Order begins with the family. Children are to respect their parents. Due honor must be given to those people above and below oneself. This makes for good social order. The respect is typified through the idea of Li.
Li is the term used to describe Chinese proprietary rites and good manners. These include ritual, etiquette, and other facets that support good social order. The belief is that when Li is observed, everything runs smoothly and is in its right place. There are five main relationship principles : hsiao , chung , yi , xin , and jen. Together, these principles balance people and society.
These rituals are designed to protect an expectant mother. A special procedure is prescribed for disposal of placenta. The mother is given a special diet and is allowed rest for a month after delivery. Maturity is no longer being celebrated, except in traditional families.
Marriage rituals are very important. They are conducted in six stages. At the proposal stage, the couple exchanges eight Chinese characters. These characters are the year, month, day, and hour of each of their births.
The engagement stage occurs after the wedding day is selected. The bride may announce the wedding with invitations and a gift of cookies made in the shape of the moon. This is the formal announcement. The dowry is the third stage. Gifts by the groom to the bride, equal in value to the dowry, are sent to her. Procession is the fourth stage. It is brief but important. The procession is accompanied by a great deal of singing and drum beating.
The marriage ceremony and reception is the stage in which the couple recite their vows, toast each other with wine, and then take center stage at a banquet. The morning after the ceremony is the final stage.
This completes the marriage. Death rituals seem elaborate to many Westerners. At the time of death, the relatives cry loudly.
This is a way of informing the neighbors. The family begins mourning. There was nothing in the history of Confucius or Confucianism which mirrored this. Would Confucius have wanted to be respected as a religious teacher? So it was pointless to imitate the movements of Western religious bodies for the purpose of respecting Confucius. The only history of Khong Kauw Hwees was the recent movement associated with the monarchical cause. In any event, was it not a lowering of Confucius's status to regard him simply as a religious teacher?
His teachings spread over three broad fields : philosophy, government and sociology, and ethics and education. Surely he was more than just a teacher of religion? Besides, if Confucianism was really a religion, and the leaders of the Khong Kauw Hwee were establishing a religious body like a church, wasn't it incongruous to have provisions in their constitution like those in Article 2 B and C?
According to Sin Po, most of those speaking at Khong Kauw Hwee meetings kept quoting Confucius in the same way as Christian clergymen who could not stop themselves quoting from the Bible when they spoke. But it was deeds rather than words that counted : Confucius himself taught by example.
Sin Po went on to lament the pessimism which had burdened Chinese thought, it was a disease with the Chinese to value the past over the present. He saw the founders of the Chinese Republic as sinning against Confucius. Such theories of the degeneration of the Chinese, said Sin Po scathingly, were so deep-rooted in Chinese culture that China's Golden Age presumably must be sought in the days before they started to wear clothes!
These ideas ran counter to the theory of evolution, were a «psychological impediment» to the progress of the nation and must themselves have contributed to China's decline. Instead of this envious looking to the past, the Chinese should follow the example of the Islamic writer Sayyid Amir 'Ali, whose book The Spirit of Islam attributed the present stagnation of Muslim communities to the abdication of individual judgment and submission to the authority of the religious schools.
Sayyid Amir 'Ali wanted to make the Muslim world modern, said Sin Po approvingly, not to subject the 20th century to the interpretations of the 9th. The Chinese likewise now had their fate in their own hands and had woken up, as could be seen from the New Cultural Movement.
Worse, its leaders, though their intentions were good, simply wanted to spread the teachings of Confucius, not to research gian-kioe them with a critical stance sikepjang critical and scientific tests oedjianjang scientific.
Many of our children here in the Indies, said Sin Po, are either studying in European schools or in Chinese schools which are busily following the example of the Western system of education. In both types of school, they no longer are told to do this or that as children in the old days were, but are increasingly taught to ask why they should do this or that. These children will need to be given logical and satisfying explanations of the teachings of Confucius if they are to accept them.
Without careful research the Khong Kauw Hwee will not provide these and our children with their modern education will not appreciate what is really valuable in those teachings. The leaders of the Khong Kauw Hwee fail to realize that Chinese society is much more complicated now than it was two thousand years ago.
In Confucius' s day one could think of improving the state by improving one's own household, but this is not sufficient today.
Sin Po suggested that those among the leaders and supporters of the Khong Kauw Hwee who honestly wanted to spread the teachings of Con-. This was a legitimate concern, but defending one's Chineseness should be seen as a means to an end rather than an end in itself. It was a means to ensure that one was not alienated from one's own nation and country.
But this, said Sin Po, pointed in the direction of modern Chinese education for our children as demanded by the New Cultural Movement rather than a movement which, for all its good intentions, looked to the distant past.
Sin Po then compared the teachings of Confucius with those of Western philosophers, concluding that they were more comparable with the classical Greek and Roman philosophers than with modern Western philosophers. If the teachings of Confucius were regarded as a philosophy rather than a religion, this did not mean they were less illustrious moelia. Religions and philosophies had different characteristics. A philosopher like Benedictus de Spinoza, who had no religion, lived a more exemplary life than many adherents of illustrious religions who have acted barbarously.
The desire of the Khong Kauw Hwee to spread the teachings of Confucius so that the Chinese had a better knowledge of their own great poed- jonggo whose influence had been so great was laudable, said Sin Po, provided that they were not treated as a dogma which must be followed blindly.
