Four Testaments brings together four foundational texts from world religions--the Tao Te Ching, Dhammapada, Analects of Confucius, and Bhagavad Gita--inviting readers to experience them in full, to explore possible points of connection and divergence, and to better understand people who practice these traditions.

Confucius’ ideas on economics are few, but through his ethics one may attain an idea of what kind of economics he would have found acceptable. Confucius’ ethics are based upon the natural goodness of human nature. In his mind, human beings are naturally kind to one another. One does not really need the Christian concept of benevolence for Confucius, because benevolence implies that one is going a step beyond what one would ordinarily do. The meaning of benevolence is to be (...) greater than oneself, greater than the normal. For Confucius, kindness is intrinsic to human nature. His is the idea of natural kindness. (shrink)

Every year, the Vietnamese people reportedly burned about 50,000 tons of joss papers, which took the form of not only bank notes, but iPhones, cars, clothes, even housekeepers, in hope of pleasing the dead. The practice was mistakenly attributed to traditional Buddhist teachings but originated in fact from China, which most Vietnamese were not aware of. In other aspects of life, there were many similar examples of Vietnamese so ready and comfortable with adding new norms, values, and beliefs, even contradictory (...) ones, to their culture. This phenomenon, dubbed “cultural additivity”, prompted us to study the co-existence, interaction, and influences among core values and norms of the Three Teachings –Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism–as shown through Vietnamese folktales. By applying Bayesian logistic regression, we evaluated the possibility of whether the key message of a story was dominated by a religion (dependent variables), as affected by the appearance of values and anti-values pertaining to the Three Teachings in the story (independent variables). Our main findings included the existence of the cultural additivity of Confucian and Taoist values. More specifically, empirical results showed that the interaction or addition of the values of Taoism and Confucianism in folktales together helped predict whether the key message of a story was about Confucianism, β{VT ⋅ VC} = 0.86. Meanwhile, there was no such statistical tendency for Buddhism. The results lead to a number of important implications. First, this showed the dominance of Confucianism because the fact that Confucian and Taoist values appeared together in a story led to the story’s key message dominated by Confucianism. Thus, it presented the evidence of Confucian dominance and against liberal interpretations of the concept of the Common Roots of Three Religions (“tam giáo đồng nguyên”) as religious unification or unicity. Second, the concept of “cultural additivity” could help explain many interesting socio-cultural phenomena, namely the absence of religious intolerance and extremism in the Vietnamese society, outrageous cases of sophistry in education, the low productivity in creative endeavors like science and technology, the misleading branding strategy in business. We are aware that our results are only preliminary and more studies, both theoretical and empirical, must be carried out to give a full account of the explanatory reach of “cultural additivity”. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the correlations of Buddhism with Confucianism and Taoism in Wei (221-265) and both Jin (265-420) periods. The philosophical principles of these three doctrines, their general and peculiarities in three doctrines philosophical principles which defined the forming in China own Buddhist schools have been showed there. The new view to the correlations between Buddhism and Taoism has been showed, the new conception that the correlations between Buddhism and Taoism in period of Wei (...) are the correlations of Prajna-paramita and liu jia qi zong. It is showed, that also Confucianism in periods of Wei and Jin saved its political and social positions in Chinese society and deeply influenced on the forming Buddhism on the earliest period of its spreading in China. (shrink)

본 논문은 조선시대 유학자들의 도가철학 이해에 나타나는 양민(養民)의 경세론(經世論)을 위민(爲民)과 안민(安民) 개념에 기초하여 분석하고, 養民의 經世論이 가지고 있는 사회, 경제적 인 의미를 분석하는 것을 목적으로 한다. 새로운 왕조 국가의 탄생과 더불어 가속화된 행정 및 사회구조 개혁의 시행은 반대급부 당대 사회가 해결해야할 사회적 문제의 현안을 표면화하는 것이기도 하다. 그리고 이것은 새롭게 탄 생한 국가의 정치적인 명분의 정당성뿐만 아니라 사회적, 경제적인 측면에서 民의 지지를 받는 것을 포함한다. 이 점에서 온전한 民의 삶과 더불어 民의 사회적 지위에 대한 인식은 조선사회 를 이해하는 중요한 요소가 (...) 된다. 하지만 성리학적 이념에 기초한 이상사회의 모습과 달리 성리학적 명분론에 기초한 신분제 사회의 질서 속에서 괴리된 民의 삶은 과도한 국가의 부역과 조세로 인해 곤궁해 진다. 더욱이 여러 번의 士禍와 양란(임진왜란과 병자호란)으로 인해 피폐해진 民의 삶은 사회, 경제적으로 위태로운 상태에 놓이게 된다. 이 점에서 이이와 박세당, 서명응, 이충익, 홍석주와 같은 조선시대 유학자들은 현실사회의 문 제들을 타개하고 온전한 民의 삶을 위한 실효성을 가지는 개혁을 노자사상의 비판적 수용을 통해 진행한다. 이와 같은 맥락에서 볼 때 조선시대 선진적인 유학자들에 의해 제기된 사회개혁론 속에 기능하는 爲民과 安民에 기초한 養民의 經世論은 정주학에 기초한 성리학적 세계관으로부터 벗어 나는 내용을 가진다. 더욱이 실학사상의 형성과정과 계보를 함께하는 爲民과 安民에 기초한 養民의 經世論에는 사회구조에 대한 새로운 개혁에 대한 의지와 더불어 주체적인 民의 삶을 위한 ‘참다운 삶’에 대 한 사회적인 요구가 전제되어 있다. (shrink)

