ORIGINAL PAPER

The Confucian Self and Experiential Spirituality

YAO Xinzhong
Published online: 15 October 2008
#
Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2008
Abstract Since the publication of his book on Zhongyong (Tu 1976), TU Weiming has
worked for more than 30 years on an anthropocosmic reconstruction of the Confucian
universe, in which self-transformation is defined both as the starting point and as the
necessary vehicle for ones spiritual journey. This article is primarily intended to examine
Tus attempts to reconstruct Confucian spirituality but further to take a step forward to
argue that in the spiritual world as construed by Confucius and Mencius, the experiential
functions as transcendental by which the self initiates and empowers the transformative
process. Through exploring the spiritual significance of Confucian experiences, this essay
will conclude that although transcendental experience is only one of many dimensions in
other religious or intellectual traditions, it is the most important path for Confucians by
which the self is enabled to become fully integrated with ultimate reality.
Keywords TU Weiming
.
Confucian self
.
Religious experience
.
Spirituality
1 Introduction
The best illustration of TU Weimings anthropocosmicism can be found in a chapter
entitled What is the Confucian Way? (Tu 1995), which provides a short but
comprehensive outline of, and the most penetrating insight into, his underlying principles.
In this outline, Tu defines Confucian spirituality in terms of a four dimensional process: the
self as creative transformation, the community as a necessary vehicle for human flourishing,
nature as the proper home for our form of life, and Heaven as the source of ultimate self-
realization, placing the self right at the centre of the Confucian universe, which then
radiates to family, community, country, world, and beyond (Tu 1995: 142). While
advocating Confucianism as a religious humanism, Tu suggests that a Confucian individual
would take the status quo as only the starting point for his/her spiritual journey.
Dao (2008) 7:393406
DOI 10.1007/s11712-008-9088-3
YAO Xinzhong (*)
Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Kings College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK
e-mail: xinzhong.yao@kcl.ac.uk
Different scholars often talk about Confucian spirituality in different senses, as an
ideology of ritual or the state cult (Smart 1992: 1034), or as the theoretical function
of integrating social life and shaping the spiritual world (Cui 2001: 843). In contrast to
these, Tus approach reveals a much deeper root of a unique type of spirituality, in which an
ontologically external transcendence (Heaven or the Way of Heaven) is closely associated
with an existentially internal awareness, enabling us to be closer to an appropriate concept
of Confucian religiousness. However, inspired by his overall project of a rational
construction of Confucian anthropo-theology to enable Confucianism to be listed among
our religions in the world, Tu quickly dismisses the possibility of a self-sustained self-
transformation, suggesting that the idea of selfhood devoid of communication with the
outside world is alien to the Confucian tradition (Tu 1995: 143). While this is true
concerning the fulfilment of the self, by making the self conditional to the outside world, Tu
has, probably unintentionally, diverted from his own position on the self-transformation
of the creative self, leading to a contrast rather than integration of the individual and the
cumulative symbolic tradition, including social community, nature, and the ultimate
authority of Heaven.
Based on the understanding that there is no justification for any dichotomy of the
internal and the external in the early Confucian tradition, this essay is intended to take Tus
view on the Confucian self and spirituality one step further, arguing that Confucian
spirituality is characterised not only by its affirming the possibility of self-transformation or
self-realization, but also by its admitting that the transformation is fully self-powered and
self-resourced.
1
Many Confucians, historic or modern, hold that the power and resources
within each person are produced by the ultimate power (Heaven) but still need to be
brought to their full realization, and accordingly champion a doctrine of ultimate-individual
unity. On the surface it seems justifiable to say that the Confucian self can manifest its
values only through fulfilling its responsibilities in external activities. As far as ones
spirituality is concerned, however, these activities must be preconditioned on an awareness
of ones heavenly endowed position and mission, and the awareness must be gained
through ones own spiritual experience of the transcendent, in whatever form the
transcendent may appear to be. In this sense, to reveal the true nature of Confucian
spirituality, we must examine the religious dimension of the Confucian self and how its
experiential dimension in terms of transcendental experience comes to define Confucian
religiosity.
2 Religion and Confucian Religiosity
It is notoriously difficult, if not totally impossible, to find a definition of religion acceptable
to all people, and it is even more so to spell out clearly the link between Confucianism and
religion. Borrowing from HAN Yus terminology, we can say that there is a lack of
consensus in defining religion at least partially because religion as a category is not a
1
In a sense Confucian spirituality and Chan Buddhism share something in common. It is well known that
Chan Buddhists advocate that everyone is able to realize his or her Buddha-nature, or in other words, to
become a Buddha. In the famous poem by Huineng the Sixth Patriarch of the Chan transmission line,
the Buddha-mind is itself innately clean, and there is no need to resort to any external effort to cleanse it (de
Bary and Bloom 1999: 498). However, the difference between Confucianism and Chan Buddhism is evident.
For the former, the self is able to transcend itself because of its innate ability to know and to learn, and this
constitutes potential but not actual enlightenment, while for Chan Buddhism, it is because of the innate state
of the mind, which is itself Buddhahood or contains Buddha-nature.
