Asian Religions, page 8
Filial Piety, Active Participation of Parents in Children's Affairs, Support of Parents in Old Age, Strong Extended Family Identity
From the home radiate moral values, spiritual beings, and ritual action. The primary moral tie is the one between parents and children, and moral consciousness begins with training in the Confucian virtues, especially xiao (孝), filial piety.
Among family relationships, the vertical/generative always takes precedence over the horizontal/affiliative. Thus the parent–child relationship is emphasized over the husband–wife relationship, the latter being patterned after the former but always secondary to it. This is reflected historically in the private writings of Confucian intellectuals – the scholar–official class – who wrote of their mothers without fail and at length, but rarely if ever of their wives. And it remains true today, when parent–child relationships are given much greater attention than marital relationships. Up until the twentieth century East Asian marriages were arranged by parents. Although this is no longer the case, parents still play a significant role in their children's choice of marriage partners, and divorce brings shame to the family as a whole, not just to the husband and wife. Divorce rates in China and Japan, while on the rise, are only about one tenth of those of Europe and America.
Of the five lasting relationships of classical Confucianism, three are related to the family: parent–child, husband–wife, and sibling–sibling. These ties are stronger than ever. As people have become disillusioned with the grand promises of communism and are equally distrustful of Western individualism, the family remains the principal source of personal value in every country of the East Asian region.
Persistence of Filial Piety as an Abiding Cultural Value, though under Threat from New Family Models, Declining Marriage and Birth Rates, and Economic Changes
The religion of China (including the Chinese-dominant states of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore) and of Korea, Japan, and Vietnam is, first and foremost, a family religion. Throughout East Asia, the most revered of all spiritual beings are the family ancestors. Families make offerings of incense, rice, meat, and fruit every morning at the family altar and on anniversary days at the family gravesite. The cult of the ancestors makes the home the most central “sacred space.” Periodic rites at local shrines and temples are also for the benefit of the family: its health, its harmony, and its preservation.
While still strong as a ritual tradition and as a social value, filial piety – indeed the traditional family model – is under threat. In China, a generation of universal birth control (in the form of the “one-child policy”) has radically altered traditional demographics; in the developed economies of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan, changing values, economic factors, and educational and economic progress for women have delayed the age of marriage as well as birthrates, which are now among the lowest in the world. The result: rapidly aging populations in the entire East Asian cultural area and projections of a significant economic slowdown (even halting the Chinese economic juggernaut) in the coming decades.3
Self-Sacrifice for the Benefit of Others and the Rejection of Western Individualism, Privacy, and Self-Interest: An Ethic of Conformity
Communitarian values, advocated cynically by authoritarian governments as a buttress to their suppression of individual rights, are still viewed positively at the grassroots level. Many Chinese and Japanese see American-style individualism as extreme and socially divisive, and even as harmful to individuals themselves. Individualism is associated with isolation, loneliness, and “outsider” status. For contemporary East Asians, a person's social identity is far more important than his or her sense of privacy or individuality. Some would argue that Confucian communitarian values have created an East Asian ethic of conformity – an ethic frequently observed by sociologists studying Japan in particular. But this characterization is highly Western: from a Chinese or Japanese point of view, Confucian communitarianism provides individuals with a strong sense of meaning and purpose in their lives.
At the same time, it cannot be denied that globalization has inspired a yearning for greater freedom and individual expression, on the part of Chinese and Japanese in particular. In the midst of a political crackdown on dissidents in China – including the long-term imprisonment of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) and the temporary kidnapping of outspoken architect and rights-activist Ai Weiwei (艾未未) – thousands of people have made use of social networking sites to express both political and personal concerns, often anti-communitarian in tone.4
In Japan, the traditional constraints have been less political than cultural. As Gordon Mathews, a sociologist and an expert in Japanese society, remarked in an essay on the Japanese concept of ikigai (what makes life “worth living”): “Perhaps as a way of resisting their societies' dominant pressures, the most vociferously individualistic pursuers of ikigai among those I interviewed were not American but Japanese.”5 In the face of political or cultural oppression, Chinese and Japanese people are more and more individualistic in dress, artistic self-expression, and legal and political advocacy. Still, communal values remain strong.
Public Support for the Arts and Civil Religion
In keeping with the Communist revolution's general condemnation of Confucius and Confucian values, the Confucian rites all but disappeared in the early years of the Peoples' Republic of China. However, state sponsorship of religious ritual, once described by the People's Republic of China as an expression of “feudal superstition,” has enjoyed a dramatic revival in contemporary China, with government-sponsored birthday celebrations of the Grand Master in his hometown of Qufu beginning in 2004.
Public performances of Confucian rites now enjoy government support in China. This reflects an emerging nationalism based on traditional Confucian values. Moreover, the “civil religion” of China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam is highly ceremonial, and public gatherings such as school assemblies, graduations, inaugurations, and other commemorative events are promoted by state and local governments and are generally well attended. People enjoy and appreciate public ceremonies, and the kind of cynicism and lack of interest so often seen in the West is almost completely absent in East Asian contexts. Public ceremonial is highly valued in the East Asian cultural region.