In an era in which a conflicting relationship exists between humans and nature, ways of solv­ing environmental problems need to be introduced into people’s thinking about what to do, what lifestyle we should accept, and what kind of people we should become to support our environmental protection work using better justifications. Traditional Chinese Confucianism and Taoism can exert a profound ideological, philosophical, and spiritual influence on how people judge the meaning and value of their lives. Regarding how humans (...) face the natural environment and how they perceive the meaning and value of human lives, Chinese Con­fucianists and Taoists who possess profound wisdom and great benevolence have provided unique philosophical views. The philosophical views and thinking of Chinese Confucianism and Taoism provide links to the environmental crises that humans encounter today. (shrink)

本书的目的是揭示以儒道互补为主的中国文化形态和哲学理念在社会结构平衡和历史动态平衡中生效的内在理路和机制.

ABSTRACT The research purpose is to investigate the influence of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism on Chinese folklore vocals and their elements in modern music. The research methodology is based on descriptive, comparative, interpretative and statistical analysis (Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient). The analysis of the folk vocals of each thematic group among 110 folk songs of the Shi Jing supports the argument that Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism had the greatest influence on the vocals. During the analysis, it (...) was determined that folk songs about love (0.942) and songs themed around nature (0.917) exhibit the most pronounced influence on their potential utilisation in the performance of popular compositions. The findings indicated that 75% of the folk vocal compositions with nature-related themes demonstrated discernible influences from Buddhism. The research findings have enabled the identification of exemplary renditions of the folkloric composition ‘Czo-yui’ from the ‘Book of Changes’, adeptly adapted to contemporary motifs, which were achieved at a notably high level within respondent groups #1 (7.2), #4 (7.4) and #5 (7.1). These commendable outcomes are attributed to the preservation of harmonious tonality, precise intonation and artistic expression during the performance process. (shrink)

Ancestor worship is a diffusive religion. Different nationalities may have different ideas about ancestors, but ancestor worship plays the same role. In the development of modern society, Ancestor worship still plays an important role in the demand for human psychology, the shaping of individuals, the stable development of families, and the cohesion of ethnic groups. The development and inheritance basis of ancestor worship is closely related to Chinese religion and culture, and the integration of the two has also promoted the (...) continuous inheritance and development of Chinese religion and culture. At the same time, ancestor worship is also the concrete manifestation of filial piety advocated by Confucianism and Taoism in Chinese traditional culture. By analyzing the basis of the formation of ancestor worship and its inheritance characteristics, this paper discusses the important role of ancestor worship in Chinses religion and culture and further discusses the influence of Confucianism and Taoism on the inheritance of ancestor worship by combining the relationship between filial piety and ancestor worship in Confucianism and Taoism. (shrink)

Objectives:Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism have influenced societies and shaped cultures as they have spread across the span of history and ultimately across the world. However, to date, the interrelated nature of their impacts has yet to be examined largely due to the lack of a measure that comprehensively assesses their various tenets. Building on a conceptual integration of foundational texts on each ideology as well as on recent measure development work (much of which is unpublished), the current studies (...) developed a comprehensive measure of these ideologies (the Three Teachings of East Asia Inventory; TTEA) and validated it across four languages.Methods:A combined sample of 2,091 online respondents (Study 1: 322 Chinese respondents, Study 2: 400 Japanese respondents, Study 3: 362 Taiwanese respondents, Study 4: 688 White Americans and 319 Asian Americans) completed 25–35 min online survey in their preferred language: English, Traditional Mandarin, Simplified Mandarin, or Japanese.Results:Exploratory Factor Analyses within a 122-item pool identified 18 stable dimensions across all samples. Measurement invariance analyses identified the final 61-items of the TTEA inventory (demonstrating reasonable invariance across all languages), confirming 18 individual tenet subscales that organize into four higher-order composites: Buddhism, Taoism, Restrictive Confucianism, and Empowering Confucianism. A shorter 36-item version of the TTEA inventory was also developed. The TTEA scales demonstrated (1) acceptable internal consistency, (2) discriminant validity, and (3) incremental predictive validity for current life satisfaction and vitality.Conclusions:The TTEA inventory offers one of the first comprehensive, multilingual measures that will allow cross-cultural researchers to examine the influence of three related Eastern ideologies on societies across the world. (shrink)