394 YAO Xinzhong
definite name (ding ming ) but an empty position (xu wei ), a kind of box that
can be filled up with different contents by different people and in different ages (Han 1997:
120). The same can also be said about Confucianism, which has further complicated the
issue due to the different interpretations of the tradition that is named Confucianism in the
West (Yao 2000: 2647). A link between Confucianism and religion depends, to a great
extent, on clarifications about what religion is and how the dimensions of Confucian
teachings and practices can be matched to the criteria of religion. It is no surprise, therefore,
not only that philosophers and theologians outside the Confucian tradition often either
cement or sever the link but also that scholars of the Confucian tradition tend to highlight
different aspects to emphasize or deemphasize its religious, a-religious, non-religious, or
even anti-religious nature and function.
When expanding on Hans Blumenbergs definition of myth by its quality of significance,
Gavin Flood suggests that like the term significance itself, religion is resistant to
definition, yet despite this problem there are forms of cultural life which are clearly
identifiable as religion in contrast to other cultural practices (Flood 1999: 42). Where can
we locate the special quality of these forms of cultural life? Having seen the ultimate
similarity between religion and secular culture, Paul Tillich seeks to enlarge the traditional
Western notion of religion by introducing the concept of ultimate concern, and further
interprets ultimate concern as involving the sacred or the holy, which facilitates
transcending the mere human existence to unlimited reality.
2
Does Confucianism have
such an ultimate concern? The answer is probably universally affirmative. However,
scholars differ over whether this concern is of a holy or transcendent nature. It seems
apparent that what defines the characteristic of Confucian religiosity has much to do with
how to interpret the ultimate, and that the spiritual dimension of Confucianism must be
revealed through a reinterpretation of transcendence.
Transcendence itself is an ambiguous term, open to a variety of interpretations. While
the root meaning of transcendent does not necessarily contain a religious connotation (to
transcend is to be or go beyond the range or limits of), throughout European history it
has become closely associated with the Christian Gods existing apart from and not subject
to the limitations of the material universe (Pearsall 2001: 1522). Following phenomen-
ologists of religion, notably Mircea Eliade (19071986) and Ninian Smart (19272001),
contemporary scholars of religions have significantly expanded this narrowly understood
concept, and associated it with a more flexible, culturally adapted, and therefore more
abstract and general quality. For example, by defining religion as any beliefs which involve
the acceptance of a sacred, trans-empirical realm and any behaviours designed to affect a
persons relationship with that realm, Peter Connolly suggests the transcendental quality
can be found in the concept of trans-empirical or sacred (Connolly 1999: 67). Keith
Ward provides yet another example of how liberal Christian theologians take a further step
toward an abstract and broadened concept of transcendence and religion. For him
religions relate human life in some way to a supramaterial realm of spirit or mind, whether
spirit is conceived as one or many, as substantial or as in continual flux (Ward 1998: 1).
For many postmodern scholars, the connotation of religion must be in one way or another
reverted to its earlier meanings referring to personal vision and piety of life and departed
from a religious intellectualism (modernism) that takes religion to be an impersonal system
of beliefs and practices (Smith 1978: 45). This has provided a theoretical and theological
2
He who wants to include Confucianism, Buddhism, Shinto, and Daoism in the category of religion must
enlarge his concept of religion beyond the way in which we ordinarily use it. It has a transforming influence
on the ordinary definition of religion (Tillich: 61).
The Confucian Self and Experiential Spirituality 395
background for contemporary Confucian scholars, including Tu, to reconstruct Confucian
spirituality.
In a broad sense the function of religion is to assist its followers to reach the unlimited
realm, either called paradise or named enlightenment, and religion can therefore be
defined as a transcending process. Like people in other traditions, Confucians are also
concerned with the problem of how to go beyond the limits of the sensed world, and make
serious attempts to transcend the conditionality of our existence. However, there is a
significant difference between the Confucian and a theistic (for example, Christian) system.
While for a theistic tradition the transcending of human limitation can be achieved only
through an act of salvation by the Transcendent, namely an omnipotent Being, for
Confucians this has to be initiated and moved from within, and on these grounds some
scholars such as Julia Ching, Tu, and John Berthrong tend to regard Confucianism as a
humanistic religion (Yao 1996: 1415) or to highlight the religious dimensions of an open
or inclusive humanism (Berthrong 1998: 7).
Questions have been raised concerning the suitability of giving the status of religion to
Confucianism simply on the basis of its aiming to go beyond the limits of the human
realm, because in a Confucian context this aim can be understood purely as a process of
intellectual learning and moral cultivation. To disperse the clouds of doubt, we have to
ascertain whether or not we can identify the sacred in these seemingly secular activities. It
is admitted that All religions have created sacred space and time, structuring day-to-day
life, and connecting secular activities with gradations of sacrality (Beit-Hallahmi and
Argyle 1997: 1), but it is equally apparent that the ways of connecting secular activity with
sacredness are significantly different. Herbert Fingarettes thesis of the secular as sacred
has an enormous influence over peoples view of the Confucian sacred, and has in one
sense substantially extended the boundaries of the worlds religions (Fingarette 1972).
