Is Confucianism a Religion?

Interesting forum entry from the History of China graduate course I'm taking right now:

When I teach religion in my World History I class, we organize each of the five major religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam) into what Emile Durkheim called "the Five Functions of Religion." These functions are that it
1) Provides psychological support,
2) Provides social cohesion,
3) Gives meaning to the mundane,
4) Serves a prophetic function and
5) Provides social order.

Normally my fellow teachers and I treat Confucianism as part of our section on Chinese philosophy rather than as a religion in and of itself and haven't in the past put it into this framework. However, in looking at these readings I didn't realize how easily I could structure my teaching of Confucianism, Daoism and Legalism in the same way I do religions. The reading on "The Nature of Chinese Religions" was especially helpful in helping me see a different way of teaching.

1) Psychological support comes from the worship of ancestors and using their wisdom to better your own and your society's life
2) Social cohesion is inherent in Confucius' "Five Key Relationships"
3) Giving meaning to the mundane can be found in how Chinese religions connect everyday activities with the supernatural
4) The prophetic function is a bit trickier, since Confucius isn't really seen as a religious figure, however, Martin Luther King Jr. and Ghandi were also not deities, but leaders who used religious teachings to bring about social change.
5) Providing social order exists not only in the five key relationships, but also is inherent in pretty much everything Hanfeizi wrote about!

Confucians Without a Cause

The Scholar-Official class in China is particularly interesting to me when good government breaks down beyond repair. Without a benevolent government to serve, what's a good Confucian to do with all of that culture and learning?

What else, but get creative?

I call them "Confucians without a Cause" when teaching them, which I find very clever, even if my students don't. (A poet I recently met told me it should be a name for a band. I told her she should tell my students that.)

A more accurate, but less catchy, title would include the Daoist layer that Confucianism gained during the Han Synthesis, and the whole "back to nature" and "just chill out and enjoy the moon and stars" options it provides the lucky Chinese -- lucky because it has the equivalent of a "straight and uptight" religion, and of a "loose and relaxed" alternative one.

Anyway, a few periods and examples, in particular:

The Period of Disunity after the Han:    
The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove create escapist literature that's for all the world a mix of '60s hippie  counterculture (Xi Kang writes a 6-page verse essay on the power of his guqin, which Jimi Hendrix would have enjoyed) and British Aestheticism. They refuse to work for the corrupt Jin Dynasty like Vietnam era college students dropped out of their own mainstream culture.

Ruan Ji reportedly launched into an epic sixty-day drunk to avoid pressures to marry into the Jin family.

Tao Qian "sold out" to 13 years in corrupt government, then "dropped out" to retire early into a life of reclusive farming, gardening, music, and writing. He wore flowers in his hair. (So much more attractive than tie-dye.)

These guys liked their wine and song -- but instead of sex, they celebrated friendship and poetry. "Wine, friendship, and song"?

And calligraphy became an art during this 400 years of bad government too. See Wang Xizhi's "Preface to the Orchid Pavilion" -- for its content and calligraphy (he's the Michelangelo of calligraphy). Tang Emperor Taizong had someone steal this scroll from a Buddhist monk, then had himself buried with this scroll, he found the calligraphy so beautiful. (My kind of politician.)

The Chinese Garden: Sculpted Homes
Even when government was good, they were creative innovators. The Chinese gardens of the scholar-officials in Suzhou, particularly, during the Song, Ming, and Qing dynasties are masterpieces of landscaping and architecture. Scholars usually designed these homes and gardens themselves, tapping into their Daoist and painterly sides.

Dropping Out from the Mongol Scene
During the Yuan (Mongol) Dynasty, when the Chinese were discriminated against, many Scholars again took their abilities from the political to the cultural sphere -- giving birth to Chinese drama.

Dropping Out from the Ming Scene Too
During the Ming, which had a few periods of anti-Confucian purges under this most totalitarian of dynasties, the scholars developed the golden age of the Chinese novel and opera.

So there's innovation and individuality galore in this tradition.

All Carrots, No Sticks -- But Still Read and Treasured

The Analects and Zhuangzi are, like the Jewish and Christian Bibles and their cousin, Islam’s Qur’an, ancient religious texts still read today. But something important separates the Chinese texts from their monotheistic counterparts: there is no threat of angering a god and burning forever in Hell if you don’t read the Chinese texts. Fear plays no part in winning readers for them. The Chinese texts seem to have lived so long because they’re worth reading in themselves, with no strings attached. They’re all carrot and no stick.

That says something worth thinking about.

Dreams of Master Kong

 

It’s time for me to start writing my own creative responses to China. It’s been my life-love, after all, for several years now (see my "Love Letter to China" for proof). It's like my favorite band or TV show, with this difference: it's got 3,000 years of "episodes" in art, music, literature, philosophy, and -- compared to every other major civilization in the world (in my view, India comes in a close second place, and Islamic and Western civilizations bring up the rear) -- all of these "episodes" are refreshingly sane and civilized. I'll die before finishing reading and otherwise exploring this vast and deep sea. That's sad and wonderful at the same time. I'll never be bored or wishing I had something interesting to do.

"At Fifty, I Knew the Mandate of Heaven"

I feel like a love-sick teenager in my attraction to China’s history -- and  Confucianism is a large part of that attraction.

I totally get Confucius saying “I’m getting old. It’s been so long since I dreamed of the Duke of Zhou.” Like me, he saw the beauty too, and literally fell in love with it so deeply that it invaded his dreams. Leaders who know they're out of a job (and possibly a life) if they don't take care of all the people, and not just the powerful; people who know that harmony in the family -- two-way harmony -- is the First Duty in life; politics that say trust and food are more important than armies; values that say wisdom and education mean more than studying how to make more money than the next greedy schmuck up the ladder from you; taste that says manners and music and people should be naturally beautiful and refined (I love that ritual has nothing to do with religion or heavens, and everything to do with honoring this heaven called Earth, and "doing unto others" on a daily -- not just a Sunday morning -- basis); "success" defined as being hired to help others with your talents, and not to help yourself to more self-indulgent toys than the next soulless sap; religion that says "We don't pretend to know what can't be known, so we choose to focus on how to live well while here on earth." On and on. I get why he dreamed about it. He saw how beautiful life could be if things still worked that way in his time. I see the same thing now, as I look at the youths in my age obsessed with digital heroism, gangster poetry about "bitches and whores," and the worship, if we're honest, of money for its own sake.

Things could be much more beautiful.