Zhang Zai (1022-1077 CE) was a pioneering Ru philosopher of the so-called Dao Xue (Learning of the Way, 道學) movement, which is usually called Neo-Confucianism in English. Zhang is famous for his treatise, The Western Inscription (西铭), in which he grounds the Ru virtue of filiality (xiao, 孝) on the cosmic piety of human beings towards the heavens and the earth.
In this exquisite poem, On the Basjoo Tree, Zhang Zai uses the image of a Basjoo tree to express his Ruist thinking concerning the relationship between the world and human beings. For Ruists, the cosmos, called tian (天), is an all-encompassing process of continuous novelty and creativity. Correspondingly, the ethical commitment of human beings is thought of as a constant renewal process of learning such that a condition of dynamic harmony (he, 和) is continually being created in the evolving situations of human society.
The biological peculiarity of the Basjoo tree is that what looks like its trunk is actually composed of curled-up stems packed together, so that when one curled stem becomes mature, a new leaf is unfurled and its stem then grows into a new branch of the plant. For Zhang Zai, this feature of the Basjoo tree represents perfectly the core of Ruist aesthetics: the world continually renewing itself. Thus, in the second half of the poem, Zhang Zai says he loves to learn with the Basjoo tree and in that way to continue to nurture and renew his virtues and to uncover new knowledge about the world.
Some use of puns or word-play in Chinese is crucial for the poem’s diction. In Chinese, 心 (xin) can mean “mind,” “heart” or “core.” It is used by Ruists to refer to the undivided central capacity of human consciousness and encompasses its intellectual, emotional and volitional dimensions. Therefore, a standard English translation of the Ruist idea of xin is “mind-heart.” Because xin also means “core” in Chinese, the curled-up stems making up the trunk of the Basjoo tree is portrayed by Zhang Zai as its xin, and its continual unfolding symbolizes a renewing of the human mind-heart that longs for continual learning and self-cultivation. Also, the Chinese term for “stem” (zhi, 枝) has the same pronunciation as the Chinese term for knowledge (zhi, 知). So, as each new stem is unfurled, it symbolizes a virtuous Ruist learner who has garnered a new piece of knowledge. Please pay attention to the fact that for Zhang Zai, knowledge and virtue are intertwined in the self-cultivation of a human being, and so these renewals are manifestations of the transformation of one’s own mind-heart. This reminds us of the first three paragraphs of Great Learning (Daxue, 大学), which lays out a detailed procedure for Ruist self-cultivation based upon attaining knowledge (致知), rectifying one’s mind-heart (正心), and illuminating one’s bright virtues (明明德).
Another important lesson from Ruist poetry is that in the perspective of comparative literature, Ruists are fond of using the same image to express multiple meanings. For example, “lotus” is an image heavily used in Buddhist literature to express Buddhism’s commitment to eliminating desires and anxieties and thereby to search for release from the suffering process of reincarnation through Buddhist practice. However, in Zhou Dunyi’s “On Loving the Lotus,” the lotus is described as “Inside, it is open; outside, it is straight” “It neither sprawls nor branches,” and in this way the lotus becomes a Ruist image, symbolizing the Ruist moral ideal of an upright and honest noble-person (junzi, 君子). Similarly, the Basjoo tree is an icon also popular in Buddhist literature where its trunk is actually “empty” once you account for all the unfolding stems. But in Zhang Zai’s poetry, the Basjoo tree becomes an icon expressive of the Ruist metaphysical insight concerning the constant creativity of Tian (cosmos) and the Ruist ethical commitment to the constantly being renewed self-cultivation of human beings.
There is a religious ritual system in Ruism which has been translated as ‘The Three Sacrifices’ (三祭, sanji): Sacrifice in celebration of Tian (Heaven), sacrifice in celebration of distinguished teachers such as Confucius, and sacrifice in celebration of one’s ancestors. Traditionally, the sacrificial ritual in celebration of Tian could only be performed by an emperor, the so-called Son of Tian (天子). This ritual used to take place in the suburb of a capital such as this:
The ‘Platform of Tian’ (天壇) in Beijing
The sacrificial ritual in celebration of Confucius was performed in Confucian temples such as this:
Confucius Temple in Nanjing
Everyone is allowed to perform this ritual. However, because Confucius is taken to be the common teacher of everyone in the Ru tradition, the main participators in this ritual were the Ruist literati.
