Author: 阿靖

Gender or: How Buddhism Learned to Stop Floating and Love the State

The focus of this week’s readings was on Buddhist world orders, and in particular the way in which the religion – and its followers – oriented themselves within the world. In particular, I wanted to understand how Buddhism was deployed in support of the Japanese state. At a first glance, it seems like such a move is impossible. Buddhism is an other-wordly religion which argues that ‘attachment’ to the material world brings about suffering.1 Nevertheless, Buddhism was used to legitimate Japanese power, the tension between this/other-worldly resolved. In order to understand how this was done, I took a look at several ways in which ‘Buddhism’, as an idea, was reinterpreted and imagined by the state. One such way was through gender. The extract below, from the journal Chūō Bukkyō (1934), demonstrates how Buddhism was reimagined in gendered ways, and how this helped resolved the this/other-worldly tension described.

Through a karmic connection Japan received a daughter from another home as its wife. With a sincere heart this wife worked hard to take care of our home, having children and then grandchildren. Our home, not her original home, has been foremost in her mind. Indeed, from early on, more than a daughter from another home, she has been our wife and mother. (( Ōta Kakumin, ‘Zokuhi zokkai’ in Chūō Bukkyō 18:3 (1934), p. 194 in Christoper Ives (tr.), ‘The Mobilization of Doctrine: Buddhist Contributions to Imperial Ideology in Japan’ in Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1/2 (Spring 1999), p. 86 ))

This extract encodes Buddhism with the female gender (‘wife’, ‘home’, ‘children’) contra the Japanese state, which is coded male. This has two effects. Firstly, the term ‘wife’ is used to build a sense of unity between the Emperor’s law and Buddha’s law (王法佛法一如).2 ‘Marriage’ conveys the notion that the Japanese state is in line with the Heavenly Way (天道), and that there is a lot of doctrinal overlap between Buddhism and the state. The emperor, for example, plays the role of the buddha, looking out for his subjects-as-children with the compassionate heart (心). In turn, this gives the state spiritual-legitimacy, with the added bonus of elevating the emperor to an ethereal, buddha-like status.

Secondly, this gendering also imparts feminine stereotypes onto Buddhism, and presents us with an image of the religion as passive and – crucially – subjugated to men.3 This limits Buddhism’s influence within society by channelling its doctrine into areas that are ‘acceptable’ for its ‘gender’, so to speak. Any priests that choose to rebel against the state, therefore, are seen as stepping beyond the boundaries of their ‘gendered’ role. Thus, in siphoning Buddhism’s influence into specific areas, gender imposes boundaries onto the religion so as to limit its power. Buddhists are now no longer unconfined by space and time, like clouds.4 Gender confines Buddhism – and Buddhists – to specific realms that are appropriate and least disruptive to the state.

  1. Rupert Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism (1998), pp. 70, 73 [↩]
  2. Christopher Ives, ‘The Mobilization of Doctrine: Buddhist Contributions to Imperial Ideology in Japan’ in Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1/2 (Spring 1999), p. 85 [↩]
  3. See He-Yin Zhen, ‘On the Revenge of Women: Part 1: Instruments of Men’s Rule Over Women’ (1907) in Lydia He Liu, Rebecca Karl, Dorothy Ko (eds.), The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (2013) [↩]
  4. Hwansoo Kim, ‘The Adventures of a Japanese Monk in Colonial Korea: Sōma Shōei’s Zen training with Korean masters’ in E. Anderson (ed.), Belief and Practice in Imperial Japan and Colonial Korea (2017), p. 63 [↩]

‘Love has no boundaries’, and what that can teach us about the self

I am a hopeless romantic. So, when we were assigned readings on new conceptualisations of love in China, I jumped on the chance to learn more about something that resonates deeply in me. I ended up reading Lee Haiyan’s Revolution of the Heart: a genealogy of love in China, 1900-1950, which maps the way perceptions of love changed within Chinese society. Lee does this by taking Chinese sentimental fiction as her source material. With the rise of popular press in China, it became a genre that was both widely-written in and widely-consumed – pervasive, in short. This pervasiveness meant that sentimental fiction had a social utility: an ability to reflect on and perpetuate certain views within society.1 Therefore, in applying a historical analysis to works within sentimental fiction, Lee argues that we can shed light on what ‘the social order, the self, and sociality’ were like at the time, and how they were expressed.2. To demonstrate Lee’s point, I take as reference her analysis of Hu Chunbing’s play, Ai de geming/愛的革命 (The Revolution of Love), and expand on the serious historical implications her analysis of it has on our understandings of the self, vis-a-vis the external world.

