Re: Is Confucianism on the rise in China?

shazi wrote:
when i first became acquainted with
chinese thought many years ago (1970s),
I took trips to southern China (1980s)
to find Taoist and Buddhist temples.

except for within hong kong, and taiwan,
i found very little remained of the
chinese religious and philosophical
heritage.

as i later (early 90's) worked with
my colleagues from the university of
beijing, i found few of them to be
conversant or interested in chinese
philosophical dialogue.

Being a confucian is about how to live one life such as how to see
human relationship, religion and etc. In this sense, Chinese is always
confucius. In addition, confucianism has been mainstream in China for
so long, a lot of confucisan percepts have been diffused to the lowest
level. For example, "Dao" and "Li", the Chinese translation of "reason"
are big words philosophically speaking. But 6 years olds also utter
them. If one pays attention to a six years old's "dao li", may be he
can contruct some philosophical meaning. As Menzi had said,"Dao is not
far from people; far from people is not dao." No?


this isn't a criticism but the legacy
of the cultural revolution seemed to
cast aside the 'traditional ways'.

now, many of my mainland colleagues are
rediscovering classical chinese thought.

to me it is quite exciting, but their
ability to read and understand classical
chinese is limited, by both the lack
of formal education in the classical
writings, as well as the change to the
simplified characters, which limits the
corpus of commentary readable by the
general public.

yet, classical chinese thought, specifically,
rujia and daojia, are, imo, the core
unique and native thought to china:
a legacy to the world with wide-ranging
significance.

In addition, rujia/confucianism often is
considered the 'soul' of the chinese,
but in saying this, that soul is hiddden
inside without, as kongzi would say,
'an investigation of things'.

is confucianism on the rise?

as the master said,
"Is it not pleasant to learn with a
constant perseverance and application?
Is it not delightful to have friends
coming from distant quarters?"
(lunyu 1:1, legge)

what easier place to have friends from
'distant quarters' than usenet?

-shazi
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