ChinaX Course Notes

If you copy this document, please do not remove this disclaimer

These are the class notes of Dave Pomerantz, a student in the HarvardX/EdX MOOC course entitled ChinaX. My
ChinaX id is simply DavePomerantz.
First, a very big thank you to Professors Peter Bol and Bill Kirby and to the ChinaX staff for assembling such a
marvelous course.
The notes may contain copyrighted material from the ChinaX course. Any inaccuracies are purely my own.
The notes for Part 1 are here.

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Table of Contents
Part 2: The Creation and End of a Centralized Empire .......................................................................................... 4
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................... 4
Week 7: Forging a Unified Empire: Qin ................................................................................................................... 5
Historical Overview............................................................................................................................................... 5
Forging a Unified Empire ...................................................................................................................................... 5
Qin Finds the Path to Power .................................................................................................................................. 6
New Ways of Mobilizing the Population .............................................................................................................. 7
Qin Unity and the First Emperor ........................................................................................................................... 8
A New Imperial Ideology: Cosmic Resonance...................................................................................................... 9
Zou Yan (copied from Part I) .......................................................................................................................... 10
Cosmic Resonance 1........................................................................................................................................ 10
Cosmic Resonance 2........................................................................................................................................ 10
Cosmic Resonance 3........................................................................................................................................ 11
The Qin-Han Text and the Meaning of Cosmic Resonance Theory ................................................................ 11
Lessons from the Qin Terracotta Warriors .......................................................................................................... 12
Social Mobilization ......................................................................................................................................... 12
Individuals Among the Masses........................................................................................................................ 12
Epilogue: The Fall of Qin .................................................................................................................................... 12
Week 8: Making Empire Last: Western Han ........................................................................................................... 13
Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 13
Historical Overview............................................................................................................................................. 13
Court Politics ....................................................................................................................................................... 13
Why does the Qin fall? .................................................................................................................................... 13
Stories of the Han Court .................................................................................................................................. 14
The Beheading in the Sutra Hall...................................................................................................................... 14
What Can Court Politics Explain? ................................................................................................................... 14
Centralism vs. Regionalism ................................................................................................................................. 15
Feudalism vs. Bureaucracy .................................................................................................................................. 15
Heredity vs. Merit ................................................................................................................................................ 16
Civil vs. Military ................................................................................................................................................. 16
Han Military Expansion .................................................................................................................................. 16
Inner vs. Outer Court ........................................................................................................................................... 17
Court Women and Consort Families ............................................................................................................... 17
The Balancing Act ........................................................................................................................................... 17
Discussion ....................................................................................................................................................... 18
How to Constrain the Emperor ............................................................................................................................ 18
History as an Answer (Sima Qian) ................................................................................................................. 18
Confucian Classics as an Answer .................................................................................................................... 19
Interpreting the Portents from Heaven ............................................................................................................ 20
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................... 20
Discussion ....................................................................................................................................................... 20
Week 9: State and Society in Western and Eastern Han ......................................................................................... 21
Historical Overview: Wang Mang and Eastern Han ........................................................................................... 21
State and Society in Western and Eastern Han .................................................................................................... 21
What is State? What is Society? ......................................................................................................................... 21
State: Places, People, and Practices ................................................................................................................. 21
Society from the State's Perspective ................................................................................................................ 22
Society: Places, People, and Practices ............................................................................................................. 23
The Different Logics of State and Society ...................................................................................................... 24
Extracting Resources: The Han Taxation System ........................................................................................... 24
Four Options for State-Society Relations ............................................................................................................ 26
1: Emperor Wu's Expansion of State ............................................................................................................... 26
2: Confucian Resistance to State Expansion ................................................................................................... 26
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3: Wang Mang's Interregnum .......................................................................................................................... 26