Following Fingarette, Tu examines the issue from a reverse point of view, exploring the
sacred in the secular or how a concept of the sacred can be distilled from a seemingly
secular system of thought and practice. For him, the religiosity of Confucianism lies in none
other than its attempt to manifest the sacredness of the secular world, to transform its
conditionality and to enable the qualities of a limited being to be the resources for
individual or communal transcendence (see Tu 2001: 40). To justify this assertion, Tu is
determined to launch a much more exciting intellectual enterprise, namely, to explore
the spirituality of matter, the embodiment of the mind, the possibility of regarding the
secular as the sacred, the creative and transformative potential in humanity, and the
meaning of immanent transcendence (Tu 1995: 198).
3 External and Internal Transcendence
Is immanent transcendence possible? Traditional Christian theologians and Pure Land
Buddhists, among others, would categorically deny it because for them the resources of
transcendence absolutely lie outside of sentient beings. For them humans cannot rely on
themselves for spiritual delivery, and in whatever form it might be, salvation can only be
achieved by the grace or compassion of an omnipotent Being or power (God or Amitoba).
Because they advocate that the possibility and realization of personal salvation originate in
an external reality or power, it is well justified to call their doctrine external
transcendence. In contrast, liberal-minded modern theologians and Chan Buddhists,
equally keen to find a way to go beyond human limitedness, are determined to free
humanity from such an external intervention. They search for a sense in the idea of self-
396 YAO Xinzhong
salvation or salvation by developing or extending the resources already within. For some of
them, there is no paradise or pure land external to ones being, and ones enlightenment can
only be achieved through fully realizing what one already has, presumably in the mind and
heart. This so-called internal transcendence maximizes human subjectivity in search of
spiritual well-being and challenges the once-dominant concept of religiosity and spirituality.
In dialogue with Christian scholars, some contemporary new Confucians also find it
necessary to distinguish Confucian immanent or internal transcendence (neizai chaoyue
) from theistically external transcendence (waizai chaoyue ): This is a
traditional immanent transcendence (nei-tsai-chao-yueh) in contrast to the Western
tradition of external transcendence (wei-tsai-chao-yueh) (see Liu 2003: 130). The
dichotomy of the internal and the external does not, however, sit well with the typical
presentation of Confucian spirituality, nor does it agree with the actual teachings of all
major Confucian thinkers. A distinctive feature of Confucian religiosity is that
transcendence is sought in the attempt to integrate the internal and the external, or in
other words the immanent and the transcendent. Most historical and contemporary
Confucians have indeed followed a middle way between the two polarised doctrines of
transcendence, by which a transcendence-immanence alliance is tentatively established.
They believe that as far as the spiritual value of a human person is concerned,
transcendence is a process of bringing potential to reality, and that since the potential is
believed to have been endowed by transcendent power (Heaven or the Way), its realization
is both transcendental and immanent. It is immanent because transcendental resources are
already embedded in the being and nature of an individual, and it is transcendental because
the value and meaning of an individual cannot be fully realized unless he or she is
embodied in the transcendental reality. For them, self-realisation is a dynamic process of
interaction between spiritual resources and personal practices, or simply between
transcendence and immanence.
From a monotheistic point of view, humans are limited, conditioned, and to be
transcended, in a clear contrast with God who is unlimited, unconditional, and
transcendental. Therefore there is a gap between God and humans, a gap not bridgeable
by limited beings. Differing from this view, Confucians would argue for a unity between
the limited and the unlimited, between the conditioned and the unconditioned, and for the
possibility that the unlimited and unconditioned can be realized in the limited and
conditioned. Idealist Confucians such as Mengzi and WANG Yangming have indeed argued
that there is no gap at all between the limited and the unlimited; rather the limited and the
unlimited exist and function together, because humans are perceived as a continuity of
Heaven, ancestors, and spirits in this world, and Heaven, ancestors, and spirits must
manifest themselves through living (and limited) humans to become ontologically
perceivable and existentially meaningful. Drawing upon this resource in tradition, a
number of contemporary scholars such as Julia Ching and Tu reiterate the claim that
because it exists in and manifests through the limited, the unlimited must be sought in the
limited. In this sense they may well be said to have championed an existentialist view: if the
unlimited existed separately from humans, then it would be irrelevant and therefore
meaningless, as stated in the Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong ): The Way cannot be
separated from us for a moment. What can be separated from us is not the Way (Chan
1963: 98). For these Confucians, both traditional and contemporary, there is no doubt that
the unlimited demands respect and reverence. However, seeking the unlimited as an
abstract reality can only lead to absurdity and obsession, and it is in this sense that they
believe that they have grasped the true meaning of Confucius insistence that only humans
can broaden the Way, not the other way around (Lunyu 15.29).
