Posted by: Scorpion | Jun 20 2023 17:52 utc | 170
Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 20 2023 16:04 utc | 166
Scorpion | Jun 20 2023 15:12 utc | 163–
Thanks for your interest. I direct you to this review of the book I’m currently studying,
“Theorizing Confucian Virtue Politics: The Political Philosophy of Mencius and Xunzi”. It’s a very complex higher graduate level discussion requiring close reading, which makes it difficult to cite. I found a softcover of the book for under $30, so don’t be shocked by the sticker price for the hard back cited at the top of the review.
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Good catch! I tend to delve into the old esoteric underpinnings. For example, one of the ‘hot button topics’ in the book involves the notion of li-ritual. As in Part One Ch II as a lead-in where we can read:
Their common argument is that Confucian rituals or li,
commonly understood as a docility enhancing social mechanism, in effect exercised a critical “constitutional” function by constraining the arbitrary use of power by the ruler. [my emphasis] According to this new interpretation, the Confucian ruler is not above the li. On the contrary, the ruler is systematically controlled by the li … that confers moral and political authority on him and simultaneously enables him to exercise political power legitimately and with sufficient popular support.
This is all fine, but the wordy abstractions in the emboldened part reveal a major problem we have nowadays in assessing systems and thinking from days of yore. Essentially what is going on – to exaggerate and over-simplify – is akin to studying Roman Catholicism without ever experiencing a Sacred Mass, something whose experiential imprint effects every aspect of the tradition both in societal and doctrinal manifestation. Put another way: the tradition cannot truly be understood without experiencing the sacred perception engendered in (a well conducted) Mass.
The roots of the daoist tradition out of which flowered Confucius’s desire to fashion sane societies are esoteric and involve the experience of sacred perception, the origin of which was hinted at in my earlier snippet and is encapsulated by approachable notions of ‘The One and The Many.’ The relative world of form (The Many) – limitless, ever-changing, ever-creating, ever-dying – arises from out of the womb of the unchanging, the never born, never dying, always present, always formless One. When we experience the realm of form with a sense of the timeless present, sometimes called ‘ever-present awareness’ this experience, almost by definition, involves sacred perception. The timeless now is where the One and Many copulate in individual or group consciousness and it is engendering this perception, or state, which is the purpose of all profound ritual in traditional societies.
Unfortunately this sort of experiential aspect is often missed in such discussions and because it is missed the tendency is to ‘descend’ into relative discourse and policy development. Basically: how to handle deviations from the good, what to do with criminals, tyrants, foreign belligerents and so forth, all of course must be dealt with, but the role of uplifting ritual, or li, is often discounted as no longer relevant in that context, as being too airy-fairy, insipidly spiritual.
The fact is, that if/when a society has the ability to engender sacred perception, many ills automatically self-correct as most members aspire to virtuous learning, living, teaching and expression. And a monarch principle is necessary to bring that about in group ritual contexts, be it a local medicine man in a jungle tribe or an Emperor on the Imperial Chinese throne. One principle that probably won’t be discussed in the book – though hope am wrong – is the Court Principle. Forget about European examples, rather consider it as similar to a Church in which a Mass is performed. Yes, it can be done in an open field, beautifully so, but for magnetizing societal wisdom and power, institutional rituals, including architecture, tend to feature prominently.
For a King or Queen to hold the seat of Power in a way that engenders sacred perception, which is always fundamentally kind and virtuous, they need a Court for the benefit of those encountering such Sacred Presence, something into which first they prepare to enter, then they enter, then they experience the sacred majesty, then they absorb whatever message or transmission, then they leave and hopefully bring some of that experience back into their own lives and family. And of course apart from the Highest (Royal) Court in the land are many lesser ones, those of local authorities, feudal or otherwise, including churches, law courts and even, some might argue, sports arenas. But in a society in which all are interconnected – which we know now scientifically to be true – the highest court is where society taps into the profound, brilliant, just, powerful, all-victorious goodness that radiates forever from the Heaven principle out of which all are born and to which all return after the form manifestation ceases – which it always does.
Part of our problem today is that, having split Church and State (for both good and bad reasons) we lack a monarch or Court principle in which to engender shared perceptions of fundamental, bedrock goodness. Without that, it is impossible to create a sane, good, stable society. If studying Confucius will bring this more to the fore in our troubled modern world, so much the better. But again, without some sort of method of engendering sacred perception, much of it will remain rather hard to put into actual practice.
Anyway, that looks like an excellent book. Thank you for pointing it out. I hope to spend much more time with it at some point, though am way behind on my reading lists these days and the hottest heat wave since the 60’s in Central Mexico right now has made it impossible to read heavy matters; the words just shimmer off the page like desert mirages…
baronbrasdor.art 