4: Eastern Han ................................................................................................................................................. 27
Simulation of the Salt and Iron Debate ................................................................................................................ 28
The State's Retreat - Harbinger of the Aristocratic Age ...................................................................................... 28
Reflections On China's First Great Empire ......................................................................................................... 28
Week 10: Self-Realization in the Medieval World .................................................................................................. 29
Historical Overview............................................................................................................................................. 29
Four Strands of Aristocratic Culture.................................................................................................................... 30
The Learning of Mystery ..................................................................................................................................... 30
Conformity vs. Naturalness ............................................................................................................................. 30
Annotation (My Notes).................................................................................................................................... 30
From Non-Conformity to Fatalism .................................................................................................................. 31
Daoist Religion .................................................................................................................................................... 31
Celestial Master Daoism.................................................................................................................................. 31
The Maoshan Revelations And Supreme Purity Daoism ................................................................................ 32
Alchemy .............................................................................................................................................................. 33
Literature ............................................................................................................................................................. 34
Annotation ....................................................................................................................................................... 34
Interview With Professor Tian Xiaofei............................................................................................................ 35
Professor Tian Xiaofei: A Close Reading Of Two Poems .............................................................................. 36
Discussion of A Candle Within a Curtain ....................................................................................................... 36
Interview With Professor Kuriyama .................................................................................................................... 37
Why is yin/yang a way of analyzing change?.................................................................................................. 37
Five Phases (wuxing) ...................................................................................................................................... 38
Change is how things work ............................................................................................................................. 38
Pulse Taking .................................................................................................................................................... 38
Qi, Life, and Medicine ..................................................................................................................................... 38
Week 11: Buddhism ................................................................................................................................................ 40
Historical Overview............................................................................................................................................. 40
Buddhism in China: Universal Religion and Foreign Teaching .......................................................................... 40
Introduction to Buddhism: The Three Treasures ................................................................................................. 40
The Buddha ..................................................................................................................................................... 40
The Dharma ..................................................................................................................................................... 41
The Community of Monks and Nuns .............................................................................................................. 41
Mahayana Buddhism and the Lotus Sutra ........................................................................................................... 41
Parable of the Burning House and Other Readings ......................................................................................... 42
Fotudeng .............................................................................................................................................................. 43
Who is Buddhism For? .................................................................................................................................... 43
Dao'an and Building the Chinese Sangha ............................................................................................................ 44
Buddhist Text and Translation ........................................................................................................................ 44
Intellectual Centrality and Political Independence .............................................................................................. 45
Monks Do Not Bow Down Before Kings ........................................................................................................ 45
Buddhist Religious Experience ....................................................................................................................... 46
Reasons for Buddhism's Success ......................................................................................................................... 46
Mouzi: Disposing of Error ............................................................................................................................... 46
Admonitions of the Fanwang Sutra ................................................................................................................. 47
Professor Bol's Reasons for Buddhism Success .............................................................................................. 47
Lingyin Si in Hangzhou....................................................................................................................................... 48
Professor James Robson .................................................................................................................................. 48
Chinese Buddhist Art at the Sackler Museum ..................................................................................................... 48
Buddha vs. Bodhisattva ................................................................................................................................... 48
Final Assessment - Discussion Post .................................................................................................................... 49

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Part 2: The Creation and End of a Centralized Empire

Introduction
This is a 6 minute video of a discussion between Profs. Bol & Kirby.
At the end of Part 1, China was in disarray with many warring states and 100 schools of thought. Let's see how it
became a centralized bureaucratic empire.
The Qin dynasty came out of the west conquering all other states. The Qin replaced the feudal aristocracy with
a central government that sent its own officials to collect taxes and run the territories. The Qin doesn't last long, but
the Han dynasty lasted 400 years and proved a centralized empire works, ironing out the relationship between
government, society and the economy as it matured.
Of note, there's a strong relationship between modern China and the Qin. The Qin emperor, Qin Shi Huang,
was famous for unifying the warring states and also for suppressing dispute by burning books and burying scholars
alive. Mao Zedong compared himself to Qin Shi Huang as someone who took control of warring states and brought
unity after a foreign invasion, in his view, dominated the political scene.
The demonstration in Tiananmen Square was in support of the memory of Zhou Enlai, in support of Deng Xiaoping.
People held banners saying 'Down With Qin Shi Huang', equating Mao Zedong with a brutal emperor who may have
been two millennia distant but was as bright in their memory as if he'd ruled yesterday.
We'll talk about how central government was formed and how the Han eventually fell apart. Comparing it to the
Roman empire we see how foreign invasion opened the door to a new aristocracy and a new religion, Buddhism.
Meanwhile, in the Mediterranean, it was Christianity.
Another parallel between China today and the fall of the Han is that the fastest growing religion, in numbers, is
Buddhism. Whereas the number of people who align themselves with the founding ideology of the PRC - Marxism,
Leninism - are few.
So in this section we want to think about the rise of a centralized empire and its subsequent demise and how that
bears on later Chinese history.

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Week 7: Forging a Unified Empire: Qin

Historical Overview

Year (BCE)

Event

350

Shang Yang reforms Qin. Decades later, Qin begins its expansion.

316

Qin turns south, colonizing the non-Chinese states of Ba and Shu, the fertile lands of present day
Sichuan Basin.

256

The King of Zhou surrenders, ending the 800-year dynasty.

231-221
230
229-228
226-223
225
227-222
221
210

The last decade of the Warring States ends with Qin conquering the remaining six states:
Han
Zhou
Chu
Wei
Yan
Qi
Death of the first emperor and subsequent fall of Qin.

Thus is the ruler of Qin now the ruler of Tianxia, all under heaven. He replaced the Zhou feudal aristocracy with a
centralized bureaucracy, imposing a unified currency, unified weights and measures, and most importantly, a
common written language.
While this was going on, the tribes of the northern steppes joined forces as the Xiongnu confederation, the first
inner-Asian empire. To defend Qin, the emperor built the Great Wall (Changcheng).
Though many of the institutions lasted thousands of years, the Qin fell after the first emperor's death in 210 BCE.

