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1 Religions and philosophies in East Asia
âPathwaysâ for self-transformation
Introduction
The peoples who have inhabited the Korean peninsula have from time immemorial remembered their dead. This is evident in the many dolmens which can be found scattered around the peninsula dating from the first millennium BCE. In fact, while dolmens can also be found in many other countries such as Ireland and India, Korea accounts for more than anywhere else â up to 40 percent of all the dolmens in the world are located on the Korean peninsula. The Kochâang, Hwasun and Kangwha (also written Gochang, Hwasun and Ganghwa) dolmen sites are listed on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 2000 (UNESCO 2018a). The construction of Dolmens can be said to represent an ancient method of remembering the dead using stone structures, but they clearly brought people together to erect them, and to commemorate the dead person(s), and so, had an important social function within communities. In contrast, KoguryĆ (37 BCEâ668 CE), a kingdom that extended into northeast China as well as the northern part of the Korean peninsula (which will be discussed in Chapter 2) left a complex of tombs (currently in North Korea and China), which is also listed on the UNESCO World Heritage list (2018b). These tombs, considered to be for the elite of that society, including royalty and the aristocracy, have wall paintings that give us some insight into the lives of the people from that time, with many colourful images of processions, dancing, and portraits of the owner of the tomb, as well as depictions of what are often interpreted as immortals or various gods and aspects of nature, but also what appears to be monks. What this illustrates is that the link between the living and the dead was something that was taken seriously by these different communities, linking them through specific traditions. It also highlights that they considered the afterlife, prepared for it carefully, and had religious rituals that were, even by this point, quite elaborate and very beautiful (if the paintings are anything to go by). More importantly, it shows a syncretic attitude that blended beliefs of immortality, probably from traditional folk beliefs, with teachings from Buddhism, which was clearly respected. Hence, these tombs and dolmens represent the material manifestations of ideas, beliefs and rituals that linked people in their society together. From this time, it is evident that people in East Asia, and in this specific case, the Korean peninsula, were brought together through their beliefs and ritual practices which inextricably bound the individual into a group where hierarchy was important, but also very evident, discernible from clothing, and shaping their cultural world.
These early people then accepted teachings from various schools of thought which shaped their culture and worldviews, where philosophy, or guides to communal living and morality, intermingled with the religious aspects of how they considered death and an afterlife, as well as the gods they held in common and revered.
Religion and philosophy: modes of self-cultivation
Ideas from China clearly exerted growing influence on ideas on the Korean peninsula from the first millennium BCE. The âThree Teachingsâ in the form of Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism (sometimes written âTaoismâ), which made their way into Korea, demonstrate how religion and philosophy converge in East Asia, rather than diverge, as may often be the case in the West, where they still occupy very different spaces, especially in universities. For East Asians, the three teachings represent different paths that assist and enable the individual to become the best person they can become. These paths are usually referred to as a way in East Asia, from the word Dao (é, K. To), hence, I have chosen the term pathway, which reflects the idea that these teachings represent different routes to becoming a better person. These teachings act as guides to help the individual become a beneficial member in their family, their society, and in short, in their own way, contribute to making the world a better place. The individual as such was always considered as part of a greater whole: a family, a state, a country, the world, even the universe.