By comparison, the ritual of sacrifice to one’s ancestors is more private. It is either performed before an ancestral altar in each individual household, in cemeteries, or in an ancestral temple shared by an extended family. It looks like this:
An ancestor altar in household
At this time, I would like to introduce a new ritual which combines the first two rituals, which I am calling a ritual of Tian-worship and Confucius-veneration(敬天尊孔).
The major reason that such a combination is needed is that in a contemporary context, the celebration of Tian can no longer be performed by an emperor alone. As a Ru committed and connected to the all-encompassing transcendent power of Tian, not just an emperor but every person has the need and right to celebrate it. Actually, traditional Ru literati also realized the egalitarian power of the idea of Tian, since each individual Ru was free to interpret this idea in his or her own particular way in order to counteract the ideologies and political policies which may have been endorsed by his or her emperor. This was a distinctive Ruist check and balance system within the traditional Chinese dynastic polity. However, because the polity was imperial, the ritual aspect of Tian-worship could not be decoupled from the monopoly power of the emperor. Nowadays, the political context of emperor has died out, and every Ru has accordingly recovered the right to perform a ritual of Tian-worship.
The reason I suggest combining the ritual of Tian-worship and the ritual of Confucius-veneration is that the relationship among Ru, as students of Confucius, is egalitarian. They are friends (友, you), committed to the Dao of Tian (天道, tiandao), who are trying to realize dynamic harmony at all levels of human existence in accordance with Confucius’ teachings. Therefore, when an occasion arises for Ruist friends “who are coming from afar” [Analects, 1:1] to join each other and to advance their Ruist learning, they will be able to perform the ritual of Confucius-veneration and the ritual of Tian-worship at the same time. This will remind the Ruist community that when studying the tradition, each Ru is not only a student of Confucius, but also a citizen of Tian (天民, tianmin). In this way, each Ru will continually nurture the feeling of gratitude towards the ultimate origin of their personal lives and personal energy; simultaneously, they will enhance their devotion to a life of manifesting Tian’s creativity in a distinctively human way in accordance with Confucius’s teaching about ‘humaneness’ (仁, ren).
Based upon these reasonable considerations which encourage the creation of an updated ritual (“to create rituals according to what is right,” – “以義起禮”, 禮記∙禮運), during the first ‘Ruist Friends From Afar’ Retreat in North America, held at Marsh Chapel, Boston University, on July 1-3rd, 2016, and before any formal readings and discussions even began, Ru friends performed a new Ruist ritual of Tian-worship and Confucius-veneration.
We tried to make the set-up of the ritual simple, since simplicity and authenticity are a consistent concern which traditional Ruist rituals convey. The set-up of the ritual looked like this:
We used a Chinese landscape painting to symbolize Tian. It was hung out in front. Then, we placed a Confucius statue on a small table in front of it, and an altar in the middle for holding incense. The painting we chose was drawn by Wang Hui (王翚, 1632-1717 CE) during the early Qing dynasty. A digital version of it looks like this:
This painting was selected by courtesy of Yair Lior, as Yair, among all the friends who attended the retreat, is a Ru versed in Chinese art history. The ‘Tian’ which this painting depicts feels solemn and energetic. In choosing the painting, we made sure that it was one which included Heaven, Earth, and Human Beings, since these three are the constitutive co-creators (三才) within Tian. In future, we have a plan to choose some western landscape paintings to symbolize the same Tian. This is because Tian’s creativity is all-encompassing, whether in the East or in the West, and one major concern of the participants of the retreat was how to share the Ru tradition’s wisdom and experience with fellow Americans.
