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Embodying the Universe: A Note on Confucian Self-realization
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15318 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1989 |
3,427 Words |
| Author
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Tu Wei-ming
Tu Wei-ming is professor of Chinese history and philosophy and
chairman of the Department of East Asian Languages and
Civilizations at Harvard University. He is the author of
Confucian Thought: Self as Creative Transformation (Albany,
N.Y.: State University of N.Y. Press, 1985). |
Personality, in the Confucian perception, is an achieved state of moral excellence rather than a given human condition. An implied distinction is made between what a person is by temperament and what a person has become by self-conscious effort. A person's natural disposition--whether introverted or extroverted, passive or aggressive, cold or warm, contemplative or active, shy or assertive--is what the Confucians refer to as that aspect of human nature which is composed of ch'i-chih (vital energy and raw stuff). For the sake of convenience, we may characterize the human nature of vital energy and raw stuff as our psychophysiological nature, our physical nature, or simply the body.
The Confucian tradition--in fact, the Chinese cultural heritage as a whole--takes our physical nature absolutely seriously. Self-cultivation, as a form of mental and physical rejuvenation involving such exercises as rhythmic bodily movements and breathing techniques, is an ancient Chinese art. The classical Chinese conception of medicine is healing in the sense of not only of curing disease or preventing sickness but also of restoring the vital energy essential for the wholeness of the body. Since the level of vital energy required for health varies according to sex, age, weight, height, occupation, time, and circumstance, the wholeness of the body is situationally defined as a dynamic process rather than a static structure. The maintenance of health, accordingly, is a fine art encompassing a wide range of environmental, dietary, physiological, and psychological factors. The delicate balance attained and sustained is the result of communal as well as personal effort. To become well and sound is therefore an achievement.
However, the centrality of the physical nature (the body) in the Confucian conception of the person is predicated not only on the irreducibility of the vital energy and raw stuff for personal growth but also on the potentiality of the body to become in aesthetic expression of the self. The wholeness of the body, often understood as allowing the vital energy to flow smoothly, is not only a measuring standard but also a unique accomplishment. Indeed, the idea is laden with ethico-religious as well as psychophysiological implications. When Mencius defines the sage (who has attained the highest moral excellence in the human community) as the person who has brought the bodily form to fruition, he assumes that the body is where the deepest human spirituality dwells. Yet, it is important to note that the Mencian conception of sagehood involves much more than our physical nature.
It seems that the conscious refusal to
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