Don’t Know Much About® Mythology (54 page)

Yao
(
Tang Di Yao
) Another of the three sage rulers of antiquity, Yao is a mythical emperor who is elevated to the status of a god. Yao lives frugally and always cares for his people. But because his son is not worthy to ascend to the throne, Yao chooses his son-in-law as his successor, and Confucius singles him out for praise as a model ruler.

Yi
(
Hou I
,
Hou Yi
) Perhaps the greatest of the Chinese hero-gods, Yi is the great archer who figures in a myth dating from the sixth century BCE. In this tale, there are ten suns, each one the son of the ruler of heaven. When they all appear at the same time, their intense heat withers the crops and the lord of heaven sends the archer Yi to restore order. But instead of commanding the suns to go home, Yi shoots nine of them with his arrows. Even though the farmers are happy, Yi is banished by the lord of heaven to live as a mortal on earth with his wife,
Chang E
. Upset at losing her immortality, Chang E acquires a special elixir from the Queen Mother of the West and consumes it all, even though half is meant for her husband. For her disobedience, Chang E is sent to the moon and becomes the moon goddess. Yi accepts his mortality, but in some accounts, goes back to heaven after being forgiven.

Yu
(
Da Yu
) Another of the three sage rulers of antiquity, Yu is a god and an engineer who appears in a foundation myth. When the Emperor Shun (above) asks Yu to work on containing the waters of the great flood, he leaves his wife and children to do the job. Instead of building a boat to escape the deluges, Yu spends thirteen years creating canals to control the floodwaters that periodically threaten parts of China. Yu is awarded the throne for his work. He is said to have founded the legendary first Chinese dynasty, the Xia, between 2205 and 2197 BCE, but there are no confirmed historical accounts of any such dynasty.

What do fortune cookies have to do with Chinese religion?

“Confucius say…”

For years, those words have combined the wisdom of fortune cookies with the humor of old Charlie Chan movies, effectively reducing Confucius and his philosophy to a series of witless jokes. Too bad. Because in Chinese history, the legendary philosopher Confucius is one of the most significant people who ever lived, responsible for both the ethical practices and political philosophy that governed Chinese history for 2,000 years.

As with the life of Jesus or Buddha, some of Confucius’s biography must be taken on faith. According to tradition, Confucius was born in 551 BCE, in Lu, in the northeastern Sandong Province. His name was Kong Fu Zi (“great master Kong”) and the name “Confucius” is the Latinized form first used by Jesuits who came to China in the seventeenth century. While Confucius is said to have practiced archery and music—activities of the Chinese nobility—he seems to have been born into relatively humble circumstances. According to one tradition, his parents died when he was a child, but in his works, there is little reference to father, mother, or a wife, though Confucius is believed to have had a son who died, as well as a daughter. When Confucius himself died, he was largely unknown in China.

Although there is no evidence that Confucius ever wrote anything himself, he was long thought to have edited the collection of ancient wisdom books called the Five Classics, including the I Ching, the ancient divination guide to which he supposedly added his own commentaries. (This is now in dispute.) His conversations and sayings were also included in a book of his thoughts and anecdotes called the Analects which was compiled by his disciples. These disciples included the early Confucian philosopher Mencius (371–289 BCE), who believed that people were born good and simply needed to preserve “the natural compassion of the heart” that makes them human; and Xun Zi (mid-200s BCE), who believed people could live together peacefully only if their minds were shaped by education and clear rules of conduct.

But Confucianism itself is the centerpiece of the philosopher’s contribution. Begun as a code of conduct that only later evolved into what might be called a “religion,” Confucianism has no organization or clergy. Nor does it teach a belief in a deity or in the existence of life after death. Instead, Confucianism stresses moral and political ideas, putting an emphasis on respect for ancestors and government authority while insisting that women belong in the home. These ideas were not new or radical by any means, but Confucius placed them in a new framework by suggesting that the individual has a proper place in the political, societal, and family hierarchies, and that within these hierarchies one must venerate those above and care for those below.

Confucius further argued that tradition and order have to be respected to maintain the equilibrium of the universe. That meant practicing piety, ethical norms, and human benevolence—or
jen
, a concept that encompasses love, goodness, integrity, and loyalty—which apply to every aspect of life. Adhering to
jen
depends on following the “middle way”—or moderation. Central to this idea was the Confucian version of the Golden Rule: “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.”