Another remnant of Confucianism is an emphasis on artistic education and public support for the arts. China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong all boast grand national theaters featuring some of the world's greatest musical and theatrical performers. Government-funded arts institutions can also be found in Japan (the Japan Arts Council), Taiwan (the National Culture and Arts Foundation), Korea (the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture), Hong Kong (the Hong Kong Arts Development Council), and so on. As a socialist state, China has consistently supported artistic expression, though severely curtailed by restrictions on artistic freedom.6
Hospitality, Social Grace, Emphasis on Social Identity
The traditional Confucian vision sees the self as a “center of relationships,” internalizing societal norms of etiquette and cooperation. Relationships are constitutive of individual identity. As a result, the maintenance of harmonious family and social relationships is a deeply held personal commitment. Confucius extended the traditional meaning of li (narrowly defined as “rites” or “ceremonies”) to a normative pattern for everyday life. Li refers to the proper patterns of behavior in all social encounters, in a living human context. The individual-in-community regards his or her personal relationships as essential to individual and social well-being and adopts a “ceremonial attitude” toward all persons.
The li of everyday life are so highly regarded in the East Asian cultural region that they are taken to be obvious. They are fundamental, so much so that they are not labeled as “Confucian,” but simply as “human” and “right.” In the details of social life, in the lessons taught to children, and in the patterns followed by adults, modern-day East Asians are unselfconsciously Confucian, as they have been for two millennia. The patterns of li are the social code or behavioral idiom of East Asian society. Once, in a public address sponsored by the Asia Society in Washington, DC, the Japanese ambassador to the United States was asked by a member of the American audience about reports of bullying among Japanese teenagers. “Are they really Japanese?” he asked, rhetorically. Acting in such a manner represents a rebellion against their cultural heritage.
The observance of li (as personal comportment) is so important that it plays a role in political disputes. One of the arguments advanced by the Taiwanese Independence Movement to promote a formal separation from Mainland China (China and Taiwan agreed in 1994 to a formula of “one China, two systems”) is that the Mainland has “abandoned” the li of personal habits. Hong Kong and Taiwanese citizens complain that Mainland Chinese tourists are rude and impolite; this charge has received a fiery response from a popular Beijing professor, who has asserted that it is in fact the “renegade” provinces that have abandoned Confucian norms.7
Confucian Fundamentalism and the “National Studies Craze”
From the May Fourth Movement of the late 1910s to the Communist Great Leap Forward of the 1950s and 1960s, Confucianism was rejected as a dragon to be slain. So strong was the revolutionary condemnation of the Confucian tradition that any mention of Confucius or Confucianism would lead to imprisonment and black-listing, a situation that persisted well into the 1970s and 1980s. Since the mid-1980s, however, and especially in the decades since 1994, Confucianism has enjoyed a dramatic reversal of fortune, beginning with government support for the traditional rites. These include birthday celebrations of the Grand Master in his birthplace and provincial capitals, the production of children's primers on Confucian principles for elementary schools, and the establishment of programs in “national studies” (國學, guoxue) at the country's most prestigious universities. Some schools have found that special programs in national studies have been financially profitable in continuing education and community outreach initiatives.
The national studies movement is indicative of general trends in contemporary Chinese society:
the revival of cultural Confucianism as a symbol of Chinese uniqueness;
intense nationalism, expressed in neo-Confucian terms;
political Confucianism as the foundation for government restrictions on social freedoms;
assertion of Confucianism as the solution to global problems and as a corrective to (if not as a direct replacement of) democratic institutions.
Confucian fundamentalism and the “national studies craze” are controversial even within China itself, but it is doubtlessly true that Confucian values, for so long regarded simply as a remnant of China's feudal past, are now expressed openly and forcefully, as the driving ideology of China's political and cultural future.8
Notes
1 On the recent history of admissions at the University of California, Berkeley, see, for example, PBS Frontline, “History of Admissions at UC Berkeley,” at www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/sats/etc/ucb.html (accessed July 22, 2013). Numerous articles and books address the educational achievements and hurdles faced by America's “model minority,” descendants of East Asian immigrants. One of the most talked about is Amy Chua's book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (Oxford and New York: Penguin Press, 2011).
2 One of the most direct statements of the contemporary application of Confucian-inspired “soft authoritarianism” was articulated by the former president of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew. See Fareed Zararia, “A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yu,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 1994). On the growth of Confucian dialectic within today's Chinese government and educational system, see, for example, Andy Yee, “China: The Coming of the Age of Political Confucianism?” Global Voices, February 5, 2011, at http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/02/05/china-the-coming-of-age-of-political-confucianism/ (accessed February 29, 2012).