The Confucian Self and Experiential Spirituality 397
4 The Confucian Transcendent
There is a certain degree of ambiguity concerning the exact meaning and reference of
Confucian transcendence. Confucian transcendence is often interpreted in two interrelated
but clearly different ways. In the first sense, it is understood as centred on the spiritual
other, either in the form of an anthropomorphic being or a metaphysical or spiritual power or
law, mostly represented by Heaven or the Way, but sometimes also by the sage, the ancestor,
or spirits (the divine). The spiritual other functions as the ultimate power or realm (zhigao
wushang ), to which all beings are destined. In the second sense it is taken as a
creative or transformative process, a process enabling humans to transcend from the limited
and conditioned world to the unlimited and unconditional realm. Scholars in Confucian
studies disagree among themselves concerning which one is more manifested in particular
texts and sub-traditions. In general those who take Confucianism as a religious tradition, for
example, Rodney Taylor and Julia Ching, tend to highlight the first, while those of a more
philosophical mind, for example, Roger Ames and CHENG Chung-ying , place an
emphasis on the second.
Instead of seeing these two senses of transcendence as parallel, I argue that they must not
be seen as totally separate. Rather, in the Confucian world (or moral-metaphysics, to use
MOU Zongsans term), they are in fact of one substance, as indicated clearly in a
specific statement of the Doctrine of the Mean: Sincerity is the Way of Heaven. To think
how to be sincere is the way of man (Chan: 107 and Mencius 4A12). The oneness of the
two references is the underlying reason that the study of Heaven-humans or the heavenly
way-human way relationship has been central to all Confucian discourses. Because of the
intrinsic link between Heaven and humans or between the ultimate destination and the
process, humans are both physical and metaphysical, both moral and spiritual; or, using
Confucian terminology, the human (moral) way is part of the heavenly way.
3
In other
words, we can say that major Confucian thinkers recognised that a seed of unlimitedness is
already embedded in the nature of a limited individual, and the self is able to seek
transcendence in its own nature and through its own experiences.
In early China, Heaven (tian ) was seen as something greater than humans (Eno
1990),
4
and was therefore looked upon externally as the ultimate, to which humans must
conform but did not necessarily have easy access. Xunzi tended to objectify Heaven in
terms of natural laws. In the Song-Ming period, materialist neo-Confucian scholars such
as ZHANG Zai and WANG Fuzhi were inclined to dismiss earlier religious
connotations of Heaven as irrelevant, and turned to more substantial categories such as the
supreme ultimate (tai ji ) or the material power (qi ) for a tangible transcendent
reality. Influenced by these scholars and by Marxist materialism, the majority of modern
mainland scholars tend to substantiate the Confucian concept of Heaven, suggesting that
heaven is a philosophical category irrelevant to spiritual values. This has made it necessary
for us to examine how Heaven in The Analects and Mencius is presented and understood,
by which we will be able to see that Heaven for early Confucians had a strong connotation
3
To the extent that the Confucian effort to achieve human perfection involves transformation in the
direction of a moral absolute such as Heaven (Ch. tian, Jpn. ten), this activity has a manifestly religious
character (Bell 2008: 22).
4
It has also been noted that one may see the concept heaven as embracing a spectrum of views of which
the religious idea of God and the popular use of the word to refer to the sky are but the extremes, and that
the character for heaven is probably derived from that for big man. This is one reason why a human
element has always been present in the Chinese conception of heaven as God (Zhang 2003: 3).
398 YAO Xinzhong
of the transcendent being or power, either explicitly or metaphorically and that this tradition
has effectively influenced TU Wei-ming in his conception of Confucian spirituality.
Confucius talked about whether or not Heaven intended to destroy this culture
(Lunyu 9.5) and about the greatness of Heaven, the law of which only sage kings were
able to follow (Lunyu 8.19), confirming that Heaven generates virtues in me (Lunyu 7.3).
In the same way, Mencius also talked about the transcendental Heaven which alone could
place great responsibility on a human (Mencius 6B15), while implying that Heaven must
not be defined as a fully anthropomorphic being, because Heaven does not speak. When
asked if it was true that the sage-king Yao passed the empire on to Shun, for example,
Mencius rejected this saying by confirming that no human ruler would be able to give the
empire to another; only Heaven had the authority and ability to do so.
5
In whatever senses Heaven and the Way are used, it is apparent that Confucius and
Mencius had no intention of separating the spiritual other from a transformative
process, or the ultimate authority from human affairs. For them, while transcendent by
nature, Heaven was not totally alien to our being, not only because Heaven was the
source of all virtues in the self (Lunyu 7.3) but also because Heaven could have an
intention for somebody to become a sage (Lunyu 9.6). In the Chunqiu Zuozhuan
(Zuo Commentary on the Spring and Autumn), we read a passage attributed to Zichan
(?-522 BCE), with whom Confucius consciously allied, that Heavens Way is distant; the
human way is close.... [how could a human being] know the Way of Heaven (Yang 1990:
1395). Many people tend to interpret this as evidence of an utterly humanist doctrine,
particularly in association with the fact that Confucius was said to have seldom talked about
the Way of Heaven (Lunyu 5.13) (Fung 1952: 30). However, these two instances may well
be interpreted in a different way. The distantness of the heavenly way and the rareness of
Confucius talking about it just prove how transcendent the Way of Heaven is! Further, all
evidence shows that Confucius and Mencius not only appreciated the distance of the way of
Heaven from humans, but also drew the way of Heaven into the way of humans, and
integrated the seemingly two ways into one, making the transcendence totally immanent
in the human world.