The performative act of the ritual was also simple. At the beginning of the ritual, a Presider held two sticks of incense, bowed to Tian three times, and then stepped aside a bit, and bowed to Confucius once. After this, the Presider placed the incense in the altar, and then handed another couple of sticks to a second Ruist friend. After all friends had completed their celebrations, we stood in a line facing the altar, meditated for a while, and then completed the ritual.
There is no strict meaning for the numbers mentioned above. Neither does any step in the sequence have to be rigorously followed. After the Presider has performed the ritual, each friend can follow it in his or her favorite way: bowing to Tian but not bowing to Confucius, or as we elected to do during the retreat when some friends didn’t feel comfortable performing a religious-seeming ritual, giving them the option to wait in the reading room during the entire event. In a word, the performance of this suggested ritual is entirely voluntary.
However, because I was lucky enough to be supported by friends to act as Presider of the ritual, I tried to endow a Ruist meaning in my mind at each step of the ritual. Once again, these meanings were my own interpretation, and they are heuristic, and not in any way prescriptive. Future practitioners will surely choose whether to follow my interpretation or not according to their own understanding of the Ruist tradition. Here was my thinking:
I used two sticks of incense to symbolize Yin and Yang, the two most basic forms of cosmic reality in the Ruist cosmology. In this way, holding two sticks of incense while bowing to Tian symbolized that Tian is an even higher cosmological concept than Yin and Yang, since the power it refers to creates everything in the universe including these two realities. I bowed three times to Tian because, as I mentioned earlier, Tian includes three parts: Heaven, Earth and Human Beings. This trinitarian idea of Tian in Ruism underpins the Ruist commitment to Tian as both ecological and humanistic.
We all bowed to Tian in front of the statue of Confucius because we wanted our celebration of Tian to witness to our common teacher Confucius, who taught us to treat Tian as what is ultimately meaningful and powerful, that is, what is transcendent for human life. Each friend may also choose whether or not to bow to Confucius after bowing to Tian depending upon how comfortable he or she feels about bowing to a statue of a human being.
In conclusion, what I have set out in this essay is the totality of the new Ruist ritual of Tian-worship and Confucius-veneration performed during the first retreat. The effect of the performance, I have to say, felt good and appropriate. Friends told me that it was simple and felt authentic. Their feelings toward Tian and toward Confucius were expressed and enhanced. In this way, they also felt more at home in this beloved Ru community and in the more than 2,500 year-old living Ru tradition.
Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song teaching and researching at Washington College. As we have learned from previous units of the course, students may already have a sense of the significance of “harmony” or “harmonization” for the Ru tradition. As the character of Ru implies, being a Ru is to utilize one’s cultural knowledge and skills to harmonize all involved beings in a civilization. But what does the Ru tradition mean by “harmony”? Is there any distinction of the Ru conception of “harmony” from other traditions? In this unit, we’ll focus upon these questions. As a conversation starter, I’ll use political philosophy as an example, but please do keep it in mind that the implications of harmony is far-reaching in the Ru lifestyle, and we’ll discuss these implications later.
By all commonsense standards, which may of course be lacking in academic sophistication, the mainland of China is not democratic. The appointment of the General Secretary for the Chinese Communist Party is similar to the selection of the Pope in Roman Catholicism: a small circle of high bishops hold a closed meeting, white smoke rises up, and a new Pope marches out. Accordingly, everyone begins to cheer! In China, the people can’t vote for local magistrates beyond the village level. People can’t openly criticize any governmental malfunction unless ‘the criticisms are of good will.’ I am here quoting the words recently used by China’s foreign minister to berate a Canadian journalist after she had challenged the lack of essential human rights available to people in mainland China ( please click here). There are no television debates, there are no campaigns; often people even know who will be the No.1 political leader, and sometimes also the No.2, almost a decade before he or she actually steps ‘unto the throne.’
