Psychology in Chinese Culture and Philosophy

[k0ct-ep]

Hello and good day to all members of Chinese-forums.com

I am afraid that i do not know Chinese language, but i am interested in Chinese philosophy and culture, and decided that the most proper place to ask a

couple of questions considering the point of Chinese philosophical view towards the human mind and psychology is where English speaking Chinese members are always present, people who know their own history of philosophy. One can say, why don't you find a good source of Asian philosophy, a translated book of Buddhist

or Taoist teachings? My answer to this is simple, that there might not be a direct answer to my question in these writings, and only a person who knows these teachings can answer me. The question is somewhat simple, but is nevertheless important(at the very least for me). In Chinese philosophy and thought of view, is intellect and psychology and absolutely ideal thing or not? I am sure this question had to emerge before.

Thank you in advanced for your time and attention.

[jbradfor]

I must be dense tonight. I really don't know what you mean by "is intellect and psychology and absolutely ideal thing or not?". [even assuming you meant "an absolutely".]

[rezaf]

I just can't make the connection between the words in that question. I don't think that a Daoist or Buddhist monk can do that either. Maybe you could clarify your questions a little bit.

[k0ct-ep]

Oh, sorry for the misprint, yes i have meant "an absolutely". By this i assumed the philosophical concept of Absolute, here is a Wikipedia Link

In my earlier post i have given a blurred definition on what i meant, but by absolute or ideal i assume the mind or psychology of a human being to be, let's say, the Alpha and Omega of the world around it, an instrument which can, if it is ideal, grasp anything around it, or not, if it is not ideal.

[gerri]

I should think that there's at least as many answers to that question as there are schools of thought and teachers...

There is some idea of a possible perfection of the human mind (or at least, of human behavior) in Confucianism, but it's not all that much concerned with epistemology rather than pragmatics. Doesn't quite sound like what you meant.

Buddhism would similarly say that you can grasp the world, i.e. perfect your understanding. In that regard, the mind is an absolute, or rather absolutely capable of "grasping the world around it" - except that what it's supposed to grasp is that nothing, including itself, is absolute...

The problem, to me, seems to be in looking for a, let alone "the," Chinese philosophy.

[k0ct-ep]

Yes, this is exactly what i meant, epistemology "alignment" of "the" Chinese philosophy. Well, if the problem is indeed in an attempt to look only at chinese philosophy, then i could rephrase my question to Asian philosophy, what does it teach in the main sense (if there is one common teaching and point of view)

[gerri]

That's just the opposite of the point I'm trying to make... there is no single/unified Chinese, let alone Asian, philosophy.

In contrast to Western philosophy, there may be some issues that are raised more often, so appear typical. It's been one of the popular ideas that Chinese philosophy is simply more interested in pragmatic matters rather than epistemology per se, but that is very much a Cliff's Notes version. Once you look any deeper, there are so many differences even between, for example, different schools of thought in Buddhism that you will have a hard time finding *the* single epistemological perspective of that religion. (Hell, I'm using that term on purpose - even whether Buddhism should be classified as a religion in the same way that the Abrahamic systems of belief are has been debated.)

So, to reiterate: there is no one single point that connects them all.

[blackmeow]

i've been thought a lot before i decide to write this reply, not the about knowledge but the question of 'should i ever give my answear?'

Chinese philosophy has three main genres which are still play the main part of direct every basic 'Chinese way of thinking': 儒，法，道。

儒 back to the time before the born of the old Confucius, the Chinese character 儒 means 'a person who has a great understanding of 礼（manners, ritual, ceremony and so on）'. And the reason why this character is became the symbol of Confucius style philosophy? it is because Confucius way of life is based on 礼, which means he wanted the world to be such world as: a king should act as a king, a teacher should act as a teacher, a husband should act as a husband, and so on for the government offices, the wife, the son, the parents and basically everyone in a human society should act as 'one should be in such position'. This is Confucius’ belief of how to maintain stability of a country.

It is like to build a very strict code of ethics and moral, that everyone must not break the 'rules'.

