The Encyclopedia of World Religions

Confucianism S 99

Each person has responsibilities. For example, a younger brother should respect an older brother. But if the older brother wants respect, he should act only in ways that are worthy of respect. PRACTICES To practice Confucianism individual persons cul tivate virtue by carefully performing their respon sibilities. These include responsibilities that North Americans would call religious as well as those they would call ethical. For example, the philoso pher Wang Yang-ming recommended sitting qui etly as a way to cultivate spirituality. The primary ritual of Confucianism, as the Chinese state religion, was SACRIFICE . Confucians performed sacrifices for ancestors, especially the ancestors of the emperor, for those who first brought culture, and for Confucius himself. They also performed sacrifices for spirits associated with political institutions, for the powers of nature, and for the universe as a whole. The elaborateness of a sacrifice depended upon how important the occasion was. On the most important occasions the sacrificial victims included a pig, a sheep, or an ox. In performing the sacrifice, either the emperor or a high official would bow, present the offerings, and pray. At the same time, INCENSE was burned and musicians would play. ORGANIZATION No professional priests conducted the cult of Con fucianism. Scholars trained in Confucian teachings did. This was one of their duties as officials of the Chinese state. When the emperor was present, he took the leading role. A special government ministry was in charge of the state cult. Among other things, it provided the materials used in the sacrifice, established the proper procedures to be followed, and set the cal endar, so that the rituals would be performed at the proper time. SIGNIFICANCE Confucianism has defined the traditional values and ideas of proper behavior in China. Although

began to rise again. Important neo-Confucian thinkers like Chu Hsi (1130–1200 C . E .) and Wang Yang-ming (1472–1528) provided Confucianism with what it had seemed so severely to lack: a metaphysics (thought about the nature of reality) as lofty as that of Buddhism and Taoism. Confu cianism became the dominant ideology of China. It was also the senior partner in a religious union that included Taoism and Buddhism. By the 19th century, Confucianism had become moribund. Many Chinese rejected it as old-fash ioned and powerless, especially in contrast to the newly arrived European powers. The democratic revolution associated with Sun Yatsen (1866– 1925) and then especially the communist regime established by Mao Tse-tung (1893–1976) cut the ties between Confucianism and the government. On the mainland, Confucianism suffered severely during the Cultural Revolution of 1966–69, but the Chinese state in Taiwan preserved Confusion ritu als as part of its cultural heritage. TEACHINGS Confucianism focuses on how human beings behave in society. It strives to identify the ideal way to live. In Confucianism the ideal person is the noble person. For Confucius, nobility did not derive from birth. It derived from cultivating true humaneness ( jen ). This was done, Confucius believed, through the practice of RITUALS ( li ). The rituals Confucius had in mind, however, were not religious rites. They were rituals of respect that one showed one’s fellow human beings. One can begin to see how truly radical Confucius’s teachings were. He redi rected the focus of religious observance. The atten tion one used to give to the ancestors one now gave to life in this world. The five relationships within which people cultivate virtue mentioned above are clearly not relationships between equals. They are also clearly male-centered. Indeed, some Confucians have sug gested that since the relationship between a mother and her child is a natural one, the father–son rela tionship should be seen as the foundation of soci ety. In any case, the relationships are not one-sided.