The Religions Book

77

Respect for elders and ancestors
is a core value of Confucianism: these
young Chinese students are marking
the anniversary of Confucius’s birth
by honoring his image.

Filial piety remains one of the most
important Confucian virtues, and
its ties and duties extend beyond
death. Sons are expected to make
offerings at their parents’ graves,
and to honor them at shrines in the
home that contain ancestor tablets,
in which the spirits of the elders are
said to dwell. Even today, the key
moment in a Confucian wedding is
when the couple bow to the
groom’s ancestor tablets, thus
formally introducing the bride to
the ancestors of her husband’s family
in order to secure their blessing.

Confucianism evolves
It was during the Song dynasty that
the scholar Zhu Xi (1130–1200 CE)
incorporated elements of Daoism
and Buddhism into Confucianism,
creating an enduring religion that is
also known as Neo-Confucianism.
Confucius was not the first Chinese
sage to contemplate the eternal
truths, and Confucius himself
claimed to have invented nothing,
but merely to have studied the
ideas of earlier thinkers, gathering
them together in five books, known
as the Five Classics. Under the
Western Zhou dynasty, from 1050
to 771 BCE, scholars were highly
valued at court, and in the 7th
century BCE the so-called Hundred
Schools of Thought emerged.
Confucius lived in a time of
philosophical ferment, but also of
social change, as the power of the
Zhou emperors declined and the
whole social order seemed to be
under threat. His focus on order
and harmony emerged from a
genuine concern about potential
societal breakdown. The emperors

of later dynasties such as the

Han (206 BCE–220 CE), the Song

(960–1279 CE) and the Ming

(1368–164 4 CE) recognized the value

of Confucian ideals in maintaining

social order, and Confucianism

became the Chinese state religion.

It was also a profound influence on

daily life and thought into the 20th

century, and was attacked during

the Cultural Revolution for its social

conservatism, but in recent years a

ANCIENT AND CLASSICAL BELIEFS

New Confucianism has emerged

in China, blending Confucian ideas

with modern Chinese thinking

and Western philosophy. Although

Confucius built his philosophy on

existing concepts and practices, he

was remarkable for his insistence

that human beings are naturally

good—only needing to be taught

and encouraged, to be virtuous—

and that this goodness is not

confined to the aristocracy. ■

Men’s natures are alike,

it is their habits that

carry them far apart.

The Analects

Hold faithfulness

and sincerity

as first principles.

The Analects