It is very easy to understand why so many years after 汉朝, China was dominated by such philosophy whenever the country reaches a unity.--- It is just good for the government to control the country as a machine that there is only few people ever wish to break the 'rules'.

And it is also easy to understand why when there are several warlords and kings are competing for the rights to unified china, Confucius style philosophy was always been abandoned by the kings and warlords. In order to unified china, they need 'change', they need to 'break the rules', and if any of them ever succeed they will pick up Confucius to rule the country as one.

Of course this is just the main theme of Confucius philosophy but not all; there are some side lines that do not have much to do with the stability but more close to the way of life.

For example: Confucius said: if one learned the way of Chinese (or Han) civilization, then he or she is a Chinese. If one learned the way of a foreign civilization, then he or she is a foreigner.

This is a very good way for any westerners to understand 'why china and the Chinese are so different?', because the carrier of china is not a nation state, the Chinese are not bonded together by blood or race, instead, the Chinese are bonded by the Chinese civilization.

Just think about it, China is nearly as large as the continent of Europe, with huge population which settled all parts of this vast land, so basically the 汉族 in fact is not a genetically bonded nation, rather a nation based on the bond of the cultural fusion. Another example is that recently there is this discovery that the ethnic group 羌族 which live in Sichuan and Tibet, are the original 汉族 they used to live in 中原 back 5000 years ago, and they were the tribe of 蚩尤, which was defeated by 黄帝's tribe and ran all the way in to the mountains of Sichuan and Tibet. They still hold a lot of customs which u can find in today's The Loess Plateau, after 5000 years they still build incredibly high watch towers to scout for the 'ancient enemy tribe', while the other tribe, which was the same nation as the 羌族 and lead by 黄帝 to be the first ruler of china, becomes today's 汉族.

Another example is 满族,蒙古族,壮族 and 回族, many Chinese middle school students will find out that during the period of 中考 or 高考，some of their friends suddenly become an ethnic (because there are extra bonus points given if u are an ethnic.) These ethnic has become a part of 汉族. Although ethnic people are not held back by the one child policy, in some extreme cases, in order to maintain their unique culture there are even laws to protect the purity of some special ethnic group. For example, Chinese law protect the Uighur man have the right to marry 汉族 woman, but do not allow 汉族 male to marry Uighur female. The law also asks that every school in the ethnic territory must teach in both languages (if that ethnic group has a writing system). Apart from all that, the recognition between the ethnic and Han are slowly disappearing.

And the last example for this is the most interesting part, which is when someone from the other country came to china and learned the way of Chinese as the old Confucius said, we do believe that he or she is a Chinese. for example 大山-Mark Rowswell or 爱华-Charlotte MacInnis. Chinese people will not think that Mark or Charlotte is a 老外, but two Chinese persons who hold a foreign passport. This is a typical thinking of Han Chinese, as for Charlotte, although she lives in Beijing , Chinese people understand that she is not just a Chinese but a 江南人.

Other than all that above, there are limits of Confucius philosophy, that this style of life is not so good to bring in now ideas from outside, from time to time, his philosophy will easily make Chinese people to believe in Chinese (especially Han Chinese) supremacy, and that is something really bad for making both scientific and social progress, as what happened to Song, Ming, Qing, and the Cultural Revolution (most things happened during Cultural Revolution looked as if they were going to destroy the Confucius, but instead they stood for a extremely spiritual form of Confucius’ belief that everything in China is great, while everything outside China is crap, and this extreme type of thinking hurt china and her people awfully).

So whenever the Confucius philosophy hurts china and hold it back from making progress, there comes a bloody battle between the 儒 and 法.

法 literally means: law or legal field. This is a philosophy that believes in bringing in new ideas, building a country based on strict laws and order, if anyone did anything good, the government and society must reward them; if anyone did anything bad, then one must be punished. If we say that Confucius’ philosophy is one of ruling a country, then 法 is the philosophy which can create a country, by blood and steel.

These two philosophies have launched countless bloody battles. In the history whenever one side gets the power, will surly try to destroy the other one, when this happens there will be huge amount of people get killed. For example, 商鞅, who is the representative of 法, got killed with his entire family (anyone who ever had any tiny little blood relationship with him included), and later on, 嬴政 did his famous '焚书坑儒' (坑 in 先秦文 doesn't just mean to dig a hole or to bury', it also means to do something bad to someone without getting noticed, in another word: assassination).