Forging a Unified Empire

Although the Zhou was nominally in control, it had no power to
impose peace over the warring states of the third century BCE. Some
other power had to arise. What is striking in the map of the period is
how the Qin stands beyond the passes, small and isolated, in lands
long ago abandoned to barbarians by the Western Zhou.

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Qin Finds the Path to Power

Kudos to Prof. Bol. This was one of my favorite lectures.
In the third century BCE, a kind of stasis had settled over the warring states. The Zhou king
had a nominal suzerainty (a suzerain is a superior feudal lord to whom fealty is due), but he
had no real power. What sparked the Qin to fill that vacuum, driving in from the west to
conquer the other states?
Prof. Bol describes a conversation between Master Shang Yang and the lord of Qin. Ive
copied it here:
Shang Yang travels to see the lord of Qin and he says, I see that you are an ambitious
man.
And the lord says yes I am.
Shang Yang said, well, tell me, do you want to be a king like the Zhou king, glorious,
honorable, but powerless? Or do you want to be a hegemon, somebody who
has the political and military power to make other states accept his will.
And the lord of Qin says, I want to be a hegemon.
Shang Yang says, well, you know if you do, you'll have to change your policies. You'll
have to institute laws of your making.
The advisers to the king are somewhat shocked, and the lord of Qin says, well, if I have
to change my policies, that will create opposition.
And Shang Yang says, it will create opposition, but if they lead to great
accomplishment, people will accept the changes you make.
The ministers, the high officials of the lords, gather round and say: This is wrong. We
know that from antiquity, ritual has been the way in which to govern well,
carrying out the rituals, performing the sacrifices, providing a model for the
people. Your policy, these policies of laws, break with ritual.
Shang Yang says, well, they do. That's true. But tell me: should you, lord, be making
the rituals, or are you a slave to the rituals of antiquity?
And again his ministers lean in and say, but the models of antiquity have proven the test
of time. We should follow them.
Shang Yang says, they were good in their time. But today is a different time. To ignore
the opportunities today is to give up and try to imitate the ancients, and it will
never get you anywhere.
Shang Yang goes on to say that the lord of Qin has farmers, soldiers, and supervisory officials. The officials can
lead the soldiers into battle with the wealth created by the farmers.
We can see the hold that the rituals have over the ministers and the appeal that conquest has for the Qin lord. We
can see how the Qin lord took advantage of a moment in history to fill a power vacuum and to overturn centuries of
ritual ancestor worship.
My own thoughts: Was the shift to a unified bureaucratic government inevitable, and if it hadn't been the Qin, it
would have been someone else? To me, it's one of those examples where events can be viewed as driven by
geography and climate and 'guns, germs, and steel'. Or viewed instead as the sum of the actions of motivated
individuals. It's an interesting question. There are moments, like a skier turning on a mogul, when history balances
weightlessly on the actions of one person. Shang Yang changed Chinese history forever. Was this inevitable, that
the ritualistic feudal aristocracy would transform itself to a bureaucratic empire? Or without Shang Yang, would
history have taken a different course?

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New Ways of Mobilizing the Population

This lecture describes how the (oppressive!) Qin bureaucratic state extracted
resources from its population.
In the Zhou feudal system, land was divided between the lord and the nobles,
making the lord dependent on the armies of the nobles for conquest. If the
nobles acceded, it was only for the one campaign. To gain independence
from the nobles, the lord needed more central control or resources.
One way was to directly control the resources in the immediate vicinity of the
lord.
Another way was to directly control any new territory that was conquered. All the central states adopted this
mechanism. In particular, the Qin used an administrative unit now called the district or county, the xian, which
even today refers to the lowest level of administrative unit that's guided by centrally appointed officials.
The Qin was most effective at centralizing power for these reasons:

Large under-populated territory that could be filled with immigrants from wars.
Weak nobility which could be recast as officials and military officers

The Qin redefined the state, the Guo, from feudal to bureaucratic.

How to Control Farmers, Soldiers, and Officials

Farmers don't like to be taxed. Soldiers don't like to fight. Officials are greedy.
Shang Yang offered the lord of Qin a solution:
(a) Give no rewards outside the bureaucracy. In other words, destroy the merchant class.
(b) Give no honor outside of that bestowed by the state.
Shang Yang says that to keep farmers working the land and paying taxes, make sure they can't get off the farm.
Forbid luxuries so they don't have the desire to consume them. Now farmers have no choice but to live a simple and
frugal life. Don't let officials maintain slaves and estates. Raise bridge tolls so merchants can't afford to travel.
When Xunzi visits Qin, he sees a society with good, hardworking people, but he also sees gloom and fear.
In the Qin bureaucracy there were 18 ranks with entry only possible through the military. To join, the elite must
fight and their sons must also fight. The lord ruled that households with more than two adult males would pay
double the taxes, forcing families to split up to produce more wealth to afford the taxes. Households were organized
in groups that were jointly held responsible for each other's taxes, encouraging snitches.
The laws were enforced impartially, however, regardless of title.

