Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
ancient thought to which they argued he subscribed. Their purpose
seems to have been to show that the secular and this-worldly concerns
of Confucian thought could be expanded or conflated into a more
comprehensive consideration of the universe. Buddhism was not the
only cosmological game in town; Confucianism too could be shown
to be profound and cosmological.
Neo-Confucianism eventually developed into two distinct strands.
One school, given definitive expression by the great Southern Song
philosopher and synthesizer Zhu Xi, was very rationalistic and cen-
tered on the study of principles (li),whichittaughtinheredinall
things. Li were nonmaterial realities that were manifest in the material
world, or qi. The greatest or ultimate expression of all li was the
Supreme Ultimate (taiji), and the universe itself was the result of the
various interworkings of these two great cosmological realities. Zhu
Xi's cosmology was perhaps a dualism, or a philosophy holding that
the universe is composed of two basic and irreducible entities.
Another school, definitively developed by the Ming scholar Wang
Shouren (Wang Yangming, 1472-1529), was more or less a monism,
or a conception of the universe as composed of only one ultimate real-
ity. Wang Shouren and like-minded Song philosophers before him
argued that the universe was not ultimately two but one; li and qi were
ultimately reducible to a single complete unity, and this perfect one-
ness inhered in people's minds or hearts (xin). Thus, contemplation
of external phenomena and meditating on their li or principles was
not as important as recovering the unity of the cosmos that was
reflected within each individual.
By Song times, Buddhism was no longer the intellectual darling of
the elite. Elites during the Song and subsequent dynasties were more
explicitly Confucian in their public and ideological lives than their
Tang predecessors had been, but many of them retained, like Han Yu
himself, some measure of attachment to Buddhism and Buddhist prin-
ciples in their private lives. It would be a mistake to conclude that
China's intellectuals had by Song times completely turned their backs
on Buddhism; and, of course, Buddhism continued to flourish
throughout other segments of Chinese society well into modern times.
THE TANG-SONG TRANSITION: MAJOR CHANGES
IN CHINESE CIVILIZATION
Historians of China have noticed some fundamental changes in
China between the mid-Tang and late Song periods. One fundamental
