What the Scholar Taught
by the Rev. Colin Bossen, December 12, 2010
This service marks the fourth in our series on the world's non-Western religious. Previously we have touched upon indigenous religions, Hinduism and Buddhism. Today we turn our attention to Confucianism.
As with our other sermons in this series, today I will offer you the barest of glimpses into the religious tradition being discussed. It has been more than two and a half millennium since Confucian, Kung Fu-tzu or the Master Kung, passed from this Earth. Since then innumerable people have taken up his teachings and lived lives and written texts influenced by what he taught. For hundreds of years, China, one of the world's great civilizations used Confucius's teachings to order society. To compress the vast stream of Confucian thought into a twenty minute sermon is all but impossible.
The subject of Confucianism presents me with a particular problem. Unitarian Universalist preaching is supposed to proceed from personal experience. Good preaching is, as Ralph Waldo Emerson would have it, "life passed through the fire of thought." The problem I have is that I have little life experience with Confucianism. I know no one who describes themself as a practicing Confucian. I have never witnessed nor participated in any type of Confucian ritual or community.
Indeed, my experience of Confucianism is only of the stereotypes many Westerners have of the tradition. I am familiar with the variety of racist jokes that run "Confucius say..." and then pair some sort of absurdity or ribald obscenity with the scholar's name. As a child I also saw the odd Charlie Chan movie on Saturday afternoon television. These films from the forties and fifties starred a white actor as the canny detective Charlie Chan. He was made-up to look Chinese and adopted a stereotyped accent--where Rs were juxtaposed with Ls--while he spouted funny, cryptic, folk aphorisms like "Ancient proverb say, 'One small wind can raise much dust.' Or "So many fish in fish market, even flower smell same." These sayings were clearly designed as parodies of the type of wisdom sayings collected in the "Analects of Confucian." I imagine that many Westerns would be offended if similar parodies were made of the wisdom found within the Bible.
A simple purpose of this sermon is to help us go beyond such stereotypes. Stereotypes are dangerous because they reduce diverse and complicated communities into simplistic singular images. Such images are false. They erase individuals by equating them solely with their communities. Often stereotypes perpetuate falsehoods and misinformation in the stead of actual knowledge.
What I know of Confucianism is gleaned from books. In an odd way this is not inappropriate. Confucian was a scholar and for close to a hundred generations he has been largely known through the written teachings attributed to him and about him. These include the Five Classics, which Confucius is said to have authored or edited, and the "Analects of Confucius," a collection of sayings attributed to him and his disciples. The Five Classics include texts on history, ritual, poetry and divination; the last, specifically, being the widely known "I Ching" or "Book of Changes."
This morning we are fixing our attention primarily on the "Analects." The "Analects" served, along with a handful of other texts, for hundreds of years as the core curriculum for the imperial civil service exams. Mastery of the wisdom and ritual contained within this text was required for any who wished to serve the court and live the life of the scholar-gentleman. This was a style of life that for much of Chinese history was, in the words of the writer Kenneth Rexroth, that of "the ideal [person]... civilized, nonviolent... with... human-heartedness and... [a] head full of memorized texts for all contingencies."
The scholar of religion Huston Smith described the goal of Confucianism slightly differently. The objective, he wrote, was "of becoming more completely human." In his teachings Confucius laid out the path to this goal. The system includes several key elements. Four of these are named, if you will excuse my poor pronunciation: Jen, Li, Te and Wen. Together these comprise the Tao, or the Way. One who cultivates each of these attributes within themself will reach the goal of maximizing their own human potential. Let's consider each of these attributes briefly in turn.
Jen is a difficult term to translate. As the philosopher Herbert Fingarette notes, "Jen has been translated variously as Good, Humanity, Love, Benevolence, Virtue,... [Humanness], [Humanity-at-Its-Best] and so on." Fundamentally, it describes the type of relationship that should exist between people. The character of such relationships is summarized in a passage in the "Analects" that captures an exchange between Confucius and one of his disciples: "Tzu-kung asked saying, Is there any single saying that one can act upon all day and every day? The Master said, Perhaps the saying about consideration: 'Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you.'"
