Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. These are the three teachings of ancient China. It is often thought that these three teachings were harmoniously synthesized into the Chinese intellectual and spiritual landscape. But how is it possible for three very different philosophical and some would call religious traditions to mess together so well?
Or did they? In this episode, we will look at the historical process of synthesization of these teachings. And it ain't all sunshine and rainbows. Okay, let's start by looking at the early development of these three teachings. By knowing the malleable nature of these teachings, we are going to get very important clues on how they can be synthesized rather easily.
During the Warring States period of China, various schools of thought competed for the hearts and minds of the lords and commoners. Confucianism, or Ru as it is known in East Asia, is one among those so-called hundred schools of thought. Ruism is a Chinese scholarly tradition that predated Confucius.
Confucius is the Latinization of the name Confucianism extols the virtue of the legendary kings of pre-dynastic and early dynasties of China, and the early Zhou dynasty kings and dukes. As Confucius had claimed himself, he was not a creator, but rather a transmitter of these ancient moral traditions. To be fair, he actually edited a lot of these ancient documents, and promoted the ethics not only to nobles, but also to commoners.
And as I have covered in more details in a previous episode, it is a living tradition which was expanded upon over time by Mencius, Dong Zhongshu, Zhu Xi, Wang Yangming and others. This philosophy is very particular about their brand of morality and ritual. But they do not prescribe for the belief in a particular god or afterlife.
That's why Christian Confucian convert Xu Guangqi claims that Christianity is compatible with Confucianism. As for Taoism, it's quite complex. As I have discussed in another video, it is a bit like a kitchen sink of ideas. This school of thought was first identified by Sima Qian in his book Records of the Grand Historian. Its proponents practiced the principle of wu wei, action through inaction, or effortless action, which is based on Lao Tzu's writing, Dao De Jing.
Ideas such as Ba Gua, Ying Yang, and Wu Xing, the five faces, were not present in Dao De Jing. They are actually later additions borrowed from other schools of thoughts. It may not have started as a standalone philosophical school of thought either, as one of the earliest Taoist school of thought in history was Huanglao Taoism. It is a school of thought or perhaps religion that identified Laozi together with the legendary figure of Yellow Emperor, which was one of the more prominent ideology in court at the time. Eventually, A recognizable religious movement emerged later at the end of the Han dynasty, the Way of the Celestial Master, which was started by Zhang Daoling.
But Taoism never had a strong central authority, and other religious Taoist sects started to emerge, and so did the Yellow Turban Rebellion that hastened the end of the Han dynasty. Being polytheistic, Taoists have incorporated various philosophies, folk religions, and local gods into their pantheon, including Buddhist ones. The collection of Taoist canons, Tao Zang, even grew to an unmanageable size of over 5,000 books at the very least.
Buddhism is a religio-philosophical tradition that was started by Siddhartha Gautama, also known as the Buddha. It is not native to China and it is considered to be one of the many dharmic religions of India, which includes Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. They share many common features such as the concept of Dharma, reincarnation, and Moksha, which is the liberation from the cycle of rebirth.
However, there are fundamental differences in the interpretation of each of these concepts among those religions and even within Buddhism itself, as it was separated into a few different traditions. The Mahayana tradition or the Great Vehicle tradition is concerned with the liberation of everyone from the cycle of birth and rebirth, and it may incorporate the gods and religious traditions of other cultures in order to appeal to more believers. Some of them may disparage the Theravadans as Hinayana or lesser vehicle, saying that the Theravadans are more concerned with following Buddha's teaching to the letter rather than the spirit of his teaching. On the other hand, the Theravada tradition or the school of the elders may think that the Mahayana tradition have strayed too far from Buddha's original teachings. I wonder if this has to do with the vegetarian Starbucks inside the Phu Quang San Buddha Museum.
Yep. I've been there. Despite their disagreements, there weren't any calls for violent conflict. Even the historic Nalanda Mahavira, which the explorer monk Xuan Zhang famously attended, taught both Mahayana and Theravada texts. As for Vajrayana, it is an offshoot of Mahayana and it is focused on tantric experiences.
The Buddhist tradition that's predominant in China is Mahayana. When Buddhism entered China during the Han dynasty, it did not immediately succeed. At first, it was considered to be too foreign.
But eventually, it started to incorporate Taoist and Confucian ideas such as filial piety into its own tradition and developed into Chan Buddhism in the 5th century, which was was eventually brought to Japan as Zen Buddhism. Likewise, Taoism also borrowed quite a few Buddhist ideas, even though they would hate to admit it. But the influence can be seen in the early Taoist canons.
Now I must distinguish the two different domains of the philosophical and religious interaction, the elites and commoners. The elites would be the scholar bureaucrats of ancient China. This domain was firmly held by the Confucian, as most of them were educated in the Confucian classics, and even more so since the Tang dynasty, because the imperial examination system was standardized and the Confucian classics are the test subjects.
The elites would be more interested in the philosophical side of Buddhism and Taoism, because Confucianism in general holds particular dist... for superstition, even though the Book of Divination, I Ching, is considered as one of the five Confucian classics. Well, I guess they just don't want to go too far with the superstition.
