trines. Shao Yung developed his cosmology from a chain of Taoist numerolo-
gists, interpreters of diagrams based on the Yi Ching, going back to the Taoist
Ch’en T’uan around 950. Chou Tun-I had studied with various Buddhists and
Taoists, including five Ch’an masters, although none of these were significant
enough to appear in our lineage charts (Dumoulin, 1988: 268). The Ch’eng
brothers were students of both Shao Yung and Chou Tun-I, and Ch’eng Hao
followed up by seeking out Buddhist and Taoist teachers for a number of years
before he and his brother formulated their own position. The doctrinal con-
nection to Taoism was so close that the works of Shao Yung, Chou Tun-I, and
Liu Mu (303 in Figure 6.4, another offshoot of the Ch’en Tu’an lineage which
led up to Chou Tun-I) ended up being included in later centuries in the Taoist
collection (Graham, 1958: 159). Later generations of neo-Confucians contin-
ued their religious contacts. Ch’eng I carried on an interchange with a member
of the Lin-Chi Ch’an lineage, as did several of his immediate disciples (see 347,
348, 327, and 328 in Figure 6.4; also in the next generation the connection of
335 to the leading disciple of the Ch’eng brothers, Yang Shih). Still later Chu
Hsi studied with Buddhists and Taoists, and in his maturity contacted impor-
tant Ch’an masters, including their last famous figure, Ta-hui, while Chu Hsi’s
rival Lu Chiu-Yüan also had contacts in the same Ch’an lineage (354).
How to relate to this Buddhist and Taoist material was the point of
contention which generated the creativity within Neo-Confucianism. Shao
Yung attacked the heaven cult of orthodox Confucian religion. His cosmol-
ogy was a form of occult divination, based on a new interpretation of the Yi
Ching hexagrams, rearranging them into an evolutionary sequence. He laid the
groundwork for a new cosmology, declaring that mind, tranquil and enlight-
ened, is the Great Ultimate at the basis of the physical universe (Chan, 1963:
493); on the material level, the cosmos is governed by numerical progressions
and goes through great cycles of creation and destruction, rather like Buddhist
kalpas. Shao Yung’s reputation was primarily as a prophet, and his followers
constituted a school separate from the emerging main line of Neo-Confucians.
Polemical battles were fought between these camps at the time of Yang Shih
(the early 1100s).
Another faction contending for religious reform, though less well organized
as a lineage, was that of Chou Tun-I, who advocated as instruments of
government divinations by the Yi Ching hexagrams and by evocation of spirits.
His technical philosophy took the form of a Taoist-like diagram describing
cosmic evolution as a series of emanations from the Supreme Ultimate (T’ai
Chi), through yin and yang, to the Five Agents, the hexagrams of the Yi Ching,
and finally to man as a spiritual being. Chou Tun-I’s position is a syncretism
of all the various divination schools. He was retrospectively elevated among
the five great founders, but his works were little known in the 1000s. The
Ch’eng brothers, who had studied with him before going on to Buddhist and
Revolutions: Buddhist and Neo-Confucian China • 307