Was sitting in the EVP coffee this morning was thinking about Chinese spiritual concepts. Some fit in the realms of a particular religion, others do not. In general these concepts were uniquely evolved from the Chinese values of filial piety, tacit acknowledgment of the co-existence of the living and the deceased, and the belief in causality and reincarnation, with or without religious overtones.
The four spiritual, cosmological, and moral concepts:
- Tian (天), Heaven, the source of moral meaning;
- Qi (氣), the breath or substance of which all things are made;
- JingZu (敬祖), the veneration of ancestors;
- Bao Ying (報應), moral reciprocity.
Tian, its li and qi
Tian is defined in many ways, with many names, the most widely known being Tàidì 太帝 (the "Great Deity") and Shàngdì 上帝 (the "Primordial Deity"). The concept of Shangdi is especially rooted in the tradition of the Shang dynasty, which gave prominence to the worship of ancestral gods and cultural heroes.
The "Primordial Deity" or "Primordial Emperor" was considered to be embodied in the human realm as the lineage of imperial power. Di (帝) is a term meaning "deity" or "emperor" (Latin: imperator, verb im-perare; "making from within"), used either as a name of the primordial god or as a title of natural gods, describing a principle that exerts a fatherly dominance over what it produces.
With the Zhou dynasty, that preferred a religion focused on gods of nature, Tian became a more abstract and impersonal idea of God. A popular representation is the Jade Deity (玉帝 Yùdì) or Jade Emperor (玉皇 Yùhuáng) originally formulated by Taoists. According to classical theology he manifests in five primary forms (五方上帝 Wǔfāng Shàngdì, "Five Forms of the Highest Deity").
The qi 气 is the breath or substance of which all things are made, including inanimate matter, the living beings, thought and gods. It is the continuum energy—matter. Stephen F. Teiser (1996) translates it as "stuff" of "psychophysical stuff". Neo-Confucian thinkers such as Zhu Xi developed the idea of li 理, the "reason", "order" of Heaven, that is to say the pattern through which the qi develops, that is the polarity of yin and yang.
In Taoism the Tao 道 ("Way") denotes in one concept both the impersonal absolute Tian and its order of manifestation (li).
Yin and yang—gui and shen
The concept 神 "shén" (cognate of 申 shēn, "extending, expanding") is translated as "gods" or "spirits". There are shén of nature; gods who were once people, such as the warrior Guan Gong; household gods, such as the Stove God; as well as ancestral gods (zu or zuxian). In the domain of humanity the shen is the "psyche", or the power or agency within humans. They are intimately involved in the life of this world.
As spirits of stars, mountains and streams, shen exert a direct influence on things, making phenomena appear and things grow or extend themselves. An early Chinese dictionary, the Shuowen jiezi by Xu Shen, explains that they "are the spirits of Heaven" and they "draw out the ten thousand things".
As forces of growth the gods are regarded as yang, opposed to a yin class of entities called 鬼 "guǐ" (cognate of 歸 guī, "return, contraction"), chaotic beings.
A disciple of Zhu Xi noted that "between Heaven and Earth there is no thing that does not consist of yin and yang, and there is no place where yin and yang are not found. Therefore there is no place where gods and spirits do not exist".
The dragon is a symbol of yang, the principle of generation.Yin 陰 and yang 陽, whose root meanings respectively are "shady" and "sunny", or "dark" and "light", are modes of manifestation of the qi, not material things in themselves. Yin is the qi in its dense, dark, sinking, wet, condensing mode; yang denotes the light, and the bright, rising, dry, expanding modality.
Described as Taiji (the "Great Pole"), they represent the polarity and complementarity that enlivens the cosmos. They can also be conceived as "disorder" and "order", "activity" or "passivity", with act (yang) usually preferred over receptiveness (yin).
In Taoist and Confucian thought, the supreme God and its order and the multiplicity of shen are identified as one and the same.