Primarily for this reason, I am infinitely sympathetic with the protest carried out by Hong Kong’s young people in 2014, the so-called ‘umbrella revolution,’ when they realized their right of universal suffrage could be ‘cashed out’ by being required to vote only for candidates for chief executive who have been either approved or assigned in advance by China’s central government. This reminds me of my own experience of voting for a ‘deputy of the people’s congress’ (人大代表) when I was in college. China has the strangest ‘congress’ in the world. Although it is called ‘the people’s congress,’ and its main functions are, like other congresses around the world, to pass laws and oversee the functioning of the government, the deputies making up the congress are almost all elitists from various areas of the country: they are city or province magistrates, high governmental officials, directors of giant corporations, presidents of universities, famous entertainers such as singers, film stars or presenters on TV talk-shows, etc. As I said, what is most ludicrous is that citizens can only vote for those representatives who have already been assigned from ‘above.’ I can never forget that in 2000, my sophomore year in college, I was called up to vote for the deputies of congress on behalf of my university. There was only one candidate and I didn’t even know who she was, what her political beliefs were, or how or whether she would fight for the people’s rights and interests. Even so, a label with her name was stuck to a voting box waiting for everyone’s ballots. When I realized how ridiculous this was, I quit, and never voted again.
This gloomy picture of contemporary Chinese politics poses a special challenge for Ruism, the most political of the traditions of ancient China, which always strives to realize ‘humane government’ (仁 政). The question for modern Ruists is: where does the tradition stand today? Actually, a western political observer has noticed a discouraging phenomenon in China’s various democratic movements, such as the umbrella revolution in Hong Kong: a Ruist voice is lacking (click here). When people search for ideological resources to back up any appeal to democracy, they are more than likely to appropriate ideas and slogans from the West, such as Victo Hugo’s, ‘When dictatorship is a fact, revolution is a duty.’ Nevertheless, in my view, Ruism is a tradition deep enough to provide an indigenous ideological resource to back up the contemporary Chinese people’s appeal to democracy, and the only remaining job for contemporary Ruists is to let people know what these ideas are, and then to try to help put these ideas into practice. In the remainder of this essay, I will argue that the spiritual, ethical and political goal of Ruism, ‘dynamic harmony’ (和, he), is the sort of democratic idea that can point to the correct direction for political reformation so badly needed in China and in all other related places in the world.
The basic meaning of ‘harmony’ is ‘being together,’ and the etymology of both its Chinese character, 和, and its English translation, harmony [Gr. άρμονία], relates to music. However, there is a significant difference between the ancient Greek philosophers and the ancient Ruist thinkers in regard to their understanding of musical harmony. For the Pythagoreans, musical performances furnish great occasions to ponder those perfect mathematical laws, such as the calculable proportions among notes and pitches within instrumental performances. In this way, playing music is a way of applying universal laws to particular performances so that an intended harmony is produced. For Ruists, I think they would not disagree with Pythagoreans’ conception of harmony, since being harmonious in general requests a certain set of rules to follow in order to counteract disharmonies. However, the tendency of embodying and practicing abstract ideas makes the Ru tradition distinctively more emphasize the bodily and participatory dimensions of harmonization. For Ruists, playing music (樂, yue) is like joining a magnificent banquet comprised of a variety of factors: performing instruments, singing, dancing, reading, ritual-playing, drinking, eating and so on. In this way, the pattern-principle (理, li) governing the performance of one single element, such as how to correctly play a harp, will be analogically adopted by the other elements even though it may be manifested in completely different ways, such as by the dancers who must translate musical notes into body language in order for the dance performance to unfold together with the playing of the instruments. Here, the key to harmony is not one of pondering universal mathematical laws beyond particular performances, but the creative inter-play among each human participant in accordance with each different situation. Understood in this way, playing music is a dynamic process leading to endless novelty while simultaneously manifesting a recognizable set of pattern-principles. It is not a matter of applying static, universal mathematical laws onto concrete instrumental performances, but rather one of engendering novel expressions of recognizable pattern-principles which have been played out by other co-players or earlier exemplary musicians. Because of this dynamic and diversifying essence of the Ruist idea of ‘harmony,’ I always suggest translating 和 as ‘dynamic harmony’ in order to distance it from its Pythagorean cousin. In Ruism, this distinct understanding of ‘dynamic harmony’ is nicely summarized by Confucius in Analects, 13:23: ‘The exemplary person searches for harmony without uniformity, but the petty-person searches for uniformity without harmony’ (君子和而不同，小人同而不和).
