The Religion and Mythology Dimensions of China (from the earliest times to beyond the Zhou Era)

I’ve hinted in the foregoing posts at the rituals that were valued by the Confucians and also at the shamanism and human sacrifices that occurred in the first five of China’s official 'dynastic cycle' periods. I now want to turn to these areas in more detail because religion and mythology really are the other major central pointers to how the Chinese and the barbarians decided on their in- and out-groups. The political discussions among the Chinese I've so far been examining all took place with a common religious understanding in the background (providing it all with a relatively coherent meaning). That’s not to say that everybody believed in the same supernatural things any more than everybody had the same political philosophy. It is to say that they shared an understanding of ways of viewing the world that were relatively well-defined among and between them. And like political ideas, religious ideas shaped ancient China and continue to be influential among Chinese today.

So how did they come up?

Shamanism – generally with male shamans – was readily understood by Confucians as a part of the ancient way. It really wasn’t the point of Confucianism to oppose it or encourage it – it wasn’t central to Confucianism.

Dao could mean the Daoist Dao of nature (on which more later) or the Confucian Dao of a great ruler. Not only vocab, though, but also stories were shared between the schools in order to facilitate debate between them. There was a common spiritual language. Many texts were in fact fused together in such a way that today we can’t always be sure who wrote what or even what side or sides of the debate the author was on. Part of any confusion today that scholars need to deal with derives from the way early Chinese writings were written on bamboo strips joined with twine that must have become jumbled up at various points when the twine rotted creating a headache of a job reordering the sophisticated and complex writings correctly down the many centuries.

Adding to the confusion today, all of the most important ancient Chinese thinkers were operating in a completely different conceptual world from most of us. Today we classify the schools as best we can, according to what appears to have concerned them. We note for example that there were three main schools concerned with order: Confucians, Mohists and Legalists. In addition; Confucians, Daoists and Tillers were concerned with political morality; and Daoists, Confucians, Mohists and Cosmologists were all concerned with cosmic relationships. It was the Cosmologists that originated Traditional Chinese Medicine and the five-direction cosmology (Wood-East, Metal-West, Fire-South, Water-North and Soil-Centre).

Despite Xun Zi’s efforts to abhor superstition generally, the Mohists often criticised the Confucians for being too accepting of what Mohists viewed as superstition based on Chinese tradition. They cited the traditional superstitions of certain southern tribes that the Chinese all regarded as weird to bolster their argument against superstition generally. Daoists also entered the debate against superstition in a sense on the basis simply that propitiation and worship of the heavens would have no effect as the heavens simply didn’t care about humans (as they viewed the ‘10,000 things’ of the material world under them as 'straw dogs'). The legalists were wholly concerned with this world as it could rationally be understood (at least according to their lights).

So arguments raged over rationality and this or other worldliness. Confucians were also concerned with whether human nature was good or bad but Daoists and various mystic schools concerned themselves with developing human powers to their utmost regardless of the uses to which they might be put.

The famous Dao De Jing or Dao De Qing of Lao Zi now known as Daoist came from a mystical school that really preceded Daoism as it now is. It was addressed to rulers and written in about the 4^th Century BCE. It says if the heart is in the body, the outside flourishes and clarity is achieved. Qi (energy) comes in. It is a meditational work that doesn’t contain the body-mind dualism of Western philosophical thinking. Another mystical text of a similar vintage proclaims that when the daemonic knows the 10,000 things all reality is one. It’s easy to see how Buddhist thought came to be at home in this environment (though a few centuries later). Yet another mystical text of the era has it that when a mystic rules over the 10,000 things the world will be in order (Christianity, Judaism or Islam, anyone?) Challenges are issued to connect the naming and the desired. The nameless name is apparently the name of a sage. AC Graham called the Dao De Jing mystical statecraft for the ruler in opposition to the benevolence of Confucianism.

The eventual Daoist political argument ran along similar lines to Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” analogy. The Daoist Master Zhuang had certainly argued for something like it. While Confucians were concerned that Daoists were selfish, Daoists retorted that a selfish Daoist ruler, for example, was ideal for political harmony as he would be too lazy and lacking in ambition to consider putting his subjects’ lives at risk engaging in wars of conquest. Selfishness and laziness were attributes Daoists sought to promote as opposed to the serious studiousness of the more politically-minded schools. Education was anathema to them as too far removed from nature. This debate was mirrored many centuries later in Europe by proponents of Romanticism versus those of the Enlightenment.

By the 4^th Century BCE shamanistic and mystical ideas had fed themselves into the philosophy that came to be called Daoism and the religious ideas of one of the preeminent Daoists, Zhuang Zi (Master Zhuang). Shamans were supposed to have clear sight and understanding and to be able to enter into mystical journeys. Their mystical traditions are where Zhuang started his quests. Of course I’ve mentioned that Dao (the Way) was used in most of the traditional philosophical schools as a descriptor of the totality of correct philosophical observance but Daoism has come to be used to describe Zhuang’s particular school.

In a era of sophistry where arguments were entered into for their own sake, Zhuang and his crew used the arguments as springboards to transcendently enter territory that was really completely their own. They sought what truly suited or was natural for humans and what mattered to them. Zhuang’s writings were partly meditational and partly aimed at the protection of the individual human organism in line with the teachings also of Yang Zhu. The chapters of the work traditionally attributed to him that are still believed to have been written by him include the so-called Mystical chapters and Primitivist chapters where he often appears angry and anarchic. He wrote that a man who looks for knowledge and eats at the market of heaven will have the shape of a man but will be unnameable and won’t say “right” or “wrong”. He will grasp totality, accept the discipline of the external world and understand it.

After the political battle was fought and the legalist Qin victors were themselves summarily vanquished and replaced by the Confucian Han dynasty, the religious battles also continued. The Confucian values may have come to a kind of tenuous ascendancy (Legalism was never far from it) but for many the often mystical and always selfish Daoist ideal of a return to nature and the abhorrence of education and public service continued to be appealing. The Confucian ascendancy had only been possible at great cost of life and yet the Confucians continued to moralise that Yangists (early Daoists) were selfish.