Zhuangzi dreaming of a butterfly (or a butterfly dreaming of Zhuangzi)
Questions surrounding the nature of Time and Humanity can certainly fill the mind when living a life in China. Whether, as in recent days, the questions surrounding the nature of Humanity relate to the incomprehensible tragedy at the school in Hanzhong, with the knife attack on those small children. Or whether the issue of Time can be related to a trip we took last week to distribute clothes in the mountains. The plan had been to get back to Xi’an about 5 in the afternoon but we were still out and about in the mountains at nightfall, not so surprising, however the Chinese drivers without even a word to the wise decided to stop for supper at around 10, much to the surprise of many who had had other plans. I am quite used to the latter scenario, I do hope I never get used to hearing stories like the former, no matter how many more of these similar cases we do end up hearing about.
This is by way of a small introduction to a continued interest I have in trying to understand a little of Chinese philosophy, of which I know basically nothing but hopefully will continue to pay a little attention to through these notes. It was noted in an article I read recently, The Chinese View of Time- A Passage to Eternity by Manuel Dy Jr, that the ethical strain of Chinese philosophy, concerning the nature of and quest for humanity/ virtue, has historically superseded questions that delve into the more abstract notions of space and time, matter and spirit. Thus, conceptions of time with regard the Chinese mind, are difficult to clearly distinguish from the nature of humanity and what can be referred to as virtue. For me, that seems no bad thing and of some interest. Here, I will very briefly offer a simple introduction to Confucianist and Daoist conceptions of Time.
For the Confucianist, time is but a linear continuum, a clear and distinct past moving towards an indefinite future. However, the indefinite nature of the future leads to a sense of their being the possibility of control over it, that humans actively participate in the movement of time. It is people that can make the way great, for Confucianists, and not the way that makes people great. There is seen to be a sense of evolution within this conception of time, noted by Dy Jr with reference to the Confucian work The Great Learning, first: ‘making the will sincere, extending knowledge and investigating things; then one rules the family, next brings order to the state, and finally maintains peace in the world.’
There is no repetition of time for Confucianists, the emphasis is on recuperation and renewal, so we can achieve the ideal of Ren (仁), which can be translated to mean humanity, benevolence or supreme virtue. The word is made up from the character for ‘people’ and the character for ‘two’, giving it (humanity/ virtue) a meaning that emphasizes the importance of inter-human relationships, what could I suppose be referred to as shared requirement or responsibility. In this sense of time, development is natural but takes time, with the onus of responsibility of our own development being laid at our own door, though it seems acceptable within these definitions that we might also need some help, the shared part.
Tao (道), or Dao as it is in modern pinyin, can generally be seen to mean the ‘way’, the ‘path’ or even the ‘principle’. Dao for Confucianists means the moral way, where as for Daoists it refers to the origin of everything and is by its nature nameless and eternal. To quote Dy Jr with regard to Daoist thought:
‘As the origin of all things, Dao’s essence is non-being (because only what is no-thing can be responsible for the being of all beings) but its function is being. Both being and non-being are simply two aspects of the one infinite Dao.’
A second important concept of Daoism is Wu- Wei, which has been referred to as meaning ‘nothingness’ but does actually seem to refer to something more like ‘naturalness’. It could be seen to refer to something like natural action, it is not knowledge in the sense of a conscious knowing of when to do something, just that the action is done at the right time, ‘effortless doing.’ Time is seen here in the movement of Dao in nature, ruled by Wu-Wei and the ‘law of reversion’, that of all things in the end returning to the beginning. Though although all things return and can be seen as if to have been repeated, in fact there is a constant movement in nature and thus transformation, change. Dy notes:
The key to both Wu-Wei and the law of reversion [return] is the life of simplicity. Just as Dao is simple, so the man of Dao lives simply. He is one with his own nature, true to himself, and seeks not to identify himself with possession and prestige, with things that pass away.’
If we were to hold true to such a nature, if the man who took the lives of those children had held true to such a nature – and not placed so much weight upon the injustice he felt from the schools continued and disputed presence upon his land – then those seven children may still be messing about in the playground. This is not to make excuses for the lack of recourse in Chinese society for many societal ills and inequalities, nor is it an argument for the acceptance of the vast array of social inequalities in any of our societies, it is simply to recognise there are more ways to judge our lives than through the modernist conceptions of property, job title and wealth. Or at least, that there are may be ways to work on the edges of these modern pressures, responsibilities and senses of injustice, without suffering from depression or resorting to anti-social behaviour, horrific atrocity or suicide.
西安