3 Many sources can be consulted for greater detail. Some interesting ones are Judith Banister, David Bloom and Larry Rosenberg, “Population Aging and Economic Growth in China, at http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/pgda/WorkingPapers/2010/PGDA_WP_53.pdf; The Economist, “Asian Demography: The Flight from Marriage,” at http://www.economist.com/node/21526329; Mari Tsuruwaka, “The Declining Birthrate and the Aging Population in the East Asian Region: From the 13th Conference on the Aging Population in the East Asian Region,” at http://www.jarc.net/int/?p=68 (all websites accessed February 29, 2012).
4 See ongoing investigative reports by the China Media Project, a Project of the Journalism and Media Studies Centre of the University of Hong Kong (http://cmp.hku.hk/, accessed February 29, 2012).
5 “The pursuit of a life worth living in Japan and the United States,” Ethnology 35: 1 (1996), p. 51ff.
6 For an overview of public funding for the arts in China, see Tobias Zuser, “How the Cultural Sector Works in China,” at http://www.hitangandccc.com/blog/2011/11/financing-funding-cultural-projects-china (accessed February 29, 2012).
7 This hot-button issue in 2012 has received extensive press coverage. For example, see Jens Kastner, “Hong Kong Clash Stirs the Pot for Taiwan,” Asia Times Online, February 9, 2012, at http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/NB09Ad01.html (accessed February 29, 2012).
8 For further reading on the Confucian revival in China, see Ruiping Fan, editor, The Renaissance of Confucianism in Contemporary China (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011).
Part III
The Taoist Tradition
8
What Is Taoism?
“Taoism” refers to a religious and philosophical system that promotes holistic well-being and ritual mastery of the spirit world. Taoism is often contrasted with Confucianism, but it is better to think of Taoism and Confucianism as two aspects of a single religious tradition; Chinese themselves, throughout the centuries, have regarded Taoism and Confucianism in complementary terms. Taoism arose in China, but now can be said to be a “world religion,” with adherents in Europe and America as well as in East Asia.
Until recent years, the Western encounter with Taoism was focused on the literary and philosophical tradition of the Zhou Dynasty, the same period in which Confucius and the early Confucians Mengzi and Xunzi lived. This tradition was associated with the writings of a “hermit intellectual” named Zhuangzi (莊子) in a book by the same name and with the writings of a “wise sage” named Laozi (老子) in a book attributed to him and known by the title Daodejing (道德經). For many decades, Western knowledge was limited to these books in English translation, and the entire rich history of religious institutions, rituals, and individual practice of Taoism was all but ignored. This situation has been rectified, and, for the past 25 to 30 years, the study of Chinese religions has been focused, quite rightly, on the history of Taoism over its two millennia of development and elaboration.
Scholars have been divided on the issue of how to relate the “philosophy” of the early sages with the “religion” of the ritual tradition; even in Chinese, they are referred to differently, as Daojia (道家, the “school” of the Tao) and Daojiao (道教, the “religion” of the Tao). Simply for purposes of organization, the present book will treat these two aspects sequentially; but it should be understood that they are interpenetrating. Both the Daodejing and the Book of Zhuangzi anticipate the subsequent religious tradition, and this tradition, in turn, refers back to the early sages with reverence, deifying Laozi as “Lord Lao.” Still, historians cannot find evidence for a fully developed Taoist religion at the time of the early books, and so it makes sense to treat them separately here.
We should remind ourselves, as we did in Chapter 1, that the words and names that we employ to describe Asian religions all originated in the West – they appeared first in English, German, or French, and they were translated into Chinese and Japanese only later. So the labels we use – “religion,” “philosophy,” even “Confucianism” and “Taoism” – are Western inventions, imposed upon Chinese culture to make sense of its history in familiar terms. “Taoism” is an especially amorphous name, and I have intentionally retained the traditional English spelling “Taoism,” as opposed to the preferred Romanization today (“Daoism”), in order to underscore the fact that the designation is not indigenous to China. It is not autochthonous, to use a scientific term, and “Taoism” is not an autonym – it is not a word used by Chinese to describe their religion. In fact I can say that I have never met a Chinese who identified him- or herself as a “Taoist” or as a “Confucian,” except in very special circumstances.
Not only are the Taoist religion and Taoist philosophy difficult to differentiate; so, too, are Taoism and Confucianism. The use of these names should not suggest two completely distinct entities. At the elite, intellectual levels of Chinese culture, members of the scholar–gentry class were as likely to cite the Taoist classics as the “Four Books” of Confucianism, and they incorporated both Taoist and Confucian modes of living into their daily lives. At the level of popular culture, the same was and remains true: enter any community temple and you will find both traditions represented without differentiation – an image of the deified Laozi next to placards promoting social harmony, righteousness, and other Confucian virtues; ritual practices that borrow from both traditions; and temple talks citing both Taoist philosophy and Confucian learning.
Confucianism and Taoism interpenetrate to such an extent that it is more accurate to describe them as a single “Chinese religion.” Notably, in the Chinese case, there is no one word parallel to “Hinduism” – a label simply designating the “religion” (in fact, religions) of the people of India. Just as the word “Hinduism” suggests a false unity in India, the words “Confucianism” and “Taoism” are equally misleading in that they suggest a conceptual separation in Chinese religious thought and practice.