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Qin Unity and the First Emperor

By 221 BCE the Qin has conquered all the other states. All nobles are moved to the capital.
Weapons are gathered and forged into statues.
The Qin forms a tripartite government of civil administrators, military administrators, and overseers.
It unifies widths of roads and heights of walls and imposes a common currency, a common written
language, a single calendar, and common set of weights and measures.
It is the first Chinese dynasty to burn books and bury scholars (alive!). Not necessarily Confucian
scholars, but those who looked to the Zhou rather than Qin.
The lord of Qin is now the first emperor, a new title he accords himself. This image is from a monument erected
two years after the unification in 219 BCE.

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A New Imperial Ideology: Cosmic Resonance

In this section, we'll turn our thoughts from the mobilization of the Qin Empire to its ideology. Cosmic Resonance
is based on what passed for science in China at that time.
The Huangdi. The emperor began by positioning himself prominently in the firmament by
taking a new title, huangdi. Di means high god, huang means august. Huangdi could be
translated as august thearch (ruler of a monarchy of gods).
The Pole Star. He named his capital the Pole Star; the Yellow River
was the Deshui or Milky Way. He had replicas built of the palaces of
the states he'd conquered, all in the Pole Star.
Multiples of Six. When weights and measures were unified, they were
all figured in multiples of six. Hats were six inches tall. Axle width,
important for ensuring carts could all travel in the same ruts in the road,
were six feet or multiples of six feet.
So what is the significance of six? It's one of the numbers of the water element:

One of the masters from the hundred schools of thought, Zou Yan, believed nature had patterns
which, if we could understand them, would help us fit ourselves profitably into the pattern.
The chart above, the Wu Xing, shows the five phases. Most importantly, it transforms heaven
from something run by gods to something run along a predictable set of principles.
Wood, fire, earth, metal, water. Each phase has its own season, color, planet, flavor and scent.
For reference, on the next page, I've copied my notes from Part I: Zou Yan and Cosmic Resonance.

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Zou Yan (copied from Part I)

He believes in Cosmic Resonance, which we'll discuss later in detail (and so we do - prophetic
he is, Master Bol). The basic idea is that cycles change the world. In the same manner that the
agricultural year governs when to plant and when to harvest, history has cycles that a ruler
needs to understand, to see his opportunities. The Zhou was part of a cycle and another cycle
was emerging, making for an optimal time for a ruler to come forward to conquer and unify the warring states.
He saw five phases of change: wood, metal, fire, water, earth. Everything had these different phases of change. To
take advantage of the times, you must understand the phase and act accordingly.
Further, there were yinyang books, or almanacs, found in many tombs that showed the cycles of yin and yang to
assist even in daily routine.
So who will succeed the Zhou king? One who knows the cyles. (and so it was that the lord of Qin succeeded the
Zhou king and ruled by the phases of the Cosmic Resonance! -- of course, we're mixing up cause and effect.)

Cosmic Resonance 1
The universe entire is our emperor's realm. In the new ideology, the emperor is the master
of the universe.
I've put an annotated copy of Andrew Meyer's paper on Cosmic Resonance in my public
Dropbox folder. Here are my notes, which don't necessarily express Meyer's opinions:

Simultaneous non-linear causality, years ahead of Schrdinger. Action at a distance.

Starting as an interesting idea, cosmic resonance became the central philosophy of the Han dynasty.
Proofs for the concept are found in magnetism, phototropism, and harmonic resonance. That ain't bad for
the 3rd century BCE. From this engineer's point of view.
The Vital Essence or jing, is the means of communication at a distance, like the ether in 19th century
physics, only more spiritual. It's the refined form of qi, the substance of which all things are made.
Democritus had atoms, this is the Chinese equivalent of the fundamental substance. There is a sense of a
cross-cultural inevitability, of the philosophy in every age reaching for its unified theorem.
Spirit or shen is the entity responsible for consciousness, related to jing.
Cosmic Resonance is an emergent phenomenon, like shen, arising out of qi. It can't be understood or
articulated.

Now, onto the characteristics and principles:

Objects that are mutually resonant have similar shapes and fall into the same category.
Human relationships create a resonant affinity.
Qi is constantly in flux between yin and yang. (shades of Zhuangzi's / Puett's constant flux and
transformation). The winter solstice is the zenith of yin, the summer solstice for yang, and the equinoxes
bring a balance.
Further, qi has the five phases of the wu xing, which are the building blocks of the universe: Wood, Fire,
Earth, Metal, and Water. Two things that share a phase are linked by cosmic resonance. The phases also
cycle, with Wood strong in February, followed in 4 months by Fire, by Earth in two more months, then
Metal, then Water. Wood is the prime category with the greatest potency.
The ruler and master of the universe (Sherman McCoy, you ain't got nothing), brings harmony to his realm
by following the wu xing and carrying out the ordinances of each phase in its period.