This war went for more than 3000 years, this battle of philosophies cost so many lives, and it reached an end when it got to the modern days: the unbelievably painful process of the fusion of these two philosophies. It started by Sun yat-sen and finished 100 years later by Deng Xiaoping--the Chinese revolution, and the most painful part came right before the delivery: the Cultural Revolution.

The reason was simple: that in this modern age, there is just no time for someone to unite the country and start to rebuild the order, because this time, the world does not just have one great nation—china, and china was no-where near the 'center of the world'. The idea of both 儒 and 法has to work out at the same time, otherwise it just won't work! For example as the current policies could be incomprehensible in ancient 儒家 and 法家' eyes that '建设法治社会' and ‘建设和谐社会’ are working at the sometime, and did well to support each other to make progress. To reach such new form of 儒 and 法， we have paid a heavy price, it was cruel when we suffered from that experiment of change, but when we look back, it is worth that.

Chairman Mao may never have thought it this way, but his act did lift Chinese civilization into a higher stage, it is just the change came too fast and too brutal. My grandpa died because of that, it was really the darkness before dawn.

Now let's move to the relax part:道

道 was the oldest Chinese philosophy which we can trace by actual evidence, it may happened when the period of 黄帝（untested statement）, but certainly became a philosophy system by whole during the end of 商 by the book of 《周易》（there seems to be many 《易》, but the oldest we can find is 《周易》） as well as the philosophy ideas of 河图 and 洛书（a way of viewing the law of the universe, the natural, our society and ourselves）.

The idea of 阴阳(yin and yang) is basically the same thing said by Isaac Newton but a bit wilder: that the energy of any form cannot be created, but only change from one form into another, in another words: one doesn't gain anything from nothing, and often because of the lack of skill, during any transformation that made by human, we often fail to deliver all of the energy from one form fully into the other. Therefore 道家 believes that if we can find a way to practice our skill to a better level of perfection, then we will save more precious energy (time, power, vitality, raw material and so on).

This is the very origin of the Chinese civilization. all other Chinese philosophies are the sons of 道: martial arts，TCM，calligraphy，art，literature，Chinese cuisine, music, Fengshui, and almost everything. And this is also why that religion is so hard to ever get much political power in china then the rest of the world: because 道 is the origin of the Chinese civilization, and the origin of the 道 is '道法自然'， which literally means: to do everything in the most natural way. This may gives not much clue. Let’s try some examples:

1, in some westerns’ eyes Taoism(道教) is the representative of 道， but in fact 道教 itself, its very existence is a violation of the philosophy of 道.

To make this easier to understand: 道 believes that one cannot tell someone else:'来信xx吧，信xx就能得到幸福'. 道 is a dialectical materialism philosophy that doesn't believe in any religion. What 道 believes is that 'everyone has their own WAY(道) of happiness' and therefore 'one should not to tell others what to do, since human born to be different.'

Therefore the act of making a religion itself is already not the way of 道. In fact the Taoism was found around 1800 years ago, about the time of Three kingdoms, when 张角 and 张鲁 used to gather man power and money in order to make a political uprising. In the eyes of 道，this act is very low, personal and selfish, far from the 道 philosophy itself.

Because of this 道 philosophy, there are the 气功，TCM and other things may sometimes look mysterious, but in fact there is nothing magic, everything is just science. They are just a method of the WHY(道) that use the breath(control of oxidization) to control human body(cell division、blood flow, bioelectricity, internal secretion(三焦) and so on). If our modern technology cannot explain this, then as the 道 says: it is just the human skills of understand the world have not yet reached that point, and with some more practice (science progress or so), one will gain that certain level of perfection (scientific theory) to do so. In a word, nothing is special; it is just the basic of all knowledge: 1, 0 and -1.

Geeeezzzzzzzz it is just a brief view of 儒 法 道,but it takes me about 90 mins to collect my mind and put some words down. tried.......

hope this will do some help.