Clearly, this idea of ‘dynamic harmony’ is what sets the foundation for the peoples’ conception of good politics. It requires a humane government that does not do what the current Chinese government has done to the people of Hong Kong and the citizens of mainland China, that is, to ignore appeals from minorities and other under-represented groups of people, and then to impose uniform laws from above. An harmonious process of governance ought to be based upon an all-encompassing process of negotiation and compromise, participated in by all relevant groups of people, which then allows all the people to live and flourish together in the same society. We find references that this is the Ruist understanding of humane governance in some of the earliest Ruist classics.
In the Zuozhuan (Zhaogong 20 昭公二十年), a scholar-minister, Yanzi 晏子 (?-500 B.C.E), whose later thought had a great influence on the Ruist tradition, is recorded to have remonstrated with the Duke of Qi when the duke praised a minister whose ideas always coincided with his own. First, said Yanzi, the process leading to dynamic harmony in governance is like cooking a delicious soup using diverse ingredients, or playing pleasing music using varying instruments. Additionally, Yanzi argued that a harmonious and good government must also be based upon a creative tension within diverse factors:
“When the duke says, ‘Yes,’ Ju (據, the minister whom the duke of Lu had praised) also says ‘Yes’; when the duke says ‘No’, Ju also says ‘No’. This is like mixing water with water. Who can eat such a soup? This is like using the same kind of instruments to produce music. Who can enjoy such music? This is why it is not all right to be uniform (同, tong).”
According to this passage, when the current Chinese government only allows candidates for chief-executive or deputy to the people’s congress who have been assigned from above, they are doing exactly what Yanzi criticized: they are mixing water with water and using the same kind of instruments to produce music—and who enjoys that? From this and other similar Ruist texts, we also find that the Ruist idea of ‘dynamic harmony’ does not mean that there should be no conflict during the process of harmonization. The diversity of interests expressed by different groups of people on which any form of dynamic harmony is based almost inevitably leads to conflict. But it does mean that people do not see such conflict as a source of eliminating antagonism, but rather as a great opportunity leading to change and growth. This requires that people with different interests need to listen to each other, become educated about their topic, and negotiate with one another. Furthermore, doing so constrains personal interest and requires accommodation to the ideas of others, and then, necessitates finding sustainable solutions which allow each inter-connected group to complement the others, and to thrive together in the same society.
Understood in this way, in a case in which unjustified uniform laws have been imposed from above, the Ruist idea of ‘dynamic harmony’ can be seen as a principle of civil disobedience. It urges citizen disobedience because harmony must be based upon an integrated diversity. Ruists believe that a dominant voice cannot be accepted from any authority unless it succeeds in harmonizing appeals voiced by varying groups of people all the way from bottom to top. It is ‘civil’ because the essential Ruist method for dealing with conflict is non-violent and ought ultimately to be oriented toward the establishment of a new harmony. This requires the human co-participators in this conflict-resolution process to creatively invent new forms of ritual-proprieties (禮, li), making the necessary negotiations and compromises practicable and sustainable. In a certain perspective, what Hong Kong’s young people have done in their peaceful demonstrations is a perfect example of how ‘dynamic harmony’ can be practiced in a modern situation: “I protest, I disobey, but I do this as a responsible and educated citizen. Therefore, I will respect the dignity of all involved humans, including my political enemies, using peaceful and civil manners, but I will fight for my basic human right to the death, since without taking account of other people’s diverse democratic views, there can be no humane government, and neither can there be true ‘dynamic harmony’ in human society.”