Cosmic Resonance 2
The Spring and Autumn Annals, written at the Qin court, brings all the schools of thought under the
umbrella of Cosmic Resonance.
Things that share a likeness, stimulate, attract, and respond to each other: magnets, stringed
instruments. People mostly die at night because the night-time yin pulls up the sickness yin.
Daily almanacs and the Yin-Yang books gave the hour of the day that's best for each activity. Even
today, Chinese almanacs give the days that are most propitious for certain activities.
Things in human life - the colors of clothes, the seasons - resonate. They're in the same categories and thus are
linked, even if they're in different parts of our experience.

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Cosmic Resonance 3
Tianming of the Zhou vs Tian of the Qin and Han
On the face of it, the Qin lord discarded tianming on his way to becoming the
huangdi, the august thearch. Yet we're still talking about tian. Why?
The days of the Zhou heaven, a godlike figure who grants the right to rule,
those days are gone. Heaven is now the universe which obeys the principles
of cosmic resonance. Heaven is the qi, the yin and the yang, the five phases.
Qi and Yin/Yang and the Five Phases
Qi is the basic substance of the universe.
Yin and yang are the alternating kinds of qi. Sunlight and dark, male and female, heaven and
earth, light and heavy.
The five phases of change are annual cycles of qi within which yin and yang are also cycling.
Yin/yang and the five phases are both theories of nature which join together While in one phase,
the next phase is nascent within it, become more prevalent as the season progresses.

My Issue with Question 8

8. The Qin ruler no longer subscribed to Zhou religious beliefs, and sought to legitimize himself through a new
ideological system. At the top of the Zhou religious system is Heaven, which gives the Mandate to rule. In the
worldview promoted by Qin, is there a god, or gods?
Following the question, we have several possible answers, one of which is "yes, and the emperor is divinity
incarnate." Back in my notes, I have the Qin ruler appointing himself the huangdi, the august thearch, the god
among gods. So how is he not the divinity incarnate?
And now (weeks later, as I'm re-reading my notes) I'll answer my own issue: we've replaced the gods with the
pervasive substance of qi, in its many forms and phases.

The Qin-Han Text and the Meaning of Cosmic Resonance Theory

What is the point of Cosmic Resonance Theory? Is this about politics? About the natural world? Is Cosmic
Resonance Theory a form of what we today call "science"?
I believe this is a form of what we call science. It's based on observations of magnetism, phototropism, and
harmonic resonance. Does it pass the scientific method of observation, hypothesis, proof, and verification? No.
But that wasn't even established until the 17th century, so let's give the early Chinese some latitude.
Is it also about politics? Yes. It's a way to discard many of the Zhou and Shang rituals of ancestor worship and
impose the will of the emperor on the people, through his insistence that all follow the rules of Cosmic Resonance
and therefore his rules, since he administers the rules with the many hands of his bureaucracy.

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Lessons from the Qin Terracotta Warriors

The emperor was buried in a tomb intended as a
microcosm of the universe. The universe entire is
our emperor's realm.
He tried to find the elixir of immortality and
sidestep death, but failing that, he created a
tumulus, a man-made mountain, containing ranks
of life-size terracotta soldiers. The picture here is
from a replica built in Katy, Texas.
Technological vs Societal Innovation
Historians talk about technological innovation as
the basis for historical change. The Qin had iron
crossbows to arm their soldiers, but so did the
other states. What the Qin had that the others did
not was social mobilization.

Social Mobilization
The only way up in Qin society was to fight well and gain merit. This created the mass armies, symbolized so well
by the terracotta soldiers, that benefited from the new technologies of crossbows and iron bolts. In this case,
however, technology played only a supporting role. The star was the new society, a Spartan meritocracy of soldiers,
farmers, and bureaucrats.

Individuals Among the Masses

Westerners often think of the Chinese as a uniform people, their
individualism stripped away by a society that encourages ritual
sameness. The Qin is an example of the kind of society where
everyone must conform and be alike. But to think that
conformity necessarily buries the individual (so to speak) would
be a profound mistake.
A friend of the Professor once told him that he most admired
America's lack of individuality -- that the Chinese were too
individualistic. Ironic, eh?
If we look at the terracotta soldiers, the arms and legs and torsos
are identical. But the heads are all different, the faces and the hair, with enormous variation.
The Qin established how to mass produce these modules while maintaining a high level of individuality. That was a
unique accomplishment.