There have been many books written in the West on religion; it is after all a Western concept (European to be precise). Especially from the nineteenth century, different scholars emerged who had different takes on religion, but most were conceptualised in relation to the monotheistic traditions of Christianity (in particular), Islam and Judaism as the standards against which other âreligiousâ value systems were to be measured. This meant that they clearly revolved around the concept of a singular, creator God, a transcendental entity with human characteristics, also known as anthropomorphism. Many peoplesâ traditions have not been so fixated on the idea of creation, and many were not interested in proving or even acknowledging a world of spirits or gods, or a transcendental existence beyond the world they lived in. In his essay âReligion, Religions, Religiousâ, Jonathan Z. Smith (1998: 281) investigates different attempts to define religion, concluding that âit can be defined, with greater or lesser success, in more than fifty waysâ. This illustrates that the term is fluid and not rigid, and often depends on the context of the individuals and their communities, shaped by different traditions. Jacques Derrida (1998: 29â30), in his discussion of religion in an edited volume of essays simply called Religion, notes that any discussion of âReligionâ is already âspeaking Latinâ. He is referring to the Latin origin of the term which may have two etymologies: ârelegereâ, which is to gather, or âreligareâ, which is to bind together, which entails a sense of obligation â such as to god(s). He also emphasises that religion reflects what he calls âglobalatinizationâ, the influence of the Latin world shaped by the Latin language which still persists today, especially revolving around discussions of religion, and more centrally around Christianity. This draws our attention to the anachronistic application of a Euro-Latinised concept of religion onto traditions, which have both religious and philosophical underpinnings, formed in very different contexts, and sometimes not concerned with gods or spirits: Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism. Indeed, philosophy in Chinese is known as Zhexue (ćČćž, K. ChâĆrhak), literally the âstudy of wisdomâ, or simply, âhow to become wiseâ, which would better reflect its more dynamic and pro-active implications in the East Asian context.
These Asian traditions were first brought to the attention of Europeans in a serious manner by Jesuit missionaries to Asia during the late sixteenth, early seventeenth century. In particular, Matteo Ricci (1552â1610), an Italian Jesuit missionary, was greatly responsible for this transcultural exchange through his âtranslational apostolateâ (Cawley 2013). Ricci had mastered the Chinese language and translated Western works on science, mathematics and religion into Chinese. Additionally, his journals and letters provided information on China, its language and customs, as well as descriptions of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism, which made their way back to Europe. As Gallagher (1953: xix) writes, â[Ricciâs journal] probably had more effect on the literary and scientific, the philosophical and the religious, phases of life in Europe than any other historical volume in the 17th centuryâ. Indeed, Ricci, who as a missionary, was clearly on a mission to convert the Chinese to Catholicism; and he engaged with Confucianism in a positive way, while rejecting Buddhism and Daoism, considering them as rival âreligionsâ. He considered Confucianism to be a social philosophy with moral teachings that were complementary to Christian ones, which he would expand upon. Ricciâs biases would make their way into the writings of European philosophers, such as Voltaire, who evoke them through their praise of Confucius, while other Europeans would also engage with these ânewâ ideas emerging from the East, which were actually older than any of their European antecedents (see: Dawson 1971; Fuchs 2006).
Confucianism has been considered as a philosophy and/or (not) a religion, and in this sense it is not easily defined by the western terms of âreligionâ or âphilosophyâ. Though it started out by being understood as a socio-political philosophy, it nevertheless does refer to the spirit world and boasts of intricate and elaborate rites for the ancestors, for example. Buddhism, which is generally considered to be one of the great world religions, also has a deeply philosophical, even psychological side to it. Daoism, which began as a philosophy for living a good life in tune with nature, saw certain practitioners adapt it as a religious âwayâ seeking health and longevity, even immortality, blending it with indigenous beliefs about spirits and gods. These different schools emerged during the Warring States period (fifth to third centuries BCE), when Chinese society was in chaos and divided, providing the contextual impetus to promote teachings to help stabilise the state and shape its rulerâs ethos, as well as bolster emotional and spiritual support for the general populous. The next section provides a basic overview of these important traditions as they provide both the foundation and catalyst for intellectual developments in Korea for almost two millennia, examined throughout the rest of this book. It also includes a discussion on Shamanism, which has been practiced on the Korean peninsula before Chinese traditions gained importance there, and which continues to have an important place in the twenty-first century.