Confucianism is an important theoretical support of the Chinese national spirit. It started with the Confucian school founded by Confucius, and after the continuous enrichment and creation of Confucianism, it gradually formed an important guiding ideology covering people, people and society, people and nature, etc., which had a far-reaching impact on politics, economy, literature, social life and other fields. In the 1980s, the stable social environment brought by the reform and opening up provided a good external condition for (...) the development of dulcimer art in China. The increasing communication between Chinese and western cultures and ideas has brought new ideas for the development of dulcimer art in China. Yangqin, in the form of "singing, dancing and telling stories", shows the living state and ideal pursuit of literati in Yuan Dynasty by shaping specific events and characters, thus being regarded as a "living fossil" that reflects the social outlook of Yuan Dynasty. There is no doubt that the culture of Chinese dulcimer is based on Chinese traditional culture. It has obvious characteristics of the cultural orientation of Confucianism and Taoism, and is also the result of the interaction between Chinese and Western cultural trends. This cultural orientation will definitely involve the future development trend of Chinese dulcimer culture and will have a profound impact on Chinese dulcimer culture in the 21st century. (shrink)

Arthur Danto argues that all Eastern philosophies – except Confucianism – fail to accept necessary conditions on genuine morality: a robust notion of agency and that actions are praiseworthy only if performed voluntarily, in accordance with rules, and from motives based on the moral worth and well-being of others. But Danto’s arguments fail: Neo-Taoism and Mohism satisfy these allegedly necessary constraints and Taoism and Buddhism both posit moral reasons that fall outside the scope of Danto’s allegedly necessary (...) conditions on genuine morality. Thus, our initial reaction, that these Eastern philosophies offer genuine moral reasons for action, is sustained rather than overturned. (shrink)

Did Chinese mysticism vanish after its first appearance in ancient Taoist philosophy, to surface only after a thousand years had passed, when the Chinese had adapted Buddhism to their own culture? This first integrated survey of the mystical dimension of Taoism disputes the commonly accepted idea of such a hiatus. Covering the period from the Daode jing to the end of the Tang, Livia Kohn reveals an often misunderstood Chinese mystical tradition that continued through the ages. Influenced by but (...) ultimately independent of Buddhism, it took forms more various than the quietistic withdrawal of Laozi or the sudden enlightenment of the Chan Buddhists. On the basis of a new theoretical evaluation of mysticism, this study analyzes the relationship between philosophical and religious Taoism and between Buddhism and the native Chinese tradition. Kohn shows how the quietistic and socially oriented Daode jing was combined with the ecstatic and individualistic mysticism of the Zhuangzi, with immortality beliefs and practices, and with Buddhist insight meditation, mind analysis, and doctrines of karma and retribution. She goes on to demonstrate that Chinese mysticism, a complex synthesis by the late Six Dynasties, reached its zenith in the Tang, laying the foundations for later developments in the Song traditions of Inner Alchemy, Chan Buddhism, and Neo-Confucianism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 287-292 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Original Tao: Inward Training and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism Laughing at the Tao: Debates Among Buddhists and Taoists in Medieval China Taoist Tradition and Change: The Story of the Complete Perfection Sect in Hong Kong Lord of the Three in One: The Spread of a Cult in Southeast China Original Tao: Inward Training and the Foundations of (...) Taoist Mysticism. By Harold D. Roth. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. xv + 275 pp. Laughing at the Tao: Debates Among Buddhists and Taoists in Medieval China. By Livia Kohn. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. xii + 281 pp. Taoist Tradition and Change: The Story of the Complete Perfection Sect in Hong Kong. By Bartholomew P. M. Tsui. Hong Kong: Chinese Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture, 1991. 207 pp. Lord of the Three in One: The Spread of a Cult in Southeast China. By Kenneth Dean. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. xii + 406 pp. Buddhism in China has many forms: sometimes functioning as a foreign object provoking attraction, rivalry, or persecution, and at other times being so integrated that it epitomized or completed Chinese culture. Although the elite monastic community maintained its distinctive Buddhist identity throughout its history, the story of the various forms of popular appropriation of Buddhist elements beyond the monastic [End Page 287] walls is just beginning to be studied. Probably the most important arena where Buddhism became part of Chinese culture is its mixture with Daoist practice, but only in the 1990s have Daoist studies evolved to the point where the Buddhist presence can be traced and evaluated. The four books listed above are among a shelf-full of new studies on Daoism that offer resources for exploring the complex relationships among Buddhism, Daoism, and Chinese culture.The study of the Inner Training by Harold Roth clarifies a core practice within early Daoism that was later integrated--usually without acknowledgment--as a central practice by both Confucianists and Buddhists, especially Ch'an. In contrast, the definitive study by Livia Kohn of the Xiaodao lun shows a carefully constructed Buddhist attack on Daoist scriptures. During the last millennium, the two most influential integrations of the three religions--Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism--were achieved by Wang Chong-yang (1113-1170) and Lin Zhao-en (1517-1598). Bartholomew Tsui offers an important field study of the liturgical practices of the contemporary followers of Wang as embodied in Hong Kong temples of Quanzhen (Complete Perfection) Daoism, while Kenneth Dean provides a massive field report of over one thousand temples of the Xiajiao movement in contemporary Fujian Province that revere the teachings of Lin Zhao-en as Lord of the Three-in-One. All four books provide rich materials for reflecting on interreligious encounter in China.The archaeological discovery of lost Chinese texts has made clear that the Lao-tzu is no earlier than the beginning of the third century b.C.E. and did not exist at the time of Confucius. Harold Roth's book argues that earlier than the book of Lao-tzu there was a movement of internal cultivation that was first expressed in two fourth-century b.C.E. texts, the first seven chapters of Chuang-tzu and a text found among the seventy-six texts in the Kuan-tzu that Roth calls Inner Training. Roth proposes that this latter text constitutes the "original Tao" in the sense that it is the core practice embodied in those thinkers who were grouped together by later historians. Roth observes that the earliest identification of a Daoist school (daojia) by Ssu-ma T'an about 110 b.C.E. emphasized techniques or practices, "not the philosophies that developed along with them and that support them.... Techniques must be seen as a way to define pre... (shrink)