Zhong Sanmin is the rebellious son of a well-to-do compradore merchant. His name, Zhong (invoking Zhongguo, China) Sanmin (invoking Sun Yat-sen’s sanmin zhuyi, the Three People’s Principles), marks him as a  … Nationalist patriot … [Sanmin] steadfastly courts a free-spirited New Woman appositely named Hua Ziyou (free China). 3

In the extract above, Lee references the lovers’ names, arguing that the symbolism contained within them indicates that love and revolution were seen as an ‘essential oneness’ in Hu’s time.4 Private emotions can be united with public political commitment; the public action of revolution is just another means of expressing the private feeling of love. Moreover, one could also speculate that Hu, in naming his characters after nationalistic and revolutionary ideals, believes that love is a necessary factor drives revolution. Of course revolution is, by no means, guaranteed through the use of love on its own. However without love, revolution cannot emerge and/or is fruitless. Either way, no matter what inference we draw out, Lee’s point is Hu’s characterisation of love and revolution as an ‘essential oneness’ gives rise to a unique understanding of the self. (( Lee Haiyan. The Revolution of the Heart: a genealogy of love in China, 1900-1950 (Stanford, 2007), p. 276 )) If we believe that love and revolution are two sides of the same coin, then love exists externally as much as it does internally, with the boundary between the two fluid.

I think this point comes with some very serious – but important- historical implications. I turn to the philosophy to explain why. ‘Internalism/Externalism’ is a dichotomy that is used in philosophical debates to draw a distinction between the external world and the self. Traditionally conceptions of this distinction take ‘internal’ and ‘external’ to mean ‘inside the skin’ and ‘outside the skin’ respectively.5. However, if internal feelings, like love, can arise in external events, like revolutions, then this means that internal feelings can arise outside the skin – a contradiction. Traditional philosophical interpretations of the internal/external distinction thus fail to explain cases of the sort that Lee describes. This poses a serious problem for history. If we have been analysing Chinese history with the presupposition that there is a distinction between the internal and external when no such distinction really exists, then our historical analysis is misguided. This means that our understanding of Chinese society, and particularly the way in which individuals relate to the outside world, needs to be overhauled – an unsettling thought. On the bright side, at least we now know better.

  1. Lee Haiyan. The Revolution of the Heart: a genealogy of love in China, 1900-1950 (Stanford, 2007), pp. 4-5 [↩]
  2. Lee Haiyan. The Revolution of the Heart: a genealogy of love in China, 1900-1950 (Stanford, 2007), p.7 [↩]
  3. Lee Haiyan. The Revolution of the Heart: a genealogy of love in China, 1900-1950 (Stanford, 2007), p. 276 [↩]
  4. Lee Haiyan. The Revolution of the Heart: a genealogy of love in China, 1900-1950 (Stanford, 2007), p. 276 [↩]
  5. Farkas, Katalin. ‘What is Externalism?’ in Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, Vol 112, No. 3 (February 2003), p. 189 [↩]

Add and Stir: Taiping as a Confucian-Christian hybrid

The focus of our reading this week was on the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864). The Taipings sought to overthrow the Qing dynasty and establish a Christian ‘heavenly kingdom of great peace’ (太平天國). A natural thought might be to characterise the Rebellion as an instance of what Philip Kuhn calls ‘an alien religion generat[ing] a furious assault on China’s existing social structures and values’.1 In describing Christianity as bringing about a ‘furious assault’ onto ‘China’s existing social structures and values’, Kuhn separates the Eastern and Western ideas into two distinct spheres – two worlds that contrast each other. In characterising the relationship between the East and the West in this way, Kuhn therefore characterises the Taiping Rebellion as a case in which the Western idea of Christianity was imposed onto the East.  I think this view is too simplistic. Instead, I think the Taiping Rebellion ought to be seen as an ‘interplay’ between Chinese and Western ideas.2 The East and the West should not be seen as two separate spheres. Instead, Eastern and Western ideas should be seen as more fluid, adapting and shifting as they interact with each other.

In particular, I like the term ‘glocalization’, which one of my peers used in his presentation on Carl Kilcourse’s Taiping Theology: The Localization of Christianity in China 1843-1864. The ‘glocalization’ framework, according to Kilcourse, refers to the localisation of a globally-disseminated product, ideology, or institution, i.e. when something is taken to a new cultural environment and transformed into an original expression of the indigenous culture3. Analysing the Taiping Rebellion this way, I think, is truer to the reality of the situation. Christian ideas were taken in and mixed in with traditional Confucian notions, creating a religion that was not purely Christian and was, instead, more of a Confucian-Christian hybrid. In order to demonstrate this, I will reference some of the Ten Heavenly Commandments the Taipings established.