One of the most perplexing aspects of Confucianism is that people easily misunderstand it as a 100% humanism. An example is that, when early Jesuit missionaries went to China and found Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucianism of “Pattern-Principle” (理）and “Matter-Energy” (氣）was taken to be orthodox by Confucian elite, they categorized Confucianism as a form of “atheism” and thus, thought it deeply corrupted.
In Christianity, even love towards one’s neighbors is ultimately driven by divine grace. That means it is God who commands and makes us love our neighbors. However, because Confucianism lacks this kind of “divine agency” concept, it is very hard for Confucians to say when we love our parents and kids, it is ultimately and exclusively “Heaven” (天） who drives us towards this love.
The divergent situation is that Heaven in Confucianism is an all-encompassing constantly creative cosmic power. It lacks the Christian feature of “agency.” The Heavenly creation is spontaneous, natural, and if we use a term in modern control theory, it can also be self-organized in certain circumstances such as on the earth, but there is no guarantee that every creation of Heaven is ordered according to human expectation. Since Heaven is constantly creating, the essence of human beings, as an organic part of Heaven, is also constantly creating. This constantly creating human nature is named by “Ren” (仁) in Confucianism. An impressive allegory made by Neo-Confucianism is that this human nature “Ren” embodied in humans is like the “kernel” (果仁）contained in the nutshell (果壳), so represents the essential of life. But what is distinct in Confucianism is, Heaven provides the creative energy to human beings, but how humans, as an “agent”, use this energy is solely due to themselves.
As a matter of fact, when Confucians feel united with Heaven through an arduous process of self-cultivation, they would love a myriad of things under Heaven. But in this mystical situation, we can say, the great body of ours which we form with Heaven makes us want to love, but how to love concretely is still exclusively due to ourselves. In this way, the idea of “Heaven” as the divine reality in Confucianism provides ultimate axiological and aesthetic motives for humans’ universal love, but it can’t provide the “agency” which is the last crucial link leading to a concrete action of human love.
In this sense, it is wrong to characterize Confucianism as an “atheism”, since “Heaven” is indeed the divine reality which provides the ultimate axiological and aesthetic values to human deeds. But it is not a “theism” too, since “Heaven” is not a personal God and lacks the Christian-like “agency”. In fact, It is a non-theism. What Confucians worship about “Heaven” is a benevolent but wild cosmic creative power, without any anthropomorphic sort of purpose, will or plan. Correspondingly, the Confucian humanism is a non-theistic humanism, and in this strictly defined sense, it is a spiritual humanism.
In the early 15th century, several Confucian missionaries embarked with Zheng He’s fleet, which was being sent out by the Ming emperor, Cheng Zu, both to demonstrate China’s national power and to build up international friendship with foreign countries. Relying on Zheng He’s incredible navigational skills and his massive ships, these missionaries reached every major country in southern and western Asia, eastern Africa, and the Cape of Good Hope, eventually arriving at their final destination, Europe. Their primary goal was to convert each non-Confucian, that is, each barbarian nation to Confucianism in order to spread Chinese civilization and also to bring, according to their view, ultimate goodness to everyone under the Heavens. But in order to do this, the missionaries first needed to understand the kind of education European people traditionally received. They found that in Europe everyone talked about Jesus. Jesus’ not so decent image, a nude, bloody and somewhat mutilated body crucified on a cross, was hanging everywhere and was venerated by almost everyone. As a result, the Confucian missionaries thought that since Jesus seemed to be the European’s sage, this tradition should be named, ‘Jesusism.’ Meanwhile, the missionaries reported this to the emperor of the Central Kingdom, and accordingly, the Chinese came to know the major teaching of Europe as Jesusism. However, these early Confucian missionaries’ efforts in Europe were not very successful. The Jesus believers refused to admit that Jesus was merely a sage, and it appeared that, to them, Jesus was much more than a sage. But because Chinese civilization maintained its technological and economic hegemony in the world from the early 15th century until the present, Chinese became such a powerful language that everyone in the world continually talked about ‘Jesusism,’ no matter whether ‘Jesusians’ approved of this name or not. At the same time, Confucianism spread into every corner of the world, and entertained, sometimes harmonious and sometimes conflicting, relationships with various indigenous traditions.