When scholars look for anticipations of libertarian ideas in early Chinese thought, attention usually focuses not on the Confucians, but on the Taoists. But in their account of spontaneously evolving social norms, their understanding of the price system, their penchant for public-choice analysis, their enthusiasm for entrepreneurship, their preference for noncoercive interpersonal relations, their call for a laissez-faire economic policy, and their rejection of Taoist primitivism, the Confucians show themselves to be the true precursors of modern libertarianism.

This research employs the Bayesian network modeling approach, and the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, to learn about the role of lies and violence in teachings of major religions, using a unique dataset extracted from long-standing Vietnamese folktales. The results indicate that, although lying and violent acts augur negative consequences for those who commit them, their associations with core religious values diverge in the final outcome for the folktale characters. Lying that serves a religious mission of either Confucianism or (...) Taoism (but not Buddhism) brings a positive outcome to a character (βT_and_Lie_O= 2.23; βC_and_Lie_O= 1.47; βT_and_Lie_O= 2.23). A violent act committed to serving Buddhist missions results in a happy ending for the committer (βB_and_Viol_O= 2.55). What is highlighted here is a glaring double standard in the interpretation and practice of the three teachings: the very virtuous outcomes being preached, whether that be compassion and meditation in Buddhism, societal order in Confucianism, or natural harmony in Taoism, appear to accommodate two universal vices—violence in Buddhism and lying in the latter two. These findings contribute to a host of studies aimed at making sense of contradictory human behaviors, adding the role of religious teachings in addition to cognition in belief maintenance and motivated reasoning in discounting counterargument. (shrink)

The Qing dynasty scholar Liu Yuan (1768-1856) developed a unique system of thought, merging Confucian learning with ideas and practices from Daoism and Buddhism, and was eventually venerated as the founding patriarch of an influential movement combining the characteristics of a scholarly circle and a religious society. Liu Yuan, a native of Sichuan, was an outstanding Confucian scholar whose teachings were commonly referred to as Liumen (Liu School). Assisted by his close disciples, Liu edited a Daoist ritual canon titled Fayan (...) huizuan (Compendium of Ritual Words). Daoist priests affiliated with the Liumen community and using the Fayan huizuan canon in their rituals constituted an independent liturgical branch of Daoism, which is still extant and known under the name of "Fayan tan" (Altar of Ritual Words). Following a comprehensive description of the Liumen tradition, the volume by Volker Olles discusses the compilation history of the Fayan huizuan canon, the lineage of the Fayan tan priests, as well as the temporal framework of their liturgy. The main part of the volume consists of a detailed study of the ritual canon, identifying its textual sources and describing its pantheon, the influence of the Liumen ideology on its texts, as well as the function and performance of its rituals in contemporary religious practice. Furthermore concluding thoughts about the Fayan tan tradition's role in present-day Sichuan constitute the epilogue. By showing how members of the Confucian elite were involved in the evolution of modern Daoism, this study sheds light on hitherto obscure or poorly understood aspects of the intellectual and spiritual culture of Southwest China. (shrink)