Confucianism: an overview and some key concepts
The use of âConfucianismâ as a proper noun is significant as it already hints at the misunderstanding of key terms, their mis-translation into European languages, and their misuse in Europe â something which continues until today â as a result of the globalatinisation mentioned above, where religious and philosophical ideas are subsumed into a Eurocentric (now Western) understanding of them. As Paul Rule (1986: 195) emphasises, âConfucianismâ only became known in Europe after Nicolaus Trigault published Matteo Ricciâs journals in 1615, noting that Ricci was responsible for having âtransmutated the tradition of the Ju [Ru] or Chinese âscholarsâ into an â-ismâ, Confucianismâ. Ricci had been made aware that the great Chinese scholar Kong Fuzi (from the Chinese characters ć怫ć) was greatly revered, and it is from the Latinised version of the scholarâs name âConfuciusâ that âConfucianismâ as a school of thought comes, as understood in the West. However, this term does not reflect how it was referred to in Asia. The Chinese (and later Koreans) referred to a corpus of literature that pre-dated Confucius, which had been compiled by various writers who referred to both mythical and real figures from the past as exemplars of moral behaviour, for example, legendary âsageâ kings such as Yao (ć Ż) and Shun (è), whose dates are usually suggested as the third millennium BCE. Confucius systematised these texts and their main socio-political ideas, teaching them to his students, who only after his death compiled the âsayingsâ of their master, much the same as the Gospels in the Bible were compiled after the death of Jesus. The text which recounts the collected sayings of Confucius is known as Lunyu in Chinese (è«èȘ, K. NonĆ), translated as The Analects. We do not have much information on the life of Confucius, but we know that he was a peripatetic teacher who travelled to spread his teachings, not unlike Jesus and the Buddha, although he sought to have his ideas adapted by rulers, and therefore was more closely aligned with the elite. His ideas were not adapted during his lifetime in any meaningful way. The tradition which Confucius belonged to, drew upon and developed is known as Ru-xue (ććž, K. Yuhak) [study of the scholars] or Ru-jiao (ćæ, K. Yugyo) [teachings of the scholars].
Figure 1.1 A painting of Confucius enshrined in Jeonju (ChĆnju), South Korea
There seems to have been a development in the roles and function of the âRuâ, who during the Shang dynasty (ćæ; c.1600âc.1046 BCE) may have been ritual specialists who through dance and music supplicated the spirits, gods or ancestors for good harvests and rain, which would have been important for agricultural communities, as well as the study of astronomy and astrology to predict the weather. In this regard, they performed the functions that shamans or folk priests would later. By the Zhou dynasty (ćšæ; c.1046âc.256 BCE), as âRuâ positions became more official and professional, their posts would have been linked with developing statecraft, while focusing on education which was linked with morality, culminating in the teachings of the great master Confucius himself. The goal of such teachings is to become a sage, one who developed himself to the utmost of his innate potential as a human being (Yao 2000: 17â21). There was no need in this context to ask for help from or to pray to gods or deities: we as humans are expected to solve our own problems.
The main texts associated with the âRu scholarsâ, which were later edited and probably re-organised by Confucius himself, are generally grouped together and known as the Five Classics (äșç¶, C. Wujing, K. OgyĆng):
The Five Classics
Yijing (æç¶) [Classic of Changes]
Shujing (æžç¶) [Classic of History]
Shijing (è©©ç¶) [Classic of Poetry]
Liji (犟èš) [Records of Rites]
Chunqiu (æ„ç§) [Spring and Autumn Annals]
These texts of different genres would have been compiled by different authors over a long period of time, much like the Old Testament in the Bible, probably corresponding to the late Zhou Dynasty (1050â256 BCE), up to and after Confucius. They all recount the importance of the remote deity Shangdi (äžćž, K. Sangje), or the Sovereign on High, who was clearly revered during the Shang Dynasty, though whose importance had diminished by the time of Confucius â in the Analects there is not even a single reference to this rather distant and evasive entity, who had been replaced with a focus on a more enigmatic conceptualisation of âHeavenâ, known as âTianâ (怩, K. ChâĆn). The Analects itself would much later be grouped into a new set of texts collectively known as The Four Books (ćæž, C. Sishu, K. SasĆ), which will be outlined in more detail in Chapter 3:
The Four Books
Lunyu (è«èȘ) [The Analects]
Daxue (性ćž) [The Great Learning]*
Zhongyong (äžćșž) [The Doctrine of the Mean]*
Mengzi (ćć) [The Mencius]
* originally separate chapters in the Liji (Record of Rites)
Confucianism places a special emphasis on the notion of Dao (different...
