two perspectives. Cosmologically, a good sleep is to preserve and nourish the yin side of humans’ daily routine. In other words, If you cannot recharge yourself during a restful and peaceful night, you cannot be full of yang power to act and function in the busy daytime either . Ethically, a good sleep is thought of being able to nurture the innately good human nature, and therefore, like Mencius said, to make humans’ practice of morality more ready and steady.

As shown in the pictures, I will introduce two postures of meditative sleep, and they are very suitable for practice before one’s sleeping.

One, you lean towards the right side, to avoid the pressure on your heart. When you lean towards the right, put your right hand under your neck. The part of the right hand that supports your head refers to the ulna bone part of your wrist. Please do not put the part of your wrist where you can feel the pulse under your head; in this case, it will bring pressure to your system of blood circulation, which causes no good. Also, where your head gets supported is the part of your neck below your ear. The final point for the head part in this sleeping posture is to put a nice pillow under your head and hand. So, in a word, lean towards right, on a nice pillow, put your right hand under your head, and use the bone part of your wrist to support your neck. If you position yourself well in this way, your head will be slightly higher than your knees, and you would not feel heavy-headed during the practice of meditative sleep.

Another key point of this posture is your knees. Do not let one knee directly upon another; you can put your left knee on your right lower leg, and in this case, your two legs would pass each other in a small angle. Then, you would not feel any extra pressure on your body.

The last point is a natural consequence of the aforementioned two points, that is when you lean right, do keep your tract of breathing relaxed and unblocked.

If you position yourself well in this sleeping posture, what remains for you to do is to focus upon breathing using the method of Ru breathing as I explained.

Sounds good? Yes, let’s move on the next posture of sleeping meditation. In this posture, You face upwards, and then, completely relax your four limbs. As indicated in the picture, there is almost no technique whatsoever for this posture other than using a pillow, which we all do.

In this completely relaxed sleeping posture, since we can feel our belly’s up and down more obviously, it will be a very good moment to practice the extra breathing practice I mentioned in third stage of Ru breathing. That is, you can deliberately extend the length of your inhale so as to let breathed oxygen more abundant, running deeper and broader in your body. So, when the belly rises a bit, breathes in a bit; rises a bit, breathes in a bit. There is a short time of holding breath after each bit of inhale. Sometimes, even without any further discipline, for mature practitioners of meditative breathing, this state just happens naturally. In this natural case, a deep, slow and delicate inhale will take a length of time longer than usual, and you will have an utterly joyful and even gratified feeling because of this deep breath. As a consequence, when your consciousness feels modified during the process, you will fall into a sound, fast, and deeply healing sleep.

Good. This will be the end of this session, and I hope you can have a very good sleep every day. Take care!

Quiet-sitting on a Chair

On By Bin SongIn MeditationLeave a comment
Audio: Quiet-sitting on a chair, by Dr. Bin Song.
Video (picture in picture): Quiet-sitting on a chair, by Dr. Bin Song.

Hi, My name is Bin Song. I am a Ru scholar, and a college professor in the disciplines of philosophy, religion, and theology. This audio is written and recorded by me to guide your practice of Ru meditation using the posture of quiet-sitting on a chair.

As I explained in How to Breathe during the Ru Meditation, the focus upon a specific posture is less important than the focus upon breathing for the practice of Ru Meditation. However, this does not mean that one should not practice varying postures of Ru meditation. Instead, I would like to emphasize that compared to breathing, it is equally important that practitioners can command all the static and moving forms of “postures” so as to extend the state of energy equilibrium, or the state of centrality in a Ruist term, to both static and moving states of our body.

Let me use one metaphor to explain it. The state of centrality achieved during the breathing practice is like the inner body of a lake, while the static or moving postures of body during the practice of Ru meditation are like the surface of the lake, which is sometimes still but sometimes agitated depending upon the weather and the environment. The goal of Ru meditation can be described as such: if our life is like the life of a lake, then, no matter what surface state the lake is experiencing, our inner body is always tranquil, quiet and full of vital energies. For achieving this goal, it is much more important to encompass both static and moving postures of meditation, rather than merely focusing upon any specific one of them.