In other words, they must be approached with freedom of thought. Thinking could only progress if we actively continued the work of our ancestors, but not if we accepted it passively. It was fortunate that in China today freedom of thought was valued. China today was in an era of change, not only in the field of learning but also in deeper matters such as outlook on life and virtue kabedjikan. Not all change was progress, of course, but the movement for freedom of thought was most important.
Those who hoped to make the teachings of Confucius a dead dogma which was more important than humanity should be criticized. The Khong Kauw Hwee would only be of value if it was based on freedom of thought and the teachings of Confucius taught with open minds. Sin Po finally turned on the founders of the Khong Kauw Hwee, suggesting that they were sufferers from a disease which had become endemic among the Indies Chinese.
This disease was the desire to become a leader. At the turn of the century, the Indies Chinese had no associations other than burial societies. This was a correct direction for the Chinese movement to take. Then it was found necessary. This too was a laudable extension of the Chinese movement. But since then associations of various kinds had mushroomed, often for no better reason than personal ambition or rivalry. The formation of the Khong Kauw Hwee was symptomatic of the disease, and in this case it was evident that there were different leaders with varied objectives under the one banner.
If one examined its constitution, it seemed much like the original THHK. So why was it necessary to make such a fuss about Khong Kauw being a religion? Why was it necessary to create the Khong Kauw Hwee movement? Answer : «To hold the congress in Yogyakarta». Why must the congress be held in Yogyakarta? Answer : «Because the desire to be a leader has become endemic in the Chinese movement». The Khong Kauw Hwee's defence. In response to this onslaught the Khong Kauw Hwee activists pressed ahead with their plans.
This booklet in fact contained two essays. The first, from which the booklet took its title, had appeared earlier as an article in the Surabaya newspaper Pewarta Soerabaja. The article was a Malay translation by Lim Hok Gan of an original in Chinese which had evidently appeared in China some time earlier.
The author, Tan Hwan Tjiang was none other than Dr. On his return to China after completing a Ph. Tan Hwan Tjiang began by baldly stating that Khong Kauw had for thousands of years been the real religion of the Chinese.
His teachings focused on humanism, including treating others the way you would want to be treated. He taught that if everyone fulfilled their roles and obligations with respect and kindness towards others, it would build a stronger state. While religious rituals were mentioned alongside all of the other rituals a person was expected to perform, Confucius did not focus on spiritual concerns like the afterlife, gods and goddesses, or mysticism.
This is why Confucianism is considered a philosophy rather than a religion, even though it is often lumped in with other major religions. Confucianism became the dominant political philosophy during the Han Dynasty from B. Because Confucian teachings were conservative and told people to maintain their role in social order, the philosophy was used by the state to keep the status quo from that time forward.
The structure of Chinese society and its focus on rituals, familial respect and obligation, worship of ancestors, and self-discipline, remains greatly influenced by Confucius and his teachings.
Taoism also called Daoism is a Chinese religion that developed a bit after Confucianism, around two thousand years ago. In contrast to Confucianism, Taoism is mainly concerned with the spiritual elements of life, including the nature of the universe.
In the Taoist structure of the universe, humans are meant to accept and yield to the Tao and only do things that are natural and in keeping with the Tao. This puts Taoism in opposition to Confucianism in another way: it is not concerned about with humanistic morality, government, and society, all of which Taoists see as inventions of humans and not necessarily part of the Tao.
At the same time, Taoists were interested in longevity, both of the human body and the soul. Achieving spiritual immortality through becoming one with nature is an important part of the Taoist religion. Despite their differences, Taoist and Confucian ideas are not completely at odds with each other, so Chinese society was able to absorb concepts from both traditions.
Taoism had influence on literature and the arts, but the biggest area of Taoist influence was in science. The Taoist focus on natural elements and observing how the natural world works helped to create Chinese medicine. Similar to the modern scientific method, Taoists observed how different medicines affected people and animals through experimentation. Their collective knowledge gained through trying to improve human longevity made a huge contribution to health sciences.
Buddhism was the third major belief system of ancient China. It was founded by Siddhartha Gautama, also called the Buddha, who lived in India around the sixth century B. Buddhism is a philosophy that focuses on personal development and attainment of deep knowledge. Buddhists seek to achieve enlightenment through meditation, spiritual learning, and practice.
They believe in reincarnation and that life is impermanent and full of suffering and uncertainty; the way to find peace is through reaching nirvana , a joyful state beyond human suffering. There are many different sects that place different emphasis on various aspects of Buddhism. The two largest sects are Theravada Buddhism, which is found primarily in southern Asia, and Mahayana Buddhism, which is found in east Asia, including China.
After its founding in India, Buddhism spread to and became popular in China in the first century C. Part of the reason Buddhism became popular in China was because of Taoism. Some Buddhist practices were similar to Taoist ones, and Buddhist monks would use Taoist concepts to explain Buddhism to the Chinese, overcoming the cultural and language barrier between Indian and the Chinese people. Buddhism also influenced Taoism with its institutional structure, which Taoists copied and modified.
A competition between Buddhism and Taoism arose to gain more followers and greater government influence, and this competition increased the vitality of both religions.
0コメント