Chinese Religion: An Overview

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Chinese Religion An Overview
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Language and Cosmology

1. The Cosmological Resonances of Civilization
   Texts Writ Large
2. Comparative Cosmology The Order of Creation

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A Diverse Spoken Language

• Chinese dialects
• Cantonese and other regional dialects (8 / 26 /
  8,000 ?)
• "Mandarin" Chinese  the "common" dialect
• ??? (putong hua)

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www.asiana.com
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Written Chinese
A Common Written Language
Xiang
??
Hakka
??
??
??
Cantonese
Minbei
Wu
??
??
Gan
??
Mandarin
Minnan
??
English
Spanish
French
Italian
??
Portuguese
Latin
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Written Chinese

• The Myth of Cang Jie ??
• (minister to the Yellow Emperor)
• observing the footprints of birds and beasts
• ... ?
• culture
• writing
• civility
• discovering culture in cosmos

Sculpted bronze figure, Library of Congress , 1939
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The Pictographic Origins of Chinese Characters
Oracle bones from about 1400 BCE
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Typology of Chinese Characters

1. Pictographs
2. Ideographs
3. Lexigraphs Meaning-meaning Combinations
4. Phonetic Lexigraphs Sound-meaning Combinations

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1. Pictographs

• ? ri sun/day
• ? yue moon/month
• ? tian field
• ? kou mouth
• ? shui water
• ? ren person

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2. Ideographs

• ? shang up/above
• ? xia down/below
• ? zhong middle/center
• ? yi one
• ? er two
• ? san three
• ? ao concave
• ? tu convex

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3. Lexigraphs Meaning-meaning Combinations

• ? (sun) ? (moon) is ? (bright)
• ? (woman) ? (child) is ? (good)
• ? (breast) ? (child) is ? (pregnant)
• ? (hand) over ? (eye) is ? (look)
• ? (hand) with ? (hand) is ? (worship)
• ? (person) in the ? (mountain) is ? (immortal)
• Three ? (trees) is a ? (forest)
• Three ? (insects) in a ? (bowl) makes ? (poison)

When you die, thousands of bugs stream from your
eyes, ears, nose, and mouth! -- especially used
by wives and other (bureaucratic) subordinates
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4. Phonetic Lexigraphs Sound-meaning
Combinations

• ? (water) ? (yang) is ? (ocean)
• ? (fire) ? (deng) is ? (lamp)
• ? (metal) ? (tong) is ? (copper)
• ? (rain) ? (yun) is ? (cloud)

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• Kangxi Zidian
• ????
• Character Dictionary of the Kangxi Reign Period
  (1716)
• 49,030 characters

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Chinese Romanization

• Systems of romanization

(representation of a word or language with the
Roman i.e. Latin alphabet)
? ?? ?? ?? ?
Tao Lao-tzu Chuang-tzu chun-tzu jen
Dao Laozi Zhuangzi jünzi ren
Wade-Giles
Han-yü pin-yin
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Advantages of a Pictographic System?

• in the face of dialectical diversity
• in the face of geographical extent
• in the face of temporal/historical scope

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Note What you need to know for the first exam

• General Concepts and Ideas (partial list)
• de ? (power, virtue in Confucian sense)
• Tian-ming ?? (the Mandate of Heaven)
• three obediences (womens roles)
• xin ? (reliability, trustworthiness)
• Chinese Characters for Recognition (partial list)
• ? li (rites, propriety)       
• ? ren (co-humanity, kindness, benevolence)
• ? xiao (filial piety)
• ? shu (reciprocity)
• ? Tian (Heaven)                                 
       

You can find the entire list on T-Learn Unit
I  Chinese Religions Term List Unit I Terms
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Note What you need to know for the first exam

• General Concepts and Ideas (partial list)
• de ? (power, virtue in Confucian sense)
• Tian-ming ?? (the Mandate of Heaven)
• three obediences (womens roles)
• xin ? (reliability, trustworthiness)
• Chinese Characters for Recognition (partial list)
• ? li (rites, propriety)       
• ? ren (co-humanity, kindness, benevolence)
• ? xiao (filial piety)
• ? shu (reciprocity)
• ? Tian (Heaven)                                 
       

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Note What you need to know for the first exam

• General Concepts and Ideas (partial list)
• de ? (power, virtue in Confucian sense)
• Tian-ming ?? (the Mandate of Heaven)
• three obediences (womens roles)
• xin ? (reliability, trustworthiness)
• Chinese Characters for Recognition (partial list)
• ? li (rites, propriety)       
• ? ren (co-humanity, kindness, benevolence)
• ? xiao (filial piety)
• ? shu (reciprocity)
• ? Tian (Heaven)                                 
       

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II. Comparative Cosmology The Order of
Creation
Cosmogonic Myths Western and Chinese
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• Myth
• A traditional story, typically involving
  supernatural beings or forces, which embodies and
  provides an explanation, etiology, or
  justification for something such as the early
  history of a society, a religious belief or
  ritual, or a natural phenomenon.
• A widespread but untrue or erroneous story or
  belief a widely held misconception a
  misrepresentation of the truth.

myth narrative expression of cultural values
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cosmology vs. cosmogony