Epilogue: The Fall of Qin

As suddenly as the Qin arose, unifying all the states in ten years, it collapsed only ten years later under the reign of
the Second Emperor. The rise and fall of the Qin took only one generation, barely changing hands once, compared
to the forty generations of the Zhou dynasty. Why?
There's a story of two soldiers who were late reporting to duty. The punishment for tardiness would be death for
them and their families, so with nothing to lose they opted for revolution.
Was it the harshness of Qin law that doomed the dynasty? Did it expand too quickly, failing to secure its roots in
each conquered state before moving to the next? Or was it the poor leadership of the Second Emperor?
You might take from the story of the soldiers that a centralized bureaucratic empire could not last, that China would
return to Zhou feudalism.
The next module will explore why that's the wrong lesson.
(An aside: I thought the story of the soldiers was apocryphal, but Ebrey's Illustrated History of China says that "in
209 BC, a group of conscripted peasants delayed by rain decided to become outlaws[and] found thousands of
malcontents eager to join them." )

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Week 8: Making Empire Last: Western Han

Introduction
After the fall of the Qin, many thought the era of the centralized bureaucratic empire, ruled
by a single family that dispatched officials to all corners of the land, was gone as quickly as
it had arrived. But it was only the Qin that failed.
The Han dynasty showed how such an empire could last.

It built its success on three fronts:

Court Politics

Who makes decisions? What are their rivalries?

Institutional Tensions

Fundamental tensions that have to be resolved for the polity to survive.

Ideology

With all the power of the empire in one place, what limits the Huangdi?

Historical Overview
The Han was a compromise between the Qin centralized bureaucracy and Zhou feudal aristocracy. Half of the
empire was divided into kingdoms which the Qin had conquered and dismantled and now under the Han were
struggling for power in the central court.
In 154 BCE the princes of those kingdoms revolted and were barely suppressed. In the north, the Xiongnu raided.
To quell the raid, beginning in 201 BCE the Han began sending Liu princesses with lavish dowries to marry
Xiongnu leaders, a practice called heqin.
From 141 to 87 BCE, Emperor Wu (aka Wudi), the great grandson of Liu Bang (aka Gaozu), curtailed the territories
of the feudal princes, centralized power, campaigned against the Xiongnu, and sent expeditions to Central Asia and
Vietnam, bringing the Han to its maximum territorial extent. To avoid raising individual taxes, he minted coin,
monopolized industries and taxed private business.
Wudi adopted Confucianism, requiring the Book of Odes or Shijing, and the Book of Documents or Shangshu for
education of bureaucrats.
In 9 CE, Wang Mang took the throne, ending the Western Han and founding the Xin. He failed in his attempt to
restore the Zhou as described in the Confucian classics.

Court Politics
The Han begins with a rebellion against the Qin, followed by an interregnum called the New
Dynasty, before the Han Dynasty is restored.
The Han Dynasty lasts 400 years, including the former Han with its capital at Chang'an, the
interregnum, and the Eastern Han with its capital at Luoyang.

Why does the Qin fall?

Because the emperor spent all his time seeking immortality? Because his son, the second emperor, listened too
much to the chief eunuch to avoid public appearances? Or because he was so arrogant and dictatorial as to burn the
books of antiquity and bury the scholars alive?

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Stories of the Han Court

When Liu Bang asks his chief allies why they were successful, they tell him he's a great
commander. He replies that it was them: Han Xin, for leading men in battle; Xiao He for his
skill with logistics; Zhang Liang for his strategy. But Liu Bang understood how to manage men.
His deep understanding, however, stopped at the feet of his wife, the Empress Lu, and in
frustration with her, he turned to concubines. When the Empress Lu saw that the sons of the
concubines threatened the birthright of her son, the heir apparent, she first maneuvered to stop
the concubine and then, after Liu Bang died, she killed the concubine and her clan and all other
threats to her son's rule.
Until she died in 180 BCE, the Empress Lu ruled the dynasty through her son's hands.
A generation later, a revolt from the Eastern Kingdoms threatened the house of Liu. Apparently the Emperor Jing,
when he was boy, had killed an heir of one of the Eastern kings, inciting a grudge that swung back around years
later. The revolution was put down and the Han reached a great height of power under Emperor Wu.

The Beheading in the Sutra Hall

Two or three generations later, in 9 AD, the Han falls to Wang Mang, an episode that
illustrates the personal animosities of the court and was dramatized in an opera.
Filial and Spousal Devotion at their Finest
Wu Han was a general serving Wang Mang. Wang Mang offered him his
daughter to marry. After they were wed, Wu Han's mother revealed to
Wu Han the shocking news that his father had been killed by Wang Mang.
To avenge his father's death, Wu Han must now kill his wife, the princess,
Wang Mang's daughter. Torn between the love for his wife and the
unbreakable duty to his father, he goes before his wife to explain.
She does what any good and loving wife would do and kills herself to
relieve him of his terrible decision. Learning of her suicide and knowing
Wu Han will never forgive her, his mother kills herself. Wu Han gathers
his mother's bones and sets out to avenge his family by joining the Han
prince, Liu Xiu, to defeat Wang Mang and restore the Han dynasty. It's a
tangled story of love and devotion, showing how loyalties at court are
complex and divided between the state, father, mother, and wife.