6
5 The Confucian Self and Self-Transformation
From the concept of immanent transcendence, it logically follows that if all the
transcendental resources are already within us, then whether or not we gain access to
transcendental reality really depends on ourselves alone. This has clearly drawn the
transcendent into the inner realm of individuals, confirming that spiritual delivery is
possible only in the form of self-transformation.
5
He further explained that this giving must not be understood in the sense of giving detailed and minute
instructions; rather it was made through active engagement or underlying principles: Heaven does not
speak but reveals itself through its acts and deeds (Mencius 5A 5).
6
Xunzi of course emphasizes the importance of separating tian from humans, arguing that those who
understand the distinction between heaven and humans are the perfect men (Xunzi 17.5). However, tian here
refers to the natural tian or natural lawfor example, the constant natural course, and the work of nature
(Xunzi 17.12). When coming to tian as the spiritual power, he requires people to revere Heaven and follow its
Way (3.6), describes those who practise good administrative policies and skills as possessing the virtue of
Heaven (tian de ) (Xunzi 9.1), and defines Heaven and earth as one of the three roots (san ben ) of ritual
principles (Xunzi 19.4). All these indicate that in the spiritual realm Xunzi also follows the course of
harmonizing the internal and the external, and searches for a path of realizing the ultimate virtue within.
The Confucian Self and Experiential Spirituality 399
Although separating the honors bestowed by humans from the honors bestowed by
Heaven, Mencius believes that heavenly honors can be naturally acquired through human
efforts (Mencius 6A16). The Confucian self is thus not simply an identity, but an
embodiment of the heavenly principle or virtue for all existences and activities. When
Mencius says that All the ten thousand things are there in me (Mencius 7A4), he does not
mean that all the tangible things but their heavenly principles or virtues are embedded in the
self. Understood this way, this paragraph indicates that because the principles and virtues of
all things are already in the self, what we need to do to reach the heavenly realm is only to
explore what we already have in our being and nature. Knowing the essence of things is the
same as knowing the essence of our own being, which is the same as the essence of the
Confucian transcendent. The great joy is to find that we are true to ourselves (Mencius
7A4), which in other words is to find that our nature is the same as the nature of all other
people and all ten thousand things, by which we are able to be in unity with Heaven.
Humans are not merely passive bearers of the heavenly mission; they are actively
realizing what Heaven intends to fulfil. Arguing this way, Tu goes a step further to
underpin the practical way to the Confucian ultimate concern: we are here because
embedded in our human nature is the secret code for heavens self-realization. Since we
help Heaven to realize itself through our self-discovery and self-understanding in day-to-
day living, the ultimate meaning of life is found in our ordinary, human existence (Tu
1995: 222). It is in confirming the ultimate meaning of self-discovery and self-
understanding that Tu names the self creative transformation, implying that the self
itself is potentially sacred and that transcendence must start with ones self-cultivation
(Tu 1985). On the one hand, the creativeness of the self indicates that, however limited
and secular it is, the self has the ability to manifest the true nature of its potentiality to the
unlimited and the sacred. On the other hand, the process and result must be
transformative, for it starts with the status quo but ends up fulfilling ones spiritual
potentiality that has been endowed by Heaven upon ones birth.
A creative transformation can be sought through many different paths. In theistic
traditions, a process departing from the conditioned and limited to the unconditioned and
unlimited cannot be initiated or empowered by the self; rather it must be motivated and
completed by the externally transcendental being or power. As a humanistic religionist, Tu
follows a different approach, where transformation engages with the conditioned and
limited, and indeed only by exploring the potentiality of the self can the meaning and value
of the unconditioned and unlimited be fully manifested.
The self is therefore central to Confucian religiosity, and the sacredness of Heaven can be
fully appreciated only in the spiritualized self.
7
Because of the sacred potentiality, self-
transformation is itself religious by nature. In his study of religious life, Frederick Streng
points out that religion is an integration of subjective and objective experiences, consisting
of three dimensions: personal, cultural, and ultimate, all of which are integrated and enable us
to see that religion is a means of ultimate transformation (Streng 1971: 17). The trans-
formation is driven by an extraordinarily significant and comprehensive awareness, and the
ultimate reality is experienced and expressed as a transformative power, for in realizing the
7
It has been argued that ritual is what makes Confucianism a religion, or that Heaven is the final
justification and manifestation of Confucian religiousness. These two views are correct in a sense, because it
is true that Confucian thinkers elevated ritual and Heaven to a new height and interpreted them as something
of transcendental values. However they would not be fully justified if they did not note that Confucian ritual
and Heaven would not embody a spiritual meaning and value unless through the fulfilment of the potential of
the self.