In the Yizhuan, a commentary to the Yijing, it is written that "one yin and one yang are called the Tao ... the unfathomable change of yin and yang is called shen". In other texts, with a tradition going back to the Han period, the gods and spirits are explained to be names of yin and yang, forces of contraction and forces of growth.
While in popular thought they have conscience and personality, Neo-Confucian scholars tended to rationalise them.
- Zhu Xi wrote that they act according to the li.
- Zhang Zai wrote that they are "the inherent potential (liang neng) of the two ways of qi".
- Cheng Yi said that they are "traces of the creative process".
- Chen Chun wrote that shen and gui are expansions and contractions, going and coming, of yin and yang—qi.
Hun and po, and zu and xian
To extend life to its full potential the human shen must be cultivated, resulting in ever clearer, more luminous states of being.
It can transform in the pure intelligent breath of deities.
In man there's no distinction between rationality and intuition, thinking and feeling: the human being is xin (心), mind-heart.
With death, while the po returns to the earth and disappears, the hun is thought to be pure awareness or qi, and is the shen to whom ancestral sacrifices are dedicated.
Like all things in matter, also humans have a soul that is a dialectic of hun and po (魂魄), respectively the yang spirit or mind, and the yin animal soul that is the body.
Hun (mind) is the shen (that gives a form to the qi) of humans, and it develops through the po, stretching and moving intelligently in order to grasp things.
Po is the "feminine" soul which controls the physiological and psychological activities of man, while the hun, the god attached to the vital breath, is the "masculine" soul that is totally independent of corporeal substance.
- The hun is virile, independent and perpetual, and as such it never allows itself to be limited in matter.
- The po is the "earthly" (di) soul that goes downward, while the hun is the "heavenly" (tian) soul that moves upward.
The shen of men who are properly cultivated and honoured after their death are upheld ancestors and progenitors (zuxian 祖先 or simply zu 祖). When ancestries aren't properly cultivated the world falls into disruption, and they become gui.
Ancestral worship is intertwined with totemism, as the earliest ancestors of an ethnic lineage are often represented as animals or associated to them.
Ancestors are means of connection with the Tian, the primordial god which does not have form. As ancestors have form, they shape the destiny of humans. Ancestors who have had a significant impact in shaping the destiny of large groups of people, creators of genetic lineages or spiritual traditions, and historical leaders who have invented crafts and institutions for the wealth of the Chinese nation (culture heroes), are exalted among the highest divine manifestations or immortal beings (xian 仙).
In fact, in the Chinese tradition there is no distinction between gods (shen) and immortal beings (xian), transcendental principles and their bodily manifestations. Gods can incarnate with a human form and human beings can reach higher spiritual states by the right way of action, that is to say by emulating the order of Heaven.
Humans are considered one of the three aspects of a trinity (三才 Sāncái, "Three Powers"), the three foundations of all being; specifically, humans are the medium between
- Heaven that engenders order and forms and
- Earth which receives and nourishes them. Humans are endowed with the role of completing creation.
Bao ying and ming yun (Bao ying and Ming yun)
The cosmic significance of bao ying is better understood by exploring other two traditional concepts of fate and meaning:
- Ming yun (命運), the personal destiny or given condition of a being in his world, in which ming is "life" or "right", the given status of life, and yun defines both "circumstance" and "individual choice"; ming is given and influenced by the transcendent force Tian (天), that is the same as the "divine right" (tianming) of ancient rulers as identified by Mencius. Personal destiny (ming yun) is thus perceived as both fixed (as life itself) and flexible, open-ended (since the individual can choose how to behave in bao ying).
- Yuan fen (緣分), "fateful coincidence", describing good and bad chances and potential relationships. Scholars K. S. Yang and D. Ho have analysed the psychological advantages of this belief: assigning causality of both negative and positive events to yuan fen reduces the conflictual potential of guilt and pride, and preserves social harmony.
