So today after talking about the attack on shamanism, we're going to talk about the emergence of self-cultivation practice. That's the huge transition that we talked about last week as the background for understanding the attack of this new intellectual class, the philosophers, a few of the thinkers—the attack on shamanism. Okay, so: now today as I said we're going to be talking about the emergence of self-cultivation that the same elite that is attacking shamanism, they're attacking it because they got something else to put in its place. And that's what we're going to discover today. And we're going to be using two essays, both of them in this first set on "Shang through Han." The first is by Mark Csikszentmihàlyi; it's called "Ethics and Self-Cultivation Practice in Early China". And the second is by Romain Graziani but we'll introduce that in a moment. There's another article that I want to call to your attention which is not in this book which is partially—was co-authored by Mark Csikszentmihàlyi and another author actually whom we cited last week, Michael Nylan, the two of them together wrote an article which appeared in the <i>T'oung Pao</i>, which is a standard, very well-known Sinological journal, in the year 2003 and it's called "Constructing Lineages and Inventing Traditions in the <i>Shiji</i>." The reason I have to mention this article is because the point of view that I'm going to be expressing today, namely, that there are Confucian and Daoist modes of self-cultivation, that these are clearly distinct, this is not the point of view of Mark Csikszentmihàlyi and Michael Nylan. They point out—absolutely rightly —that these distinctions between Confucian and Daoism are really distinctions that were first introduced, vocabulary that was first introduced —talk about schools and lineage—that were first introduced in the second century BC, and they don't like the idea of retrojecting these terms back on to the past. Now I'll be explaining why I take a more traditional point of view and continue to use these terms, Confucian and Daoist, because I think that they point to two very different kinds of self-cultivation, one which is focused on public service, on being a public servant, a part of the state, a counselor to the sovereign. And the other is about not participating in that which is public, on the contrary, it is seeking self-cultivation in order to become immortal. So yes, it's about a private, you might say, search for transcendence outside of politics. And this is going to be one of the key themes of this talk about the emergence of self-cultivation practices, that there are these two modes which we could refer to as politics and religion, if we could completely separate politics and religion in China, okay? So: again that's why I want to mention that this is my opinion, my view. It is not everybody else's point of view. So let's start talking then, starting with Mark Csikszentmihàlyi's article, chapter. Self-cultivation in pre-imperial China, says Csikszentmihàlyi, took three forms: ethical, physical, and spiritual. These are things that we often separate, but which in China were frequently conjoined. Common to all three was the idea that desires need to be dammed and channeled. In other words, we'll be quoting a series of passages which show that very clearly, the emotions and the desires which take us out of ourselves, which make us eccentric, that is to say not centered, not calm and quiet within, that pull us out of ourselves towards things outside of ourselves. These desires of outside things have to be channeled, okay? In other words, they should be just repressed, but they have to be channeled. And the story of Yu, the Great Yu 大禹, that we mentioned last week is not unrelated to that, because the story is how his father, when there was this great flood, his father, well what did his father tried to do, he tried to plug the holes in the dams and the result is that the waters rose ever higher, and they overflowed and the flood continued and got worse. And then along came Yu 禹, and he understood the lay of the land, and so he could dig channels for the water to be channeled out, okay? So: that idea of channeling and damming, which of course is very important in North China, which is quite dry and which requires irrigation, so: channeling desires rather than repressing. How do you channel? You train. And the idea is that the individual can be trained in sincerity and reverence, <i>Cheng</i> 誠 and <i>Jing</i> 敬, which are two terms which appear in the practice of ritual as we'll see. And so if the person is self-cultivated, that is to say, has trained his emotions, trained himself, he can come to be in a beneficial relationship with the universe, in harmony with the universe rather than at odds with the universe. So we're going to take a first quote from the <i>Lüshi chunqiu</i> 呂氏春秋, which is a text which was written during the Qin 秦 dynasty, in other words just at the very beginning of the bureaucratic empire. And this is what it says about sincerity: "Therefore. It is when 'sincerity' has sincerity": What does that mean? Well, it means when sincerity is really sincerity. We've all seen people on television who trying to impress everybody with their sincerity, but we can see right through them that it's fake sincerity. They've really learned how to look the camera in the eye. So "it is when 'sincerity' is really sincerity that it is joined to disposition". The word in Chinese is <i>qing</i> 情, which means emotions, but is translated here as disposition, because the emotions draw us in this direction or in that direction, okay? So, it's when the person is truly sincere that his dispositions, his emotions, that which draws him outside, has been properly channeled so that it doesn't overflow the banks, okay? That's what it means to be joined to the emotions, to disposition. It is "when essence"— essence 精 is another one of these terms which is absolutely key to the whole history of self-cultivation. Usually, it's associated with the spermatic essence of the male. But the idea is, well, it's the essence. It's that which is the key, the core of vitality. So: "it is when 'essence' has