400 YAO Xinzhong
nature of his or her being, a person becomes spiritually whole (Streng 1971: 8). This
ultimate transformation sounds similar to what Tu highly appreciates as creative
transformation, for in both cases transformation is not only for a solution of short-term
problems but for the realizing of the true nature of ones being, and this transformation cannot
be achieved except through ones own awareness and experience of the transcendental power.
6 An Experiential Spirituality
Taken as an intellectual tradition, many contemporary scholars have studied Confucian-
ism mainly from a rational rather than an experiential perspective. They tend to emphasize
the philosophical and ethical aspects of the Confucian tradition, in a way similar to earlier
Christian missionaries who defined Confucianism as a system of ethics but not as a
religion. Under the influence of heavily enforced intellectualism in the twentieth century,
even those who appreciate the ethico-religious significance of the Confucian tradition are
nevertheless reluctant to recognise its spirituality in its own right; they tend to define it in
terms of its intellectual reconstruction of a moral-metaphysical world.
8
For whatever
reasons, it seems that the experiential dimension of Confucian spirituality has not yet
become a main focus of Confucian studies, and to a good extent it is marginalized.
9
Experience is a kind of direct and observational knowledge of the world, frequently
associated with but not totally confined to sense impressions and responses. Early
empiricist philosophers asserted that sense experience is the only source and the single
criterion of knowledge or belief. They used it as a powerful lever to overturn the dominance
of Christian churches in Europe. While the experientialist claim and practice were refuted
and rejected by rationalists, the importance of experience for religion was highlighted later
by William James (18421910), who defined religion in terms of the feelings, acts and
experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to
stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine (James 1902: 29). From a
different perspective, Paul Tillich also placed an emphasis on the experiential dimension of
religion by pointing out that the meaning of religious symbols is based on the experience
of the holy (Tillich 1963: 6064). This is a powerful reaction to the intellectual tradition
where religion is primarily defined by external, rational, and systematic parameters, and
sheds light on the internal, personal, and sensory values of beliefs and practices. It has been
observed that although most philosophers have recently come to base their vision on
experience, the real choice is not between those who look to reason and those who look to
experience, but between those who understand experience to refer to sense experience and
those who hold experience to be a much richer source of evidence (Long 1969: 53). It is
in the second sense of experience that we have found a richer source for Confucian
spirituality.
8
All those [teachings] can be termed as [religious] doctrine (jiao ) if they are able to open up human
intelligence and guide people to reach the ultimate reality through practice to purify human life (Mou 1985: ii).
9
Under the sway of an overall rationalism, Tus exploration of Confucianism is also heavily intellectualized:
What I have done is in fact to understand, or an attempt to understand, the internal logic of Confucian
learning (Tu 2001: 46). However, more than his masters such as MOU Zongsan and XU Fuguan , Tu
places an emphasis on ti zhi , combining the rational and the experiential into one mode of knowledge,
and providing an interpretative method for the extension of human knowledge. He further defines the
experiential knowing as final ground of the religiosity of Confucianism (Tu 2001: 52).
The Confucian Self and Experiential Spirituality 401
There are a variety of experiences that matter spiritually to individuals, but the most
important is a special kind of experience in which individuals become aware of, or
influenced by, a presence or power that transcends everyday life.
10
It is difficult to define
what exactly a transcendental experience is, but scholars in the study of religion have
recently established a number of criteria for conveniently indicating the religiousness of an
experience. First, it involves an awareness of a reality that transcends oneself; secondly,
while transcendent, the reality is in some way immanent to oneself, and thirdly, between
these two expressions of the supreme reality there is a dynamic exchange (Marxwell and
Tschudin 1990: 14). A parallel between what is called transcendental experience and the
Confucian attaining of perfection, or in Tus term, creative transformation, can be easily
identified. There was no lack of spiritual experiences that awoke or enlightened individual
scholars in Confucian history. For example, under the influence of Chan Buddhism,
scholars of the Song-Ming period often claimed to have had a kind of experience that led
them to an enlightened insight into their sagely nature or heart. A classical example of these
was provided by WANG Yangming (14721529), when he described how he was
enlightened by a sudden awareness about the best way to become a transcendent sage.
11
However, Confucian experiences of an immanent-transcendent nature do not have to be
confined to the suddenly enlightened cases, and early Confucians, especially Confucius and
Mencius, were equally aware of the importance of the experiential link between the self and
transcendent reality. Although there is little trace in their conversations of, to use modern
terms, experience (tiyan ) or transcendence (chaoyue ), we should have no
doubt about their intention when they talked about the effect and importance of seeing,
feeling, knowing, hearing, or dreaming the power or thing that transcended
themselves. It is apparent that they held a belief that by experiencing the power, individuals
would easily see that Heaven, the Way, the Decree of Heaven, ancestors, sages, and spirits
could motivate them to go beyond the limits or conditionality they were faced with, or that
the transcendent powers or beings were bigger or higher than any individual human being,
able to provide guidance or motivation for individuals to be part of the ultimate reality.