  1. Honour and worship the Lord God …

2. Do not worship false gods …

3. Do not take the name of the Lord God in vain …

4. On the seventh day, worship and praise the Lord God for his grace …

5. Be filial and obedient to thy Father and Mother …

7. Do not indulge in wickedness and lewdness …

… Men or women who commit adultery or who are licentious are considered monsters; this is the greatest possible transgression of the Heavenly Commandments. The casting of amorous glances, the harboring of lustful imaginings about others … are all offenses against the Heavenly Commandment …

10. Do not think covetous thoughts …4

I will begin by highlighting the Christian elements of this extract. Western influence can be seen in some of the practices adopted by the Taipings.5 Firstly, the overall observance of the Ten Commandments is undoubtedly Western in origin. Within the extract, points 1, 2, and 3 are taken directly from the original Ten Commandments, and 4 – the observance of the seven-day week – originates from Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament. As Commandments 1-4 are lifted explicitly from the Bible, they can thus be used as evidence to support Kuhn’s view, promoting the idea of the Taiping Rebellion as a direct imposition of Western ideas onto the East.

Glocalization begins when we analyse Commandments 5, 7, and 10. What makes these particular Commandments interesting is that they all make explicit reference Kongzi’s Analects (孔子). Firstly, 5 mentions ‘filial piety’, the duty a young person has to respect their parents. In Analects 1.6, Kongzi states that ‘a young person should be filial and respectful of his elders when at home and respectful of his elders when in public’.6

7 and 10, on the other hand, make reference to the fact that intentions, not just actions, carry an ethical charge in Confucianism. 7, makes the argument that ‘harboring lustful imaginings about others’ is just as offensive as committing adultery. 10 warns Taiping’s followers to not have ‘covetous thoughts’, or thoughts of wanting more than they need. In focusing on ‘imaginings’ and ‘thoughts’, both thus make the argument that intentions can be both morally good and bad. This references Analects 3.12, in which Kongzi says that ‘if I am not fully present at the sacrifice, it is as if I did not sacrifice at all’.7 What he means by this is that it is not good enough to show your goodness by doing good actions. If you sacrifice without ‘being present’, i.e. not mentally and spiritually committing to the sacrifice, then you are better off not having done the sacrifice at all. Instead, a truly good person must also have good intentions whilst they are doing their actions. Otherwise, those actions are empty.

By explicitly-referencing Kongzi’s Analects, Commandments 5, 7, and 10 thus demonstrate that the Taiping Rebellion was not just an instance in which Western ideas were imposed onto the East. Instead, the references to the Analects demonstrate that the Taiping Rebellion was more ideologically-complex, with interplay between Western and Eastern ideas. This interplay can be described as ‘glocalization’, whereby Western Christian ideas were taken in, mixed with pre-existing Confucian traditions, and combined to create a Confucian-Christian hybrid religion.

  1. Philip A. Kuhn, ‘The Taiping Rebellion’ in D. Twitchett, J.K. Fairbank (eds.), The Cambridge History of China: Vol. 10: Late Ch’ing, 1800-1911, Cambridge University Press: 1978, p. 264 [↩]
  2. William Theodore De Bary, ‘The Heavenly Kingdom of the Taipings’ (1952) in Richard John Lufrano, Wing-Tsit Chan, John Berthrong (eds.), Sources of Chinese Tradition: Vol. 2: From 1600 through the twentieth century, Columbia University Press: 2000, p. 213 [↩]
  3. Carl S. Kilcourse, Taiping Theology: The Localization of Christianity in China 1843-1864, Palgrave Macmillan: 2016, pp. 17-18 [↩]
  4. Xiao Yishan, ‘Taiping Tianguo congshu’ （太平天國叢書） ser. 1, ce 1, pp. 1a-2b, 6b-8a in William Theodore De Bary, ‘The Heavenly Kingdom of the Taipings’ (1952) in Richard John Lufrano, Wing-Tsit Chan, John Berthrong (eds.), Sources of Chinese Tradition: Vol. 2: From 1600 through the twentieth century, Columbia University Press: 2000, pp. 220-221 [↩]
  5. William Theodore De Bary, ‘The Heavenly Kingdom of the Taipings’ (1952) in Richard John Lufrano, Wing-Tsit Chan, John Berthrong (eds.), Sources of Chinese Tradition: Vol. 2: From 1600 through the twentieth century, Columbia University Press: 2000, p. 218 [↩]
  6. Kongzi, 1.6 in P.J. Ivanhoe, Bryan W. Van Norden (eds.), Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, Hackett Publishing: 2005, p. 3 [↩]
  7. Kongzi, 1.6 in P.J. Ivanhoe, Bryan W. Van Norden (eds.), Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, Hackett Publishing: 2005, p. 9 [↩]

