Spirituality
Day Thirty Six
A week ago, I was a guest at a breakfast hosted by a dean of a training school in his apartment. The other two invited guests included two learned gentlemen, one in his seventies trained in law and theology and the other a younger man from Kolkata, with a PhD in theology from Edinburgh. Over a cooked breakfast meal, we discussed comparative philosophy and religion.
I asked if Christianity could be embraced by higher caste Indians. It could be that Christ could be worshipped but as merely one of the many avatars in the Hindu religion. The young theologian from India then waxed lyrical about the need for a contextualised faith beyond Hindu contexts as India is indeed diverse and has many spiritual traditions. Indian identity is not necessarily tied to the Hindu faith. The challenge is for Christianity to take root in non-Western cultures without the trappings of Western cultural imperialism.
My older friend from Singapore who has clean shaven head then remarked that he could be a Buddhist Christian. He mentioned that once when he was a guest speaker at a meeting of Buddhist monks and nuns, he opened his speech saying he probably shared the same barber as his friends in the audience. He also noted that he could embrace the values of his Buddhist friends as he found it compatible with his Christian values of kindness and compassion. I nodded with affirmation and said that I could call myself a Confucian Christian too as I found Confucian teachings resonate with the teachings of my faith.
I remember over thirty years ago when Professor Tu Weiming was invited as a panelist at a forum in Singapore, he mentioned that he considered Confucianism as a spirituality and not a religion. Prof Tu was a popular speaker who was often invited to Singapore’s numerous conferences then as our government was promoting Confucian values along with the Speak Mandarin campaign then. He elaborated that the heart of Confucianism is self-cultivation and the practice helps one to learn to be more humane and to relate well with one another in society. Tu had been a well sought after speaker on China’s television programmes too as he was director of a research institute in Beijing’s university and was influential in China’s search for civilisational resources in the 21st century as China rises.
By 2007, President Hu Jintao had enunciated the vision of a Harmonious Society (Hexie Shehui) aimed at building and maintaining social harmony. They acknowledged that the rich-poor divide had widened with the rapid modernisation of China, and with the uneven distribution of wealth, social challenges were threatening an implosion. It was an attempt to recover Confucian values as a way to strengthen social relations and to create a stable social hierarchy.
In the early 20th century, Confucianism had been seen as a serious obstacle to China’s self-strengthening vis-a-vis not only West imperialism but Japan’s Meiji reformation. The traditional feudalistic values were thought to be hindering China’s progress. Hence it was debunked from the May Fourth Movement of 19191 through the Cultural Revolution in the 60s and 70s in favour of science and democracy, and of course communist ideology.
Ironically, by the 17th Party Congress, scientific development was lauded as the way forward for China and Confucianism was mentioned in the same breath and once again promoted as a core cultural resource for China’s future. Confucian Institutes proliferated in major cities all over the world, as the flagship of Chinese cultural bridge-building programmes in the world and an assertion of Chinese cultural soft power influence. By 2017, the twelve social values promoted by President Xi Jinping also encompassed many Confucian core values.
Social stability and the ability to relate rightly with one another constitutes what Lin Yutang would call the art of living. Confucius emphasised that the ability to relate well with one another, (highly valued today as EQ, or social skills which is such an important business competency) begins with self-cultivation. It also begins right from young, and from the home. The cultivation of the next generation must not be restricted to emphasis on science and technology but also must include the humanities.
What is the use if one gains all the knowledge of the world but loses one’s ability to know oneself and hence loses one’s soul? Then a person loses one’s personhood or sense of being a human being. A person becomes merely an automaton, a cog in the wheel, a digit in the demographics of economic productivity or an instrument to be used.
Confucius often reminded his disciples that the cultivated self is not to be a mere instrument valued for its functionality, to be useful and to be used (Junzi Buqi). Humans have the sense of dignity of being a person and personhood needs self-cultivation. Socrates would agree as his adage is simple, “Know Yourself”.
Self-cultivation needs to be holistic, beyond mastery of technology and skills. The breadth of education includes the mastery of language, of the music and the arts, which constitutes the humanities education curriculum (Liyue Wenhua). Interestingly Confucian education includes the “Four Books and Five Classics” (Sishu Wujing) which provided a really broad-based humanities education.
There are always the argument that alleviation of poverty is the most basic and important way to imbue one with a sense of human dignity. But we are also reminded that man shall not live by bread alone. We really do not need much material food and goods to live well. There has to be spiritual resources too, from food for thought to cultural and spiritual nutrition. Confucius attributed the glorious rise of the Zhou dynasty in ancient Chinese history to the cultivation of rites and rituals as well as appreciation of the arts and music. It is a reminder that we must strive to be humans.
To live merely for food, and good food, and indeed a quest for gourmet food, as much of media seeks to promote these days, will merely set humans on a trajectory towards a life of animal existence. Some thoughtful Chinese intellectuals have remarked to me that such emphasis is like “feeding pigs” (yangzhu). Rowan Williams in his small book reminded us once again the importance of “Being Human”. We need to take time to develop our spirituality and cultivate our mind, body and spirit.
Journey with me over 40 days as we reflect on life in the wilderness… sometimes cultural wilderness.
See previous day’s reflections on Shanxi in Chawu. See next day’s reflection on Horizon