Yes, you are right! This is a fairy tale, a total fiction! But if you exchange ‘China’ for ‘Europe,’ replace ‘Confucianism’ by ‘Jesusism,’ and switch all the other relevant historical factors in this fiction, then I have been describing exactly what happened in the case of ‘Confucianism’!
Confucianism is a misnomer. It was created by early Christian missionaries for the purpose of comparison and, especially, of conversion. Although Christian missionaries created a number of names for the now so-called world religions, the term ‘Confucianism’ is especially unfortunate since it says nothing at all that is essential about the tradition that the name purports to describe.
We can see that this is so by making a comparison with other major world religions. In Christianity, ‘Christ’ means ‘the anointed,’ or ‘the savior.’ This is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word, ‘Messiah.’ For Christians, Jesus is the Christ, because he is thought to have cleansed the original sin of human beings through his crucifixion, and thus to be able to bring salvation to all the world. Similarly, in Buddhism, ‘Buddha’ means ‘the awakened’ or ‘the enlightened.’ For Buddhists, Siddhartha Gautama is a ‘Buddha’ because he has attained enlightenment. His teaching is thought to be capable of awakening people, allowing them to understand the origin of human suffering and helping them to transcend the otherwise endless cycle of reincarnation, the samsara.
By contrast, if we follow the name ‘Confucianism,’ and claim that Confucius is a Confucian, what could this mean? It is as tautological as to say a dog is doggy and the sun is sunny. I am quite skeptical concerning whether any Confucian practitioner approves of this name.
So what is the Chinese name for ‘Confucianism’? In other words, how would a contemporary Confucian wish to identify himself or herself when following this tradition? It is Ru (儒, pronounced like ‘zoo,’ but in an ascending tone). Given this name, it makes sense for Confucian practitioners to say that Confucius is a Ru because, similar to ‘Christ’ and ‘Buddha,’ Ru is not only a name. It also represents an ideal for human life. In this sense, to know why Confucius is venerated as a Ru is to understand the essential teaching of ‘Ruism,’ which in my view is the correct name to replace ‘Confucianism.’ So, what is this ideal? And what is the meaning of the Chinese character ‘儒’?
Although the division of ancient Chinese thought into named schools, such as Ruism, Daoism, Legalism, etc., was brought about by intellectual historians in the Han Dynasty (202 BCE-220 CE), the philosophical debate among major Chinese thinkers who were designated by these names had already begun several hundred years earlier. Mencius (approximately 372-289 BCE) considered that his own thought belonged to the school of Ru (Mencius, 7B). In addition, separate chapters entitled, “The Influence of a Ru“ (儒效) and “The Deeds of a Ru“ (儒行) are contained in Confucian classics such as the Xunzi and the Book of Rites, which were written during approximately the same time period as the Mencius. In other words, among various schools of ancient Chinese thought, the strong self-designation of Confucius’ students as Ru began shortly after Confucius passed away. If we now pay attention to the reason that the tradition selected the character 儒 (ru) to identify itself, we find there are two major meanings of 儒, both of which are warmly endorsed by Confucian practitioners.