Ming yun and yuan fen are linked, because what appears on the surface to be chance (either positive or negative), is part of the deeper rhythm that shapes personal life based on how destiny is directed. Recognising this connection has the result of making a person responsible for his or her actions: doing good for others spiritually improves oneself and contributes to the harmony between men and environmental gods and thus to the wealth of a human community.
These three themes of the Chinese tradition—moral reciprocity, personal destiny, fateful coincidence—are completed by a fourth notion:
- Wu (悟), "awareness" of bao ying. The awareness of one's own given condition inscribed in the ordered world produces responsibility towards oneself and others; awareness of yuan fen stirs to respond to events rather than resigning. Awareness may arrive as a gift, often unbidden, and then it evolves into a practice that the person intentionally follows.
As part of the trinity of being (the Three Powers), humans are not totally submissive to spiritual force. While under the sway of spiritual forces, humans can actively engage with them, striving to change their own fate to prove the worth of their earthly life. In the Chinese traditional view of human destiny, the dichotomy between "fatalism" and "optimism" is overcome; human beings can shape their personal destiny to grasp their real worth in the transformation of the universe, seeing their place in the alliance with the gods and with Heaven to surpass the constraints of the physical body and mind.
Ling and xianling—holy and numen
The term xian ling may be interpreted as the god revealing his presence in a particular area and temple, through events that are perceived as extraordinary, miraculous. Divine power usually manifests in the presence of a wide public. The "value" of human deities (xian) is judged according to his or her efficacy. The perceived effectiveness of a deity to protect or bless also determines how much he or she should be worshipped, how big a temple should be built in his or her dedication, and what position in the pantheon he or her would gain.
Zavidovskaya (2012) has studied how the incentive of temples restoration since the 1980s in northern China was triggered by numerous alleged instances of gods becoming "active", "returning", and claiming back their temples and place in society. She brings the example of a Chenghuang Temple in Yulin, in Shaanxi, that during the Cultural Revolution was turned into a granary; in the 1980s the temple was restored to its original function because the seeds kept into the temple always rotted, and this event was attributed to god Chenghuang giving signs to empty his residence of grain and let him back in. The ling qi, divine energy, is believed to accumulate in certain places, temples, making them holy. Temples with a longer history are considered holier than newly built ones, which still need to be filled by divine energy.
Another example of Zavidovskaya is that of the cult of god Zhenwu in Congluo Yu, Shanxi; the god's temples were in ruins and the cult inactive until the mid 1990s, when a man with a serious cancer, in his last hope prayed (bai 拜) Zhenwu. The man began to miraculously recover day after day, and after a year he was completely healed. To thank the god, he organised an opera performance in his honour. A temporary altar with a statue of Zhenwu and a stage for performances was set up in an open space at the foot of a mountain. While the opera was being played, large white snakes appeared, not afraid of people and not attacking them, seemingly watching the opera; the snakes were considered by locals as incarnations of Zhenwu, who came to watch the opera held in his honour.
Within temples, it is common to see banners bearing the phrase "if the heart is sincere, the god will reveal his power" (心誠神靈 xin cheng shen ling). The relationship between men and gods is an exchange of favour. This implies the belief that gods respond to the entreaties of the believer, if his or her religious fervor is sincere (cheng xin 誠心). If a person believes in the god's power with all his heart and expresses piety, the gods are confident in his faith and reveal their efficacious power. At the same time, for faith to strengthen in the devout's heart, the deity has to prove his or her efficacy. In exchange for divine favours, a faithful honours the deity with vows (huan yuan 還願 or xu yuan許願), through individual worship, reverence and respect (jing shen 敬神).
The most common display of divine power is the cure of diseases after a faithful asks for aid. Another manifestation is the fulfillment of a request of children. The deity may also manifest through mediumship, entering the body of a shaman-medium and speaking through his or her lips. There have been cases of people curing illnesses "on behalf of a god" (ti shen zhi bing 替神治病). Gods may also speak to people when they are asleep (tuomeng 託夢).
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