It was a widespread belief among early Confucian thinkers that Heaven or the Decree of
Heaven determined the meaning and value of life, and personal appreciation of meaning
and value is a necessary step closer to Heaven or the Way of Heaven. With an integrated
concept of the self, for example, Mencius elaborated an experiential approach to the
Confucian ultimate when he called for extending ones heart to the utmost and knowing
the nature of oneself and all people. If he had stopped here, then we might legitimately call
him a humanist philosopher seeking a better understanding of humans. Mencius took an
important further step saying that by extending ones heart and knowing ones nature, one
would be able to know and serve Heaven (Mencius 7A1). Mencius dismissed any attempt
to justify the separation of transcendental awareness from ones own personal experience,
and provided a typical case for Confucian spirituality in which the extending (jin ) and
10
This so-called Hardy question was used by Alister Hardy (18961985) to collect examples of peoples
religious experience: Many studies have been done investigating peoples religious experiences, all showing
from a third to half of the population to have had some such experience which has profoundly affected their
lives (Rankin 2006: 5, 15).
11
Wangs experience came when he was 36 years old, during his exile, and realized that human nature was
where sagehood and wisdom lay. The one night, in the year 1508, he awoke and shouted so loudly that
people living nearby were startled. What caused his excitement was that upon awakening he had suddenly
discovered that so-called things are not entities in the external world but objects of consciousness (Chang
1962: 5).
402 YAO Xinzhong
knowing (zhi ) of the self were listed as two of the most important experiential paths to
transcendental reality.
The experiential paths of Confucianism perfectly match the three measures of
transcendental experience as listed above. The awareness of a transcendental being or
power is of paramount importance for Confucian creative transformation. Heaven, the Way,
and the sage are generally considered the source and the reason of transcendence, and
awareness of their greatness or ultimate nature is taken as the prime cause of their being
experienced. It is therefore believed that holding them in awe distinguishes a Confucian
gentleman from a small man: The gentleman stands in awe of three things. He is in awe of
the Decree of Heaven. He is in awe of great men. He is in awe of the words of the sages.
The small man, being ignorant of the Decree of Heaven, does not stand in awe of it. He
treats great men with insolence, and the words of the sages with derision (Lunyu 16.8).
What Confucius meant here is clearly that the Decree of Heaven, great persons, and sages
were all transcendent by nature and by function, and the awareness of them would bring
about an experience in which one would come to stand in awe of the goal of ones spiritual
cultivation and personal life. This standing in awe has thus become an inseparable
element of Confucian transcendent experience. However, the transcendent nature of
Confucian awareness does not mean that the meaning and significance of Heaven, the Way,
and the sage is external to ones own existence and experience; rather it is believed to be
within and part of ones life, without which life would become meaningless or one would
no longer be a human in the full sense (hence a small man). Therefore, Confucian
Heaven, Way, and sages are immanent, not only in the sense that any individual is
potentially able to be part of them, but also in the sense that an experience of them or their
power would enable individuals to hold a wider and all-encompassing view of a spiritual
aspect of reality.
Above all, in Confucian experience there is a dynamic exchange between the sense of
the transcendent and the perception of the immanent, or between the reality that is
considered beyond ones reach and the feeling, seeing, and observing of the sacred in ones
daily life. Confucius was clearly aware of the connection between his dreaming of the Duke
of Zhou and his physical and mental health, and when he did not have such a dream he
realized how much he had gone downhill (Lunyu 7.5). This suggests that in Confucius
view there exists an interactive relationship between ones experience of the sage (in this
instance, dreaming) and ones ability to carry out the teaching of the sage. Confucian
experiences manifest the presence of something transcendent, in which ones value is
associated with the highest realm and ones existence is integrated with the ultimate reality.
This can be seen from Confucius attitude toward sacrifice. Contrary to those who
performed rituals simply as customary procedures, Confucius emphasized that the
importance of ritual was to feel or see the presence of the spirits: One should make
sacrifice to a spirit as though that spirit was present (Lunyu 3.12).
12
Only by the presence
evident in ones perception can a set of phenomenological rituals become existentially
meaningful, because it is in this presence that the immanent nature and function of the
transcendent becomes embodied, functional, and influential in peoples ritual experiences.
12
The same can also be said about ancestor worship. Zengzi , one of Confucius disciples, associated
the full manifestation of virtues among the people to proper respect toward the dead and continuing
sacrifices towards ancestors (Lunyu 1.9). For living descendants, ancestors are of a transcendent function,
and by experiencing their teaching and power through proper rituals, descendants would be able to become
virtuous.
The Confucian Self and Experiential Spirituality 403
7 The Experiential as Transcendent
Distinguished scholars such as Tu have clearly seen the importance of personal experience
for enhancing Confucian religiosity and tend to place the self at the centre of Confucian
spirituality. However, confined by their rational agenda of reconstruction, they seem
reluctant to confirm any direct association of personal experience to transcendence. For
them transcendence can be fully realized in the self only through a rational connection with
the external world, or through conscientious fulfilment of moral responsibilities toward the
community. There is no doubt that the self-experience in Confucianism is preoccupied with
secular matters, taking place in daily life or in the process of moral education or self-
discipline. Can we say that because of this Confucian experiences are secular by nature and
lack an explicit transcendent significance?