A simplistic translation of Li would render it ritual. If Jen terms the ideal character of the relationship between people then Li is a prescription for how to develop those relationships. Li instructs ceremonial, public and private life. It offers a proper way to do things. The Li of the Confucians is detailed enough that some claim it contains more than two thousand rules for conduct. This complexity has led to a characterization of Confucian society as impossibly rigid and rule bound.
It has been argued that this characterization is entirely inaccurate. The purpose of Li is not to create endless rules for conduct. Instead it is charge the individual to develop within a sort of moral sensibility that allows them to do what is right and proper in every situation. One of the sayings attributed to Confucius provides clarity in this distinction, "The Master said, Govern the people by regulations, keep order among them by chastisements, and they will flee from you, and lose all self-respect. Govern them by moral force, keep order among them by ritual and they will keep their self-respect and come to you of their own accord."
Here ritual does not mean simple rote activity. Instead, it is a sort of presence combined with ceremonial skill. Fingarette provides an example from our contemporary society that could be understood to mimic Li. "I see you on the street;" he writes, "I smile, walk toward you, put out my hand to shake yours. And behold--without any command, stratagem, force, special tricks or tools, without any effort on my part to make you do so, you spontaneously turn toward me, return my smile, raise your hand towards mine. We shake hands--not by my pulling your hand up and down or your pulling mine but by spontaneous and perfect cooperative action." In this example both people are present with each other, genuinely engaged, and understand how to interact without resorting to force, coercion or worrying about miscommunication. That is the essence of Li.
Te is probably best translated as power. However, what is meant by Te in the Confucian system could equally be understood as governance. And if Confucianism is anything it is a system that provides a prescription for good governance. The Confucian objective is to become an ideal servant to the state and help guide so that it might best serve both the prince and the people.
Here a brief biographical note about Confucius might prove helpful. Confucius lived in about the fifth century BCE. It was a time in China when the ruling Chou Dynasty was in collapse. Small feudal states fought with each other for dominance. The warfare was bloody and brutal. The defeat of an army often led to the wholesale slaughter of the community it protected. There are accounts of tens and hundreds of thousands of people being put to death by the most barbaric methods possible. There are stories of the conquered being tossed into boiling cauldrons and their relations forced to eat the resulting human soup.
Confronted with this situation Confucius asked the logical question: What can we do to stop from destroying ourselves? He rightly saw that unless altered, patterns of violent barbarism and warfare lead to a civilization's extinction.
Part of Confucius's answer to his question was that better government was needed. He believed, in the words of Huston Smith, that there were "three essentials of government... economic sufficiency, military sufficiency, and the confidence of the people." Of these three the trust of the people was by far the most important. Without the trust of the ruled rulers would resort to force and coercion. If they used force and coercion in their own lands they could be trusted to use in the lands of those they vanquished.
Te is about how rulers cultivate that trust. Here a selection from the "Analects" provides a useful summary: "Chi K'ang-tzu asked whether there were any form of encouragement by which he could induce the common people to be respectful and loyal. The Master said, "Approach them with dignity, and they will respect you. Show piety towards your parents and kindness toward your children, and they will be loyal to you. Promote those who are worthy, train those who are incompetent; that is the best form of encouragement."
Order and stability come to a society where everyone is afforded a modicum of worth and dignity. If the ruler treats the ruled with respect then respect will be a dominant theme throughout society.
The great translator Arthur Waley rendered Wen as "the arts of peace (music, dancing, literature)." In the Confucian view these arts form the heart of culture. Without them humanity is little more than beast. Much of the purpose of Confucianism is to ensure that Wen is properly cultivated in and transferred to the next generation. Confucius understood, as Cornell West would have it, that "tradition is something you don't inherit. It is something you gain by great labor..." Ultimately, the Confucian concept of Wen could be understood as a charge to gain fluency in cultural traditions--to be conversant in poetry, appreciative of music and widely read in literature--and in doing so develop a fuller understanding of what it means to be uniquely human.
It should be clear from this brief summary that Confucianism falls outside of the Western mindset. It is largely unconcerned with the supernatural--though ancestor worship does play a role in its rituals--and Western scholars have long debated whether it is a religion or a philosophy. For many Westerns religion has an otherworldly goal and orientation. For most Christians and Muslims the objective is often not so much to cultivate the human ideal within one's self during this life but to achieve salvation in the next. For many Jews, the ideal is to live in proper covenant with God and keep the laws that God has commanded.
