Confucius and Confusionism

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Confucius and Confusionism
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Taoist-Confucian Temple Given that Taoism and Confucianism, two of China’s main religions, are 180 degrees apart in philosophy, it’s surprising that Dadeng Island has a temple where pilgrims manage to worship both! (Confusionism, perhaps? A bilingual Quanzhou map actually shows a "Confusionism Temple" in Anxi!)

How Confucius Got That Way Unlike Confucianism, which emphasizes absolute obedience, conformity, standards, and education to preserve them, Taoism is the Montessori approach to enlightenment. Taoism means “The Way” (New Testament Christianity was also called “The Way”), and is based on the teachings of Lao Tzu in 6th Century B.C. China. But with Taoism the way is relative for there are no standards for proper behavior or right and wrong. All is relative. The emphasis is individual freedom, loose government, and mystical experience.

Not surprisingly, the powers that be preferred Confucius to Lao Tzu--though not in his own lifetime.
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Confucius employed his youth mastering poetry and history classics, and the six arts (ritual, music, archery, charioteering, calligraphy and arithmetic). Then in his 30s, he became a teacher and devoted his life to insuring that Chinese for the next 3000 years followed suit.

Confucius humbly claimed that he was an ordinary man of ordinary intellect, so all people could follow his lead in seeking perfection through study and conformity to society. The problem was that no one wanted to follow his lead because he was usually jobless, homeless, and half-starved.

Confucius’ failures often ate at him. He once said, “It is these things that cause me concern: failure to cultivate virtue, failure to explore in depth what I have learned, inability to do what I know is right, and inability to reform myself when I have defects.”
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I think what really ate at him was his wife, because she too was usually homeless and half-starved – not exactly choice ingredients in the immortal’s elixir of marital bliss.

While claiming to be just one of the boys, the unemployed Confucius also said he was unstoppable and immortal until his heavenly mandate was completed. “If Heaven does not intend this culture to be destroyed, then what can the men of K’uang do to me?”

Not much, except to keep him unemployed. So at age 56 he left the inhospitable leaders of Lu, who still weren’t hiring, and spent the next 12 years traveling about with a slowly growing following. He returned home at age 67 and died 6 years later, leaving behind 3,000 disciples who were usually jobless, homeless and half-starved. But they kept alive the teachings dear to 2400 years of imperial hearts.

Confucians taught that moral community begins by cleaning up one’s own backyard (and ignoring the emperor’s). The foundation of society is filial piety. Obedience to father and elders and magistrates and emperor guarantees social order, stability, and peace; deviations of any kind insure anarchy.
They learned that lesson only too well.
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A few centuries back, a young man saw a girl drowning in a river. He debated whether or not to save her because society forbade young men, under penalty of death, from touching young women. In the end he leaped into the raging torrent, rescued her, and was promptly arrested. The magistrate said, “Saving life is good, but arbitrarily disobeying society’s rules is not. You will not be killed, but for your dangerous precedent, you are banished for life.”

Not much of a concession; for Chinese, banishment is worse than death.

Emperors have always loved Confucius’s emphasis on obedience, but his warning that revolution would topple unjust governments never went over well. In 231 B.C., the emperor tried to eliminate Confucius’ influence by destroying every book in China. But someone missed a few volumes. Confucians crawled back out of the woodwork, regained the upper hand, and have been stacking China’s deck ever since (while being careful to remove all the wild cards).

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