Eclecticism and the Deeper Meaning
Renowned British historian, Alfred Toynbee, has remarked, “Mankind has already mastered the technological means of civilized self-destruction, and at the same time is entrenched in extreme political ideologies. The most important thing for avoidance of a crisis is ‘harmony’ – the essence of Chinese civilization.”(11)
Harmony is not exclusive to Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. Chinese traditional culture is permeated by the philosophy of Harmony. As early as 3,000 years ago, the character for He (和), or Harmony appeared in oracle bone and bronze inscriptions. The thinking, “Once harmony is achieved, creation is possible, and the uniform does not proliferate,” dates from the Western Zhou period.(12) The philosophical schools of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period often used the concept of harmony to elucidate their ideologies and cultural notions. The spirit of “harmony” in Chinese traditional culture is at once a kind of recognition, respect, gratitude, and a kind of acceptance. The path of harmony is to seek understanding through dialogue and to co-exist amicably, to seek unity by consensus and work for the common good; to seek peaceful cooperation through tolerant acceptance. The ideal state of harmony is a society that benefits from the recognition by every member of their own and other’s merits.
Harmony is not exclusively for oneself. If we expand our perspective, we see that the sages who have extolled the merits of Harmony pervaded history from pre-Christian until the modern era. G.W.F. Hegel wrote, “Harmony is one run above simply according with the rules. Harmony is a kind of relationship which in essence reveals an aspect of difference...it is a type of coordination among various factors that is consistent. The coordination among factors is harmony. On the one hand, harmony realizes an essentially different aspect of the whole, on the other hand, it also eliminates the pure opposition between these different aspects, hence their interdependence and innate connectedness appear as their unity. People often discuss shape, color, sound, etc., in terms of harmony which makes use of this meaning.(13) The notion of harmony in China’s three great religions also needed to develop in an eclectic mix, adopt liberalism and shed intransigence, receptive both to mutual incorporation in the horizontal dimension, and exploring new territory in the vertical direction, in the first case taking on the character of the myriad schools of the time, and in the second the strengths of modern world civilization. Whether in cultivation of one’s interior world, or ordering society exteriorly, they merged into a body of mutually enhancing ideas.
The continual enrichment and reinforcement of the harmony of Chinese culture. The China of today pursues a foreign policy of amity and peaceful coexistence with the outside, while building a harmonious society domestically and furthering the grand undertaking of peaceful unification of the motherland. China’s development is a peaceful development, and China’s ascendancy represents the rise of peace.
The meaning of the character He (和) comes from music. It was originally written 龢 in ancient times and referred to a kind of woodwind instrument. The 龠 element is pictographic and indicates a group of pipes assembled together that can produce a mixture of simultaneous sounds. Its meaning is harmony, the nature of which lies in difference. In order to harmonize, things must differ to begin with, otherwise they can only be simultaneous (singing or playing in unison, a homogeneous group of facial expressions and voices). In terms of the aesthetic experience, musical synchrony falls far short of harmony. Take the composition of civilization, harmony is only a state, a situation, not the ultimate value. For example, if different pipes are played at the same time, so long as they are “in harmony,” you can achieve a mellifluous effect, that is, beauty. But that is the result, not the cause. The beauty of harmony, if we look more deeply, requires each pipe to keep their own melody and beat.
In our diversified world, we must set a course for an advanced culture, preserve and develop different ethnic heritages, strive in availing ourselves of their wisdom as it befits the modern era, become aware of our culture, make new contributions to global civilization. This is a problem that China’s millennial history and glorious culture should surely solve. Our deeper “cultural awareness” should consist in continually enriching and augmenting Chinese culture’s profound philosophy of Harmony.
In the 5,000 years of Chinese culture, all major world religions have taken root in and sprouted from China’s soil. Her native Taoism, along with foreign-introduced Buddhism, Islam, Catholicism, and Christianity, developed in peaceful coexistence against the background of Confucian cultural traditions, co-authoring one another’s chapters in the annals of religious harmony.
The Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist conceptions of Harmony are prodigious in their profundity, and complimentary in their outlooks, the first dealing with the world, the second with the body, and the third with the mind. The process by which these three mutually contentious religions became three mutually reinforcing aspects of the same whole is the same process at work in Chinese traditional culture’s continuous enrichment and growth, as well as in the theoretical and practical trials of the harmonious philosophy of ancient Chinese religion. This process did not entail a back-and-forth rebuttal of one obdurate catchphrase with another, but rather a flow of ideas along the course of mutual understanding, acceptance and admixture, circulating a harmonious network which ultimately channeled them in the direction of pervasive universal truth. This network was the foundation for the harmonious philosophy of traditional Chinese religious culture, while giving birth to a rich and colorful harmonious thought.
The harmonious pluralism of China’s religious cultural development contrasts with the factionalized monism of the Abrahamic religions. These three religions, which currently occupy a position of dominance in the world, are the offspring of Judaism, itself a product of the Middle Eastern region of Palestine, whose navigable terrain, contested by ethnic groups, has been a hotbed of conflict since antiquity. The tragic history of the Jewish nation is one of repeated destruction and exile. Therefore, a religion which is the sole spiritual pillar sustaining the Jewish heritage must place special emphasis on a belief in the one true God, the Jewish nation conceives of themselves as God’s chosen people, as a means of distinguishing theirs from the religions of other ethnic groups and preserving their heritage. Although Christianity and Islam, which later developed from Judaism, have altered many of its religious concepts and organization, their belief in one absolute God has nevertheless persisted in its original form. The Abrahamic religions continue to splinter into new sects and the lines between them continue to be drawn more and more sharply, possibly violently.
China’s religions arose historically within a half-accessible, half-secluded geographic situation, a self-sustaining agricultural economy, and an ethnic majority possessed of an advanced culture and sound practical means. China is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country, and its main ethnic group is polytheistic. China’s religions have an extensive history, and with diverse origins and a dynamic diversity. Its development has been the continuous incorporation of various belief systems into a central axis, while maintaining open inclusion, peaceful coexistence, conservative reform, and balancing ancient ancestor worship with humane ethics, centering faith around moral virtue, thus constituting a pluralistic and harmonious ecosystem. Its characteristics are: a diversity of deities and creeds which coexist in relationship to a primary corpus; harmony among religions being the main motif; the ubiquitous hybridization of religious beliefs; ancestral religions depending on ethical philosophy, and the authority of a deity depending on that of the monarch; refined civility which reveres civic merit; absorption and amalgamation of foreign religions, referred to as “the United Nations of Religions” by foreign religious scholars.
(1) See The Analects, Ch. 13.
(2) See Infinite Life Sutra.
(3) See Diamond Sutra.
(4) See Vimalakirti Sutra.
(5) See Tao Te Ching, Ch. 42 (Translator’s source: http://enlight.lib.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-AN/an142304.pdf).
(6) See Tao Te Ching, Ch. 25.
(7) See Tao Te Ching, Ch. 64.
(8) See Baopuzi, Inner Chapters, “The Meaning of Subtle.”
(9) See Tao Te Ching, Ch. 55.
(10) See Zhuangzi, “Tianyun.”
(11) See Alfred Toynbee. A Study in History, Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2000.
(12) See Discourses of the States, “The Discourses of the Zheng.”
(13) See G.W.F. Hegel’s Aesthetics, Chinese translation by Zhu Guangqian. Beijing: Commercial Press, 1981.