By about 200 BCE, the first large, unified Chinese empire had begun under the Han Dynasty. The Han rulers approved of Confucianism’s emphasis on public service and respect for authority. In 124 BCE, the government established the Imperial University to educate future government officials in the Confucian ideals found in the Five Classics. Candidates applying for government jobs had to pass rigorous examinations based on the Five Classics, and a second set of texts called the Four Books.
*
Mastery of these classics was also proof of moral fitness and the chief sign of a Chinese gentleman, even one not born into nobility. Under the Han Dynasty, the idea that the emperor’s authority came from heaven was also given greater clout, and Confucianism increasingly became the state “religion” of China from the 100s BCE until the mid-twentieth century. When the Chinese Communists gained control of China in 1949, they opposed Confucianism, because it encouraged people to look to the past rather than to the future. It was among the “four olds”—old ideas, habits, customs, and culture—rejected by the Party in the 1950s. Official opposition to Confucianism ended in 1977. Since then, the Communist government has relaxed some of its policies against religion, and so Confucianism has enjoyed a revival on the mainland.

What religion shunned the Confucian approach?

It has been turned into a way to raise cats or children, invest, paint, understand physics, heal yourself, and even reinterpret
Winnie-the-Pooh
. Stick the word “tao” in a book title, and it conveys an image of some secret inner knowing. Not bad for a philosophy that was conceived in mystery and myth. Taoism is a philosophy with obscure, legendary beginnings in China during the 300s BCE—although many practitioners claim its oral roots go back thousands of years—and that it acquired the qualities of a religion by the 100s BCE.

While Confucianism stressed that a good life only comes from living in a well-disciplined society that emphasizes ceremony, duty, morality, and public service, the Taoist ideal rejected conventional social obligations and urged the individual to lead a simple, spontaneous, and meditative life close to nature, and to see change as the way of the universe. The word “tao” (also spelled “dao” and pronounced
dow
) originally meant “path” or “way.” Tao was all about getting in rhythm with the great cycles in nature, and learning to live in harmony with the changing seasons.

The beliefs of Taoism as a philosophy are showcased in the Tao Te Ching (“the classic of the way and the virtue”). Tao Te Ching is a collection from several sources, but its authors and editors are unknown. Unreliable accounts say that a man named Laozi lived during the 500s BCE and wrote these works. A legend tells how Laozi, supposedly a keeper of imperial archives some six centuries before the Christian era, could foresee the imminent decay of society. He was preparing to leave China for the fabled land of the West. A guard at the frontier asked this master for an account of his ideas, and Laozi responded with Tao Te Ching. However, the Tao Te Ching, made up of eighty-one brief sections, was probably compiled and revised during the 200s and 100s BCE—well after Laozi had died. (A legendary meeting between Laozi and Confucius is also most likely just that—a legend.) Chuang-tzu, his disciple, lived around 329–286 BCE and expanded on the tao with a second book, called Chuang-tzu.

Composed largely in verse, the Tao Te Ching describes the unity of nature—the tao, or “way”—that makes each thing in the universe what it is, and determines its behavior. Enigmatic and elusive, this unity can be understood only by mystical intuition. Because, in Taoism, “yielding eventually overcomes force,” the book teaches that a wise man desires nothing. He never interferes with what happens naturally in the world or in himself. One passage in the Tao Te Ching says: “The highest good is like water. Water excels in giving benefit to all creatures, but never competes. It abides in places that most men despise, and so comes closest to the Tao.” The Tao Te Ching also teaches that simplicity and moving with the flow of events are the keys to wise government.

Over time, Taoists began to add more mystical practices in the hope of helping adherents reach a transcendent state. As Taoism evolved into a form of worship, it took on aspects of traditional folk religion, including the growth of a hereditary priesthood that used rituals to submit the people’s prayers to various folk gods. Working in trance, the chief priest prayed to other divinities, who were aspects of the Tao, for favors for the people. Taoist groups also sought to attain immortality through magic, meditation, special diets, breath control, or the recitation of scriptures. Besides looking at these “alternative” avenues, many believers pursued their search for knowledge in various pseudosciences, such as alchemy and astrology.

Who was Japan’s first divine emperor?

It is the land of shoguns and samurai to most Westerners, a string of four main islands and thousands of smaller ones, which roughly equals the size of the state of California. In the mid-nineteenth century, Japan emerged from hundreds of years of near-isolation and became one of the great empires of modern times. After it fell in the fiery destruction of World War II, it then rose, like a phoenix, from the ashes to become a modern financial and trading empire.

According to Japanese legend, the first emperor of this island nation was Jimmu-tenno, or “divine warrior emperor,” who is traditionally dated from 660–585 BCE. Believed to be the great-great-great-grandson of the divine sun goddess Amaterasu, Jimmu and his elder brother supposedly marched eastward from a region of Kyushu Island, intent on consolidating their power. After his brother is killed in battle, Jimmu presses on, guided by a heavenly crow. His army continues its march until he reaches Yamato, traditional home of the Japanese emperors. The consensus today is that Jimmu-tenno did not exist, that there were no emperors at that time, and that more than a dozen of Japan’s earliest reputed emperors were inventions. Historians today assert that the imperial line actually began in the fifth or sixth century of the Common Era.