For the Confucian the primary relationship is not with God. It is with other humans. This is difficult for some people to grasp. It calls them to focus on the present world they are confronted with, and the proper way to live in harmony with those who inhabit it, rather than whatever bliss they may obtain or suffering they may experience in the next one.
As Unitarian Universalist I find some sense of familiarity with the teachings of Confucius. The Confucian objective is not all that different from the objective the 20th century Unitarian Universalist religious educator Sophia Lyon Fahs articulated for our religious education programs. Fahs believed, that religious education should be a process of, in her words, "creative discovery, intelligent examination and free decisions." The purpose such an education is to develop within what Fahs called the religious way. Such a way, she wrote, "is the deep way, one with a growing perspective and an expanding view. It is the way that dips into the heart of things, into personal feelings, yearnings and hostilities that so often must be buried... The religious way is the way that sees what physical eyes alone fail to see, the intangibles at the heart of every phenomenon." It provides a path to emotional and religious maturity. In other words, the religious way exists to help each person obtain their full human potential.
The Confucian bell of the human ideal tolls similarly to the teachings of the 19th century Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing. Channing believed in the perfectibility of human nature. Each of us, he thought, had the possibility of obtaining our full human potential. This is what Jesus had done. We each have the opportunity to do likewise. In Channing's view, Jesus is an example of the ideal human, an example that can be imitated. The purpose of religion is to aid people in this imitation. "Look up to the illustrious Son of God with the conviction that you may become one with him in thought, in feeling, in power, in holiness. His character will become a blessing just as far as it shall awaken in you this consciousness, this hope," he wrote.
I do not offer these examples so much to suggest that there are clear parallels between Confucianism and Unitarian Universalism. Rather I bring them to the fore to speculate that the reason why many people have trouble seeing Unitarian Universalism as a religion is similar to the reason why they might fail to grasp Confucianism as such. Both traditions call for the cultivation of the self without a resort to some transcendental referent, some outside being who orders the universe and proscribes right livelihood.
Much of Western religion is built around salvation narratives. But, as another Unitarian minister, A. Powell Davies remarked, "The salvationist faith is a faith that cannot save us." To be a Unitarian Universalist is, on some level, to understand this truth and, in doing so, place oneself outside of the narrative of our culture's dominate religious traditions. It is to understand what will save us, and here I do not mean in the metaphysical. I mean what will save us from the growing ecological crisis, the unending spiral of war and violence and the threat of economic and social stagnation.
As distant from us as Confucianism is, I see another parallel with Unitarian Universalism here. Both traditions see the solution to human problems in human hands. The problems we face are the ones we created. They can only be addressed if society undergoes a moral transformation. Our Unitarian Universalist values of transformative love for and acceptance of all members of human family and recognizing and honoring the ecological web of which we are a dependent part offer hints of the sort of morals needed for that transformation.
So, too, does some of the wisdom of Confucianism. This came to me clearly on Friday when Bernie Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist Senator from Vermont, mounted a filibuster against the extension of the Bush tax cuts. Sanders railed against the growing inequality in our society and chastised his colleagues for serving the rich rather than the poor. In this I heard echoes of Confucius own teaching, "A gentleman helps out the necessitous; he does not make the rich richer still."
Confucianism helped to order and organize Chinese society until at least the advent of the Maoist regime. Its ideal of the scholar-gentleman led to the development of some of the greatest poets the world has known. We heard one poem from the Confucian poet Tu Fu earlier. Let us close with another, "By The Winding River I":
Every day on the way home from
My office I pawn another
Of my Spring clothes. Every day
I come home from the river bank
Drunk. Everywhere I go, I owe
Money for wine. History
Records few men who lived to be
Seventy, I watch the yellow
Butterflies drink deep of the
Flowers, and the dragonflies
Dipping the surface of the
Water again and again.
I cry out to the Spring wind,
And the light and the passing hours.
We enjoy life such a little
While, why should men cross each other?
Please rise in body or in spirit and join with me in singing hymn #308, "The Blessings of Earth and Sky." The words come from the Universalist minister Kenneth Patton who sought wisdom in all of the worlds religions and found in, among other places, the teachings of Confucius.