Ogyū Sorai’s Paradoxes

Confucian philosophy cannot be disentangled from politics. The thinkers we have studied this week, Kongzi (孔子), Mengzi (孟子), Xunzi (荀子), and Ogyū Sorai (荻生 徂徠), all centred their works on trying to define the ‘right’ way to organise and run a society.  In asking these philosophical questions, we can infer that these thinkers were responding to what they perceived to be the decay of society, government – political instability, in short. Indeed, all the authors mention rather explicitly in all of their texts that following their thought will lead to the prosperity and success of their home states.1 In light of this dynamic between philosophy and politics, I think it makes sense to explore how Confucian thinkers tried to turn their philosophical ideas into a practical political policy. In particular, I will focus on the difficulties that come with trying to put ideas into action and will reference Ogyū Sorai as a case study to explore this.

I find Sorai to be an interesting case study because his thought is littered with paradoxes. ‘Paradox’, for my purposes, refers to an inconsistency between a thinker’s philosophical ideals and the actual political policies they promote. I will demonstrate this with reference to one of many paradoxes in Sorai’s thought: his argument for social equality.

‘In formulating the Way, the early kings focused on the problem of bringing peace and security to all-under-Heaven and posterity … Therefore, the early kings followed the mind of all people to love, nourish, support, and perfect one another.2

This extract shows us that social equality is an important part of Sorai’s thought. In arguing that ‘all-under-Heaven’ ought to experience peace and security, Sorai argues that it is the King’s ultimate duty to provide peace and stability to all of his people, irrespective of class. In order to do this, Sorai suggests that the King ought to help ‘all people … nourish, support, and perfect one another’. The King should give everyone a means of satisfying their basic needs, and also a way for them to attain some kind of virtue and act in good ways. Overall, Sorai appears to be using the Confucian belief in equality to argue for the creation of a society that works to benefit all individuals instead the very few.

However, we see this point turned on its head in another part of Sorai’s thought:

‘If the members of the military class lived in the country, they would not incur any expenses in providing themselves with food, clothing, and shelter, and for this reason their financial condition would be much improved … At present, the merchants are in the dominant position, and the military class is in the subordinate position because the military class lives as though they were at an inn where they cannot do without money and must sell their rice in exchange for money with which to buy their daily necessities from the merchants3

Here, we see Sorai contradict himself. He argues that the Samurai and military class ought to be privileged over the merchant class. Sorai argues that the Samurai ought to provide for themselves, not ‘live in an inn’ (i.e. travel around and live off of their income), so that they can reclaim the ‘dominant position’ in society over the merchants. In referring to ‘dominant’ and ‘subordinate’ positions in society, Sorai is telling us that power within a society ought to be hierarchical, not equal, which thus contradicts the sentiments Sorai expresses in the first extract and generates a paradox.

What are the implications that we can draw out from this analysis? One natural thought might be to say that Sorai was generally unsuccessful in turning his ideals into actual political thought. However, I do not think this thought is particularly charitable to Sorai. In this entry, I have only covered one aspect of his thought. Evaluating him, as a whole, would require a detailed analysis of all aspects of his thought. Instead, I think Sorai’s paradoxes demonstrate that philosophical ideas can become muddled when translated into political policy or put into action. This point, I am sure, will become especially salient in weeks to come when we begin to explore Confucian thought historically, analysing the way it influences and is used in historical events.

  1. See Kongzi 2.1, Mengzi 1A7, and Xunzi Chapter 23 in P.J. Ivanhoe; B. W. Van Norden (eds.), Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, Hackett, 2005. For Ogyū Sorai, see W. T. De Bary; C. Gluck; A. E. Tiedemann; A. Barshey; W. M. Bodiford, ‘Ogyū Sorai and the return to Classics’, Sources of Japanese Tradition: Vol. 2: 1600 to 2000, Columbia University Press, 2010 [↩]
  2. Ogyū Sorai, ‘The Sage: Benmei (Distinguishing Terms)’ in W. T. De Bary; C. Gluck; A. E. Tiedemann; A. Barshey; W. M. Bodiford, Sources of Japanese Tradition: Vol. 2: 1600 to 2000, Columbia University Press, 2010, p. 290 [↩]
  3. Ogyū Sorai, ‘The Sage: Benmei (Distinguishing Terms)’ in W. T. De Bary; C. Gluck; A. E. Tiedemann; A. Barshey; W. M. Bodiford, Sources of Japanese Tradition: Vol. 2: 1600 to 2000, Columbia University Press, 2010, pp. 297, 298 [↩]