Let me explain the significance of varying postures of Ru meditation in another perspective. The practice of concrete postures of Ru meditation is to model in a micro scale what happens more frequently in a broader macro scale of life. As I will explain in this series of audios, I intend to introduce 7 postures of Ru meditation: sleeping, cross-legged quiet-sitting, quiet-sitting on a chair, standing, walking, eight brocade exercise, and the yang-styled 24-move Taiji martial arts. As you heard, some of these postures are more static, and some of them are more dynamic. However, human life is obviously more complicated, more social, and more far-reaching than the performance of these concrete meditative postures.

From the perspective of Ru philosophy, being able to deal with real life issues, conducting oneself properly in varying human relationships, and constantly embodying the major principles of Ru metaphysics and ethics, such as harmony and humaneness, in one’s daily life, are of course far more important than commanding good meditative postures and ideal breathing. Nevertheless, the benefits we get from the practice of Ru meditation is that it can help human individuals to realize those metaphysical and ethical principles in a micro scale, and then, gradually, to enable us to be an exemplary person, the Ruist junzi, in those broader stages of human life.

As mentioned by one of the canonical texts of Ruism, the Great Learning 大學, before one can govern a state, or align one’s family, everyone must be dedicated to cultivating their persons. So, before we are more sufficiently involved in varying stages of human life, we should be dedicated to the practice of Ru meditation. And the gist of Ru meditation is, firstly, to achieve the state of energy equilibrium, or the state of centrality, during one’s breathing practice, and secondly, to extend this state to the practice of both static and moving postures of Ru meditation. As mentioned, we will introduce 7 postures in our audios for you to practice this gist.

Among all these 7 postures, let’s talk of one of the most Ruist at first, which is quiet-sitting on a chair.

So far as my research shows, the invention of this posture by Ruists took place in the same time when the so-called “neo-Confucianism” arises to react to the increasingly flourished Buddhism in ancient China. And the timeline is around the 10th or 11th century.

As I mentioned in the brief introduction of Ru meditation, Ru practitioners are scholars and scholar-officials. Apart from the dedicated works of learning, education, and scholarship, they had so many things to care and manage in their households, schools, the governments and other workplaces. This means, even if they were fond of meditation, their occupied life schedule required them to immediately get out of meditation, and deal with tangible issues in their life. In this way, the normally Buddhist style of meditation, which requires a crossed-legged posture, a secured and quiet space, and sometimes an extended time period of practice, would be thought of by these Ruist scholar-officials as too isolated and socially disengaged. Therefore, rather than crossing one’s legs and letting every thought come and go in one’s mind in an isolated space, why not quietly sit on one’s chair, to clear one’s mind, re-gather oneself, to nurture an attitude of reverence towards things at hand, and thus, stay centered in one’s everyday life? This is the central motif for Ru practitioners to invent and practice this posture of quiet-sitting on a chair in this period of time.

Before I describe to you the major points of the posture, let me elaborate its characteristic and significance a bit more. “Chair” is a very normal piece of furniture, and you can basically find it in any place where your life is seriously engaged. It is in your study room, in your office, around family dinner table, in your classroom, or in any other private or public meeting room. Therefore, if you know how to meditate on a chair, at least for a few minutes or even some seconds, you will know how to remain centered, focused, and re-energized in your daily life.

Let’s imagine that you are right now in a very important conference with your colleagues and boss in a business meeting room. The boss is going on and on, sometimes on the topic, and sometimes not. Although you know the meeting is important, you feel quite exhausted by it. Then, you can start to meditate on your chair. You just need to sit nicely according to the method I will describe in the following, put your vision broadly on objects in front of you, and then, focus on your breath. Once you have a deep, slow breath, you start to let those bossy words appear on the screen of your inner-mind; you understand them, follow them, but your attention is actually put on the entire universe, the heaven, the earth and the human beings, which include but is not limited to those words. In this way, you can nurture a specific kind of attitude of reverence, dedication and seriousness towards your own work and your own worth, while being able to reenergize yourself during this work time in an uninterrupted way. You get it? Right? So the benefit to meditate on a chair is huge.