What Can Court Politics Explain?

Not much. Liu Bang is skilled at managing men in a dynasty under threat and in a court filled with tension. Yet
somehow the dynasty survived.
My thoughts: perhaps it explains, at least in part, why the Qin failed. If the first emperor had stronger advisors and
if the second emperor was stronger than his advisors, perhaps the Qin would have lasted at least a bit longer.

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Centralism vs. Regionalism

China is composed of regions:

North China Plain

NW behind the passes, where Chang'an, the capital is located
SE, marshy and wet, good for rice
Sichuan

Should these regions be centrally administered or should they have their own governments?
Should taxes be the same for rice vs. wheat regions, which have different harvest calendars and different issues
with resources? In the north, the fields are flat, but the SE needs investment in rice paddies and irrigation.
Should policies be the same (one kind of fairness) or take into account natural regional differences in wealth
and population (another kind of fairness)?
Central power is necessary for defense and for investment in multi-regional projects, like canals. But the Qin
suffered from too much central power with no regional variation.
To me, this is not unlike the great debate in the founding of the 13 colonies of the United States, of how much power
the federal government should have over the colonies. The dispute almost broke up the union in its infancy, leading
to the clumsy electoral college system and rearing up again with the civil war. Even now the inflammatory phrase
states' rights remains an issue that needs periodic adjudication in the U.S. Supreme Court, impacting marijuana
laws, public school funding, and the incipient question of a federal VAT. It is a particularly thorny issue.
The Han chose to divide the country into those territories ruled directly by the Chang'an capital - the West,
Northwest, and Sichuan - and the territory in the East governed by their respective kingdoms. Thus the Han restored
some independence to the old Zhou feudal states, which they used to advance their sons into power, which then
threatened the Han and eventually became an outright revolt in 154 BCE. And this forces the Han to return to the
Qin mode of bureaucratic centralization.

Feudalism vs. Bureaucracy

Feudalism: The ruler delegates territorial authority to an official, who has limited authority over the law, the
judiciary and administration, taxation, infrastructure, building and investment. But no military authority, although in
the Han the kingdoms took some military power.
The great advantage is that of any direct representational government (e.g. congress vs. the senate) where power
derives locally. Make the locals miserable and you won't stay in power - a good thing.
Bureaucracy: The ruler dispatches administrators whose authority is limited to carrying out the laws and policies
of the central government. The power and wealth of the administrator derives from the center. His career is focused
on the central bureaucracy, since his regional appointment is only a temporary post. His performance is judged by
how well he serves the central government. He makes the locals happy only to the extent that their needs align with
the wishes of the central government.
Qin vs Han: The Han tried for a balance while the Qin administered all regions centrally. As a result, the Han
builds a large civil bureaucracy numbering upwards of 120,000 people.
This confuses me: if the Han is delegating authority to the kingdoms, why does it need a large bureaucracy?
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Heredity vs. Merit

How to recruit officials? By lineage or worthiness? My thought: Doesn't this go back to Yao, Shun and Yu, the
meritocracy of the Sage Kings?
Hereditary Right or Protection (Yin) Privilege
Should the right to hold office be inherited? Sometimes, as with nobility, you directly inherit the title from your
father or grandfather. In practice, high officials obtain the right to see their sons or grandsons take office or become
eligible for official rank.
Merit
Should the right to hold office be awarded for performance? Merit comes from success in battle, educational
achievement, or gaining a competence or specialization in a discipline like law.
Qin vs. Han
The Qin had a strict meritocracy.
The Han, with its early balance of feudalism, allows protection privilege for high-ranking officials, giving officials
convicted of crimes the opportunity to buy off their punishments. (Unless they're poor historians who can't afford
it.)
At the same time, Han recruited new officials chosen for merit in the form of honesty, filial devotion, and high
morals. Schools in the capital were another path to the bureaucracy. People who rose through schooling tend to
think merit was good.
The problem is that smart, talented people are not necessarily honest. This leads to the argument, questionable as it
may be, that hereditary right is superior because it avoids promoting the crafty and talented yet potentially dishonest
people, choosing instead those who have grown up with the system and are loyal to the people within it.

Civil vs. Military

How do we divide resources between civil and military uses, regardless of
whether they administered by a regional or central authority,?
Military resources generally go toward territorial expansion. Civil uses
include roads, canals, and tax relief.
The Qin always set the military above the civil, but the Han dynasty did not,
accumulating resources until, by the time of Emperor Wu, "the grain was
turning red with mildew" and the ropes holding the strings of cash were rotting. Wu applied the excess resources to
military expansion.