But it never stopped some emperors and officials from being superstitious. Now here, in the commoners'domain, is where the religious ideas mesh and intermingle. Gods and supernatural concepts were borrowed, shared, and reinterpreted. The religious side of Buddhism and Taoism would make this place their ideological battleground for the most part. But sometimes they would influence and appeal to kings and emperors too.
Buddhism and Taoism did not get along well before the Ming Dynasty. There is actually a historical reason why they are depicted as rivals in all those Wuxia movies and series. As in certain dynasties, they would be persecuted in turn, depending on which side was able to get the emperor's favor, or more accurately, which side was threatening their rule.
Emperor Tai Wu of Northern Wei, who favored Taoism, discovered that some rebels had stored their weapon in a Buddhist monastery. So Buddhism was persecuted. This lasted until his Buddhist grandson took the throne a few years later.
This is quite ironic because you would imagine that the Toba royalty would favor Buddhism since it was considered to be a Hu religion, and they had the nomadic Xianbei ancestry. Meanwhile, the Southern Liang Dynasty, which had ethnic Han royalty, favored Buddhism, the foreign religion, and persecuted Taoism. During the Tang and Song Dynasty, Taoism was the state-sponsored religion. Despite that, Buddhism became very popular with the masses.
Then during the Mongol expansion and the Yuan dynasty, the Mongol Khans like Mongke Khan and Kublai Khan often invited Buddhist and Taoists for debates. In those occasions, all the different Buddhist sects joined together to defeat the Taoist multiple times, leading to the burning of countless Taoist canons. The Buddhists wrote the Laughing at the Taoist essay which accused them of stealing Buddhist ideas and the Taoist wrote the Converting the Hu classic, claiming that Buddha was a disciple of Laozi because according to legend, he traveled to the west. Buddhism, they claimed, is just a corruption of Taoist teaching.
This whole curfew fuffle between the two is very interesting. I may cover it in more details in the future. Anyway, despite this, in general, Taoists and Buddhist monks were still treated fairly by the Mongols. And Taoist activities continued. Since it was relatively harmless and did not threaten those in power, the synthesization of the Three Teachings is a long process that wasn't consciously directed.
It is just the result of the natural evolution of these Three Teachings, in order to survive the political and religious climate. In the Song Dynasty, Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi borrowed Buddhist and Taoist concepts, but he still disliked the Buddhist's monasticism and withdrawal from family responsibility. It was only around the Ming Dynasty when the three teachings were treated equally, because the first Ming Emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang, gave them the same amounts of respect. Ming Dynasty Confucian Wang Yangming also borrowed Buddhist meditation methods in his teaching.
To put this synthesization into context, Let's compare the differences between the elites and commoners. The philosophical ideas are freely borrowed by the Confucian elites because they do not threaten the rule of the emperors. The mandate of heaven is still strictly a Confucian concept. It is an agnostic concept that doesn't specify which heaven or god gives the ruler the mandate of heaven. Buddhism being a monastic religion and Taoism being disdainful of politics and hierarchy does not challenge the Confucian justification to rule.
And in the commoners'domain, due to the fact that those religions are polytheistic, there wasn't much religious and doctrinal violence either. Despite all the rivalry, polytheistic religion have a very simple non-violent method to counter their rival's religion. And that is to steal their god. Yep, just change the label and redefine them in their own terms.
It is similar to how the Romans took the Greek gods and combined them with their own. Nezha, one of the Taoist gods, had Buddhist Indian origin. And Guanggong, who was based on the historical general Guan Yu.
became both Taoist and Buddhist god. In Japan, some Buddhists also claimed that the Japanese gods were reincarnation of certain Buddhas. In modern-day Hinduism, some sects considered Jesus and Buddha to be avatars of Vishnu. The thing about monotheistic religion is that the prominent ones, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, insist on just having one god and doctrinal purity. The ruler's justification to rule, used to hinge on the blessing of their one god.
However, in instances when they did not feel politically threatened by the gods of other religions, they would also play the same assimilation game. For example, the legend of the Buddha had been adopted by the Catholics into the legend of Saint Barlaam and Josaphat, where the name Josaphat is the corruption of the Sanskrit word patisattva. Various Catholic celebration and saints were also influenced by the pagan Roman religion. So despite the common saying, three teachings as one, it is really Confucianism that firmly holds the political power. And since it is secular enough and wasn't politically threatened by those other teachings, it was free to borrow concepts from Taoism and Buddhism.
Or at least the ones from the orthodox sects. Because there were quite a lot of cults that encouraged rebellion that appeared from time to time. The rivalry in the commoners'domain is pretty tame too. Most lay believers in ancient China won't really know much about the difference between Taoist and Buddhist gods because they kept borrowing from each other.
That's why in classic literatures such as Journey to the West and Investiture of the Gods, we see Buddhist and Taoist gods interacting with each other. But we can see which author favors which religion more. Because in the Journey to the West, the Buddha is depicted to be more powerful than the Jade Emperor. Only he could subdue Sun Wukong.
And in Investiture of the Gods, the Buddhas are just side characters, even though the sinicized Buddhist deities are featured prominently. So there you go. That was the Realpolitik behind the harmonious teachings. By the way, if you like this kind of cool history, then make sure to subscribe, because we've got plenty more contents coming up. If you like what we are doing, then you can also support us on Patreon.
Until next time, stay cool my bros.