essence, that it communicates with heaven," <i>tongyu tian</i> 通於天. So here we're talking about how the human being can be in communication with Heaven. But that's what we saw, that's what the shamans are doing. That's what the spirit mediums are doing. They can have those heavenly gods <i>jiang yu shen</i> 降於身, come down into their body. But now it's this human being who, because he engages in self-cultivation, in training, he can himself communicate with heaven. Notice that sincerity is for us a moral value, something we associate with a sincere person, a sincere heart, whereas essence is more physical, and again this is typical of the combination, as we'll be seeing, the combination of the physical and the ethical. "Once one communicates with heaven, then one can move the nature of water, wood and stone. How much more so someone made of blood and Qi 氣?" Blood and Qi are considered to be in the medical texts of this period —third century BC, late third century—are considered to be the core components, physical components, what brings life to the body: blood and Qi. Qi energy, breath, okay? So: this person who has trained, who has cultivated himself so that he is utterly sincere and that has lost none of his original vitality, he can move wood and stone. And of course, if he can move wood and stone, well, he can also move other people. But now listen to the last sentence, because it tells us something about the aim of doing this self-cultivation: "For all those who work at persuasion and governing, nothing is as good as sincerity." Who's doing persuading? Well, it's the persuaders, it's the thinkers, it's the counselors of all these people from the "warring states," these states which are gobbling up all the smaller states and becoming ever bigger. And who's going to finally unify it all? Well, I'm counseling this guy and this one's counseling the other one. And we're all counseling them to how to conquer Tianxia 天下, all under heaven, okay? So: that's the counselors, that's the intellectuals, that's the public intellectuals, the thinkers who are engaged in persuading, and governing, of course, is the sovereign himself. So: "For all those who work at persuasion and governing, nothing is as good as sincerity." So, we talked last week about <i>gan</i> 感, the idea that you can move Heaven. Here we see it's not just moving Heaven, it's also about moving people. The next quotation comes from the <i>Zhongyong</i> 中庸, which is a chapter in the <i>Liji</i> 禮記, which is the <i>Book of Rites</i>. And it's also talking about sincerity. It's generally considered precisely to be one of the Confucian classics, it'll become very very important in the Song dynasty. When we get there, we'll talk about it again. "The ability to reach sincerity:" in other words, sincerity is not something which is just there automatically. It has to be cultivated. So: "The ability to reach sincerity is associated with foreknowledge." Foreknowledge. Remember we talked about divination. —divination to divine the future, using oracle bones or using the scapula of sheep. So we also saw that the counselors in the <i>Zuozhuan</i> 左傳 who understood human psychology and human history had even better foreknowledge. Well, here we have it stated in a more abstract way. Somebody who has reached sincerity, he has foreknowledge and [he has the] capacity to transform. He can be compared to the spirits. Compared to the spirits. So we're going to see increasingly how the spirits which were outside and coming down to possess the spirit medium, they're inside a person who is perspicacious, who has deep, almost divine understanding. The <i>Mengzi</i> 孟子, Mencius, quotes one of the passages from the Zhongyong that summarizes a connection between Tian's way —that's the Tiandao 天道 that we talked about last week, the Way of Heaven. So a connection between the Way of Heaven and the human way, and describes it as <i>cheng</i> 誠, sincerity. The text continues, this is Mencius now: "It has never happened that a person has reached sincerity but has not moved others 不動者." Mencius, the persuader <i>par excellence</i>: you read him, and every anecdote that is found in his seven chapters, is designed to persuade. He is the great persuader. On the other hand, "there has never been an insincere person who is able to move others." We move on to the <i>Lunyu</i> 論語, or the <i>Analects, of Confucius</i>. And first a general description: "Reverence," says Csikszentmihàlyi, "is a spiritual attitude that is optimal"—where?—"in ritual contexts." In other words, when we do the ritual sacrifices to the ancestors, we have to be reverent. Obvious, right? No, if you don't believe that the ancestors are there, the spirits are there, why be reverent? Why just not go through the formal —you have to sacrifice, okay, that's part of my job, I do my sacrifices? No. "Reverence is a spiritual attitude that is optimal in ritual contexts and is at the core of the moral distinction"—ethical distinction, in the <i>Analects</i>—"between human filial devotion and the care of domestic animals." Now listen to this: "There, the 'right action' of feeding one 's parents may or may not be moral." Okay, you're supposed to, as a filial son, you're supposed to make sure that your parents in their old age are taken care of, that they have food. This is still a part of Chinese society today, there are even standard rules in traditional villages. This has once again actually been legislated in mainland China today, the obligation of feeding one's parents. When you have no social security, no pension, well, who's going to take care of the old folks, okay? So: "the right action of feeding one's parents may or may not be moral, and what determines whether it's moral is whether there is reverence in the act of feeding them." And he goes on and now this is a quote from Confucius, "If it is not done reverently," <i>bujing</i> 不敬, "what basis is there to distinguish them 何以別乎?" That is to say to distinguish between feeding your parents and feeding animals. So that gives you, these quotes give you an idea of the aims of self-cultivation for the persuaders, for the thinkers, for the people who were involved in government.