Let’s use another example to explain. Almost every adult has an experience of being interviewed for a job. Before you meet those interviewers, as a candidate, you are normally required to sit for a while in a room or a space separated from the interview room. I will tell you, this will be a perfect space and time to do a quick quiet-sitting meditation on a chair. Close your eyes, focus on your breath, feel all the energy flowing around you who are right now sitting nicely in the middle of heaven and earth. You need to remind yourself that you are special, you are unique, and while attending to the needs of those interviewers are important, you also need to be awesomely authentic to be and do yourself. And then, you take a deep breath; start to visualize everything you have prepared or anticipated for the interview. Per my experience, this practice of quiet-sitting meditation on a chair will contribute very positively to your interview.

Sounds good? Yes, remember the three features of Ru wisdom: simple, consistent, and adaptable to change. You already get two instances why it is so in the case of quiet-sitting on a chair.

Now, a final example before talking of its method. You know, almost no couples do not fight. We are human beings, we have our own views, and arguing with each other between a couple in our household is not only inevitable, but indicates that we invest our life upon each other, we care each other, and care our family. However, if inappropriate emotions are intertwined with inappropriate words during the process, squabbles will develop into fights, and fights will develop into wars. So, how can you nicely exchange ideas with your spouse without getting mired into these annoying and exhausting family in-fights? I will tell you, when your spouse forcefully expresses their views, you can quietly sit on your chair using the method of Ru meditation. At this moment, you pay attention to your breath, calm it down, and you listen to your spouse carefully and peacefully. During the process, you intend to nurture an inner feeling of love, mutual-bond and respect even though you also need to manifest your genuine self and exchange ideas with your spouse. Since the quiet-sitting meditation happens rightly during the middle, it will greatly calm down yourself, and thus, prevent the interaction between a couple from deteriorating into an undesirable family in-fight.

Good, enough examples for the significance of this posture. Let me get to the method part. The method of quiet-sitting on a chair is actually quite simple. It comprises the following several major points:

(1) Make sure your hip a bit higher than your knee. This may mean you need to put a cushion under your hip, or, you need to sit towards the edge of a chair. A chair with a hard surface will be better than a softer one, since sitting softly would make people sleepy. A too high chair which cannot have you put your feet, or a too low chair where you need to squat a bit to sit, is not ideal for beginning practitioners either. However, most chairs are not made as such, so you will find it fine to meditate using this posture almost everywhere.

(2) While sitting on a chair, the position of your backbone is really the key. Starting from our neck, our backbone caves in, caves out, and finally, caves in again towards our tailbone. So, make sure you neither pop up your chest to make the backbone super straight, nor slouch yourself to block your tract of breathing. Make sure you can feel the natural stacking-up of varying parts of your backbone skeleton: cave in, cave out, and finally, cave in again. In a word, the key to sit rightly in this posture is that you need to use minimal efforts to position yourself so as to make varying parts of your body naturally and harmoniously fit together. In a Ruist term, you need to find the pattern-principle 理 of your body so as to sit there nicely and joyfully.

(3) After you position your backbone well, then, your head naturally lines up with it. No nodding, no looking upwards; neither shall your head lean towards either of the sides. Still, let’s follow the same principle, use your minimal effort to make varying parts of your skeleton fit together.

(4) For your eyes, you can either close them or leave a slice of vision broad and open, just as what I explained in the previous audio on Ru breathing.

(5) The distance between your feet is about the same as your shoulder. Maker sure it neither too wider nor too narrower. Your toes are forward, but do not make them rigidly forward, like right in the angle of 90 degree. No, you do not need to do that. You just need to give yourself a little bit discipline, line up with the effortless position of your body, and then, sit there nicely and quietly.

Basically, the look of your upper body in this posture will be exactly the same when you do crossed-legged quiet-sitting. However, since this is sitting on a chair, your lower body has its unique position.

After you sit in this way, you just need to focus on your breath using the method of Ru breathing which I explained before.

Good, that’s all about quiet-sitting on a Chair. If you have any questions or comments to discuss with me, I would look forward to seeing them below the audios. You can also send me an email you can find in the contact part of my website, or find me in the facebook group “Friends from Afar: a Confucianism group.” Have a nice one, and You take care!

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