• 1. The logy vs. the gony of the cosmos
• Gk. discourse vs. begetting
• universality of cosmogonic myths
• diversity in relative importance of cosmogonic
  myths
• 2. Creation Bringing Form to Chaos

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The Western Cosmogonic Myth
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Quiz The Order of Creation In the book of
Genesis, a cosmogonic myth describing the
creation of the world in six days is recounted.
What was created each day, and in what
order? 1 2 3 4 5 6 Extra credit In a
different version of the myth (Genesis 2), the
first two humans are named. Who are they?
________________________________________
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• Quiz The Order of Creation
• In the book of Genesis, a cosmogonic myth
  describing the creation of the world in six days
  is recounted. What was created each day, and in
  what order?
• light
• water/land
• vegetation
• heavens
• animals
• humankind
• Extra credit Adam and Eve ____________________
  ____________________

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Creation as Separation/Distinction
1. light 2. water/land 3. vegetation 4.
heavens 5. animals 6. humankind

• God separated the light from the darkness
  (Genesis 14)
• Let there be a firmament in the midst of the
  waters, and let it separate the waters from the
  waters God called the dry land Earth, and the
  waters that were gathered together he called
  Seas (Genesis 16, 10)
• God separated seed-bearing plants from
  fruit-bearing plants (Genesis 112)
• separation of light from darkness (Genesis 114)
  as well as the light of the day (the sun) from
  the light of the night (the moon) (Genesis 116)
• God distinguished between creatures of the air
  and creatures of the sea
• God distinguished between creatures of the land
  and humans
• the separation of male and female in Adam and Eve

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The Chinese                                
             from Patterns of Faith Around the
World   by Wilfred Cantwell Smith  
                                                  
             

• Conflict Dualism
• We in the West are familiar with a type of
  dualism, which we may call conflict dualism. In
  this, two basic forces are in collision, as
  opposites that struggle and clash good and
  evil, right and wrong, black and white, true and
  false. This type of dualism ... found its way
  into the Jewish, Christian, and the Islamic
  traditions... In our religious traditions a
  Devil, over against God, was long accepted
  Heaven and Hell are postulated and the saved and
  the damned, the sheep and the goats... A final
  unity, whether synthesis or ultimate triumph of
  one side, is envisaged but meanwhile the world
  is analyzed in bi-polar terms. For two and a
  half thousand years the Near East and the Western
  world have either postulated or sympathized with
  a cosmic conflict dualism or, in a dichotomy of
  less antagonism, with a dualism of opposition.
  If not God and the Devil, at least God and the
  world, man and nature, matter and spirit,
  either/or.

The West as ???? duìkàng wénhuà
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quiescent yin
active yang
The five phases earth, water, metal, fire, wood
The Chinese Cosmogonic Myth
The dao of femininity birthed women
The dao of masculinity birthed men
and gave birth-through-transformation to the ten
thousand things
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The Chinese Cosmogonic MythFrom the Huai-nan-zi
(Han Dynasty)

• light (yang ?) qi ? -- fire, sun, stars, summer
• ?
• Unfolding of the Dao from
• Primordial Chaos
• Creation as Continuous Unfolding
• ??
• Hun-dun
• (chaos)
• heavy (yin ?) qi ? water,
  moon, winter

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The Chinese Creation Myth (Key Terms)

• Hun-dun (Chaos)
• Qi/ChI (Breath, Steam, Pneuma)
• Dao/Tao (Way or Path)
• Yin (Potentiality of Dark Receptivity)
• Yang (Potentiality of Light Activity)

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The Chinese Creation Myth (Key Terms)

• Hun-dun (Chaos)
• Qi/ChI (Breath, Steam, Pneuma)
• Dao/Tao (Way or Path)
• Yin (Potentiality of Dark Receptivity)
• Yang (Potentiality of Light Activity)

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Hun-dun (Chaos)

? to mix ? confused, turbid
?water radical
Won-ton Soup
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(No Transcript)
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Qi/Chi (Breath, Steam, Pneuma)
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Contrasts between Judeo-Christian and Chinese
Cosmogonic Myths
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Judeo-Christian Orientations

• anthropomorphism
• anthropocentrism
• mechanistic model
• conflict dualism

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Chinese Orientations

• non-anthropomorphism
• non-anthropocentrism
• organistic model
• complement dualism

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Complement Dualism, Yin-Yang and Chinese
Religious Pluralism (based on Wilfred Cantwell
Smith)

• The symbol itself represents and affirms the
  harmonious holding together of contrasts in a
  balanced synthesis, the integrating of divergence
  into a rounded whole.

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The Chinese Religious System A non-exclusive
(complementary) religious whole

• Yang
• Confucianism

• Yin
• Taoism

In light of Chinese cosmology, are Confucianism
and Taoism two religions, or are they opposing
alternatives within a single religious tradition?
From a Chinese cultural perspective,
Confucianism and Taoism are opposing but
complementary aspects of the unifying Dao or
Path of religious cultivation. Most Chinese
are, to one extent or another, both Confucian
and Taoist, and very few are exclusively one or
the other. So, describing Confucianism and
Taoism as the two religions indigenous to
China, and further identifying their branches,
distorts the actual practice of religion in
China. R. Nadeau, Confucianism and Taoism
(Greenwood Press, 2006), p. 125
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as cultural ideal
Harmony ? (he)