Confucians are concerned with social, political, and educational problems, by which
they create a vision or blueprint for a morally perfect life, the realization of which is taken
as the driving force for them to work diligently. Such an experience in Confucianism,
however, is not totally secular; rather it can be traced to a transcendent origin, either
because it is derived from an awareness of the reality that transcends the human realm, or
because in it the one who has the experience has gone through such a transformation that he
or she can be totally renewed. Therefore daily renewal is both moral and spiritual,
underlying all Confucian efforts in politics, morality, and community. The Great Learning
(Daxue ) quotes from the Book of History that if you can renovate yourself one day, then
you can do so every day, and keep doing so day after day (Daxue 2, in Chan: 87). To live a
respectful Confucian daily life is therefore to experience oneself anew everyday. It is easy to
interpret this daily renewal simply as a process of normal learning, adding something new
everyday to our knowledge and skills through learning and practice, by which we are
renovated. However, this is only one side of the Confucian renewal, an intellectual aspect of
Confucian experiencing. In a more subtle sense, daily renewal must be seen as a spiritual
regeneration, in which a new self is born everyday. The spiritual content of the Confucian
self is not fixed at any given time; it involves being changed or transformed, and every
renewal is a means to voice ones ultimate concern and a step closer to the transcendental
reality. Therefore the renewing is not only central to the creative transformation of the self,
but also is the key for us to understand why Confucian experiences can be said to be
transcendent by nature.
The formation and process of Confucian experience shares many features with religious
experience in other traditions. For example, Confucian experience is initiated by an
awareness of spiritual profundity, is frequently accompanied with an enlightened insight,
and has a significant impact on the experient and his or her view of life. Confucian
experience is, nevertheless, special, with a number of characteristics that distinguish it from
other types of religious experiences. First, it can be transcendent without an extraordinary
trigger. Religious or transcendental experience normally has a kind of trigger, initiated through a
particular conscious or unconscious action or encounter. However, this is not a necessary
condition for Confucian experiencing. Because of the inter-communication between Confucian
Heaven and Confucian self, spiritual experiences mostly take place in a daily life situation,
triggered by a moral engagement, not necessarily stipulated by a spiritual presence. Secondly,
typical Confucian experiences are not necessarily a sudden awareness of something
extraordinary, but more commonly involve a slow and gradual process. In other traditions,
religious experiences in general appear to be momentary, like a light shining through ones
mind. For Confucians, this so-called sudden realization is only one of the many types, and it is
certainly not universally applicable. Rather it is more common among Confucians to experience
404 YAO Xinzhong
an extraordinary awareness through a gradual process, which, when accumulating to a
breaking point, enables one to transcend ones limitation and conditionality and finally to reach
the ultimate reality where one has become a trinity with Heaven and Earth (Zhongyong 22, in
Chan 1963: 108). Thirdly, religious experiences in a theistic tradition are normally
accompanied by a strong conviction or belief in the authority or power of the transcendent,
and are therefore externally-pointing (numinous), rather than inwardly directing (mystical).
However, many Confucian experiences are primarily an inwardly seeking journey, an
exploration of what one already has, something innate of a transcendental nature. Therefore,
what is for the sake of the self is not merely secular, but contains spiritual meaning and is part
of Confucian transcendence. Fourthly, mystical experiences normally involve the submerging
of ones self in the ultimate reality, but Confucian experience is aimed to manifest the self,
and by experiencing the ultimate one is able to gain ultimate truth, knowing the Mandate or
Decree of Heaven (zhi tian ming ). Confucian experience is to gain freedom for
the self, not to set limits for its scope and action. The significance of the freedom for spiritual
growth can be seen from Confucius when he defined it as the highest achievement in
moral progression: at seventy I followed my hearts desire without overstepping the line
(Lunyu 2.4).
8 Conclusion
TU Weiming correctly places the self at the centre of the Confucian tradition, arguing for
the creative self to be taken as the moving force to unfold all Confucian programs and to
rebuild a moral, political, and educational world. Tu has clearly realized that the self cannot
be purely rational and moral, suggesting that it may well also be experiential and spiritual.
In this sense, Tu has proposed a new Confucian program that distinguishes him from a
number of other contemporary Confucian scholars. In unfolding the Confucian agenda,
however, Tu has followed a programmatic approach that is unable to fully reveal the
experiential dimension of Confucian spirituality and that is not possible for an appropriate
assessment over the experiential and spiritual nature of the Confucian self. To address this
weakness, as this article has argued, we must abandon the dichotomous way of thinking
concerning the rational and the spiritual that has to some extent dominated contemporary
Confucian studies, and pay more attention to the importance of transcendental experiences
of the self, by which a holistic Confucian spirituality can be firmly established.
Acknowledgment The author wishes to thank Professors TU Weiming, John Berthrong, and TSAI Yan-zen
for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this essay, some of which have been incorporated into
the paper during the process of revision.
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