First, rou (柔), a closely related character, means ‘being soft’. Why soft? This meaning relates to the sociological status of the term Ru before the time of Confucius. At this time, as a social order, Ru referred to a variety of professions: shamans, diviners, those who prayed for rain, dancers, those who presided over religious ceremonies, etc. In pre-Confucian China, this rank of people possessed one key skill which was thought by early Confucian thinkers to be of the utmost importance to human civilization: knowledge of ritual (li, 禮). From a Ruist perspective, the relationships among human beings and that between human beings and non-human nature are not immediate. Quite often, these relationships are, and ought to be, mediated by a variety of li: language, art, ceremonies, social etiquette, political institutions, technology, etc. In this way, li, although conventionally translated in English as ‘ritual,’ actually refers to all possible means of human civilization, and thus it is fair for us to paraphrase the Ruist concept of li to refer to all ‘civilized symbols.’ For example, faced with a beautiful, charming woman, no suggestion would ever be made that a civilized man should be driven immediately by his sexual impulses to grab her, kiss her, and touch her, without any scruple. On the contrary, civilized human sexual relationship is always mediated by kinds of symbols: a smile, particularized eye contact, intimate language, and probably also messages, emails, heartfelt gifts, etc. Finally, a civilized, more ideal result in this case for humans may be that even if the woman fails to accept the man, both must still show basic respect for each other, and thereby maintain a degree of humaneness throughout such interactive processes. Understood in this way, the uniqueness of civilized symbols consists in this, that as media, they are used by human beings to represent what happens in their subjective inner worlds in order to engage the objective realities which exist outside that inner world.
Therefore, li, according to this broad Ruist understanding, is a non-violent, uniquely human, way to facilitate human to human and human to nature relationships in order to advance human growth and to achieve the condition of dynamic harmony (he, 和) in every domain of human life. In a word, the ‘softness’ connoted by the character 儒 implies the essential and ideally non-violent nature of human civilization.
Secondly, ru means ‘to moisten’ (濡). In order to grasp the significance of this meaning of ru to Ruism, we must first understand a traditional Chinese idiom, 相濡以沫 (xiang-ru-yi-mo), which can be roughly translated as ‘(fishes) moisten each other using their saliva.’ The idiom refers to the following story: when a river dries up, fish become stranded in the river bed. In order to survive in this difficult situation, the fish spit saliva at each other, moistening and thus bringing relief to each other’s bodies. Understood in this way, a Ru, a ‘Confucian,’ was metaphorically thought to be able to ‘moisten’ people’s bodies because the Ru, by relying on their knowledge of all the resources of human civilization as well as on their own ‘practical moral influence’ (de, 德), are able to nourish people’s lives within human society. In comparison to other approaches to ethics in the West, this Ruist understanding of morality points to its distinctively holistic nature: if I am moral, I can nourish my life and the lives of other people, which thereby includes a significant bodily dimension. In other words, if I am moral, I will become healthy. In fact, based upon my previous analysis of the meaning of ‘dynamic harmony‘ (he, 和), this holistic approach to Ruist ethics is quite understandable.
In biological terms, a condition of dynamic harmony can be defined as one of ‘energy equilibrium,’ as when a biological entity employs the least amount of energy to exert optimal biological functioning, at the same time attaining a symbiotic relationship with each of the other entities within its local environment.
In this sense, if a Ru, by employing all kinds of non-violent civilized symbols, is able to bring a condition of dynamic harmony to his or her community, he or she is actually creating a healthy ecosphere within which all kinds of life benefit, nourish, and thus “moisten” each other. In this way, the character of 儒, which is made up of two parts, ren, 人, meaning ‘a human being,’ and xu, 需, meaning ‘need’ or ‘want,’ can be interpreted to refer to someone who is ‘a needed human being.’ But why should a Ru be needed by other people? It is precisely because he or she has command of the essential resources for human civilization, and so is able to ‘moisten’ people’s lives and thereby create those virtuous ecospheres which are needed within all domains of human society.
If we now combined these two meanings of Ru, ‘being soft’ and ‘to moisten,’ we can recognize that the standard meaning of Ru, as it is received in the Ruist tradition, is ‘non-violent transformation.’ To be a Ru is thus to be commissioned as a non-violent warrior and fighter who employs every resource of human civilization toward the realization of dynamic harmony in the world. A Ru is someone who tries to transform the world into an all-encompassing symbiotic ecosphere by employing his or her own personal moral cultivation. As a consequence, please do not forget that Confucius is not a Confucian; he is a Ru. And Confucianism is not Confucianism; it is Ruism. I hope that everyone who reads this article will help to spread this message, and will also commit to realizing the Ruist ideal in every dimension of human living.
Bin Song 