Han Military Expansion

The expansion took Wudi into Korea and
Vietnam. He pushed his empire southwest,
around the mountains and through the
valleys of what we now call the Burma
Road. He hammered north against the
Xiongnu. And far, far northwest into the
desert.
At first the empire met with success, but
over time the distant garrisons stretched
their logistics and drained their resources,
demanding greater revenue and shifting the
balance of civil and military.

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Inner vs. Outer Court

Inner Court: The emperor and his attendants, which include the regents, the empress, the relatives and the relatives
of concubines, and the eunuchs. Their power derives from the emperor, so they want his power to be absolute.
Outer Court: The civil bureaucracy: administrators, tax officials, judiciary, and military officials. All of these
may rise to the rank of prime minister or chief counselor. They want rational policy rather than arbitrary diktat.
They don't like the eunuchs in the ear of the emperor. They want policy decisions made by their people.
Qin: The first emperor had total control, but his bureaucracy was also effective. With the second emperor, the
inner court gains authority. The eunuchs convince the emperor to restrict his public appearances, giving the inner
court power that it handled poorly.
Han: Empress Lu tries to accord herself power, but generally the bureaucracy agrees that the House of Liu should
be in control.

Court Women and Consort Families

Consort families often included high officials and daughters of emperors and regents.
Given the role of Empress Lu in subverting the House of Liu, it's been typical of Chinese
historiography to blame the conflicts of the dynastic courts on the role of women and the families
of women married to emperors.
While we know of the factional fighting in Wu's court, one could argue that the consort families
in the Han were successful in bridging the inner and outer courts.

The Balancing Act

The Han begins by changing some of the Qin policies:

Makes room for hereditary right

Allows greater regionalism, restoring feudal lords to power
Focuses on the domestic over the military

Gradually, however, the Han dynasty moves back toward the Qin policies but less harshly, allowing regional
flexibility and accepting input from official families. This flexibility, despite the problems with the inner court and
sometimes without great leadership, is why the Han succeeds.
They balance the tensions between center and region, merit and hereditary right, civil and military.

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Discussion
Choose an event from one of these and explain in terms of court politics and institutional conflicts

The fall of Qin

The rule of Empress Lu
The rebellion of 154 BCE

I apologize for giving this short shrift - it's divisional weekend in American football, my family is visiting, and
time is short.
I'm choosing the rebellion as it seems to me to represent a turning point in the acceptance of a central authority
for Chinese government.
Let's start with the Qin dynasty, which struggled with maintaining its power base through its early imposition of
a harsh and heavy-handed central bureaucracy over the feudal lords. An uprising destroyed the dynasty
shortly after it had begun.
So the Han tries to balance central and regional power, in much the same way, it seems to me, that the early
central (federal) government of the United States tried to balance power with the southern states. The southern
states rebelled to maintain their 'way of life' which was counter to federal policy, resulting in the U.S. Civil
War. A bit simplistic, but it demonstrates the parallel.
In a similar vein, the feudal lords rebelled to resist the imposition of the emperor's edicts.
Liu Pi, the feudal lord of Wu, already hated Emperor Jing because of the killing of Liu Pi's heir Liu Xian by the
Emperor when he was crown prince during their famous game of liubo. A member of the inner court, Chao
Cuo, a long advisor to the Emperor, suggested that Liu Pi was destined to rebel someday anyway, so he
encouraged inciting the rebellion before the feudal lords gained strength.
When the rebellion began, Jing first tried to appease Liu Pi by executing Chao Cuo, but that accomplished
nothing since the personal animosity was between Liu Pi and Emperor Jing. Chao Cuo was merely an
instrument. This was a power struggle between an angry feudal lord and the Emperor.
By quelling the rebellion and imposing a central authority over all Chinese lands, Jing established the balance
of power as originating from the center and put the feudal aristocracy firmly in the past.

How to Constrain the Emperor

Wudi was the second most powerful emperor after Liu Bang (Gaozu).
Several sources advocate the emperor controlling a dynasty and all the people in the dynasty
centrally with absolute power: the Huainanzi written under the patronage of Liu An, one of the
Liu princes.
How do we limit the power the emperor wields? What forces will best restrain him (or her)?

History as an Answer (Sima Qian)

With his father, Sima Qian wrote the Shiji. It's a classic text worthy of having thoughtful
annotations and interpretations in the copies scribed during the Ming dynasty.
We have additional readings in a PDF file.
It begins with Basic Annals, going back to mythical emperors like Huangdi. It has treatises extended discussions of the history of law, of the building of canals and damning the Yellow river,
of the economy, the tax system, the calendar. Half the book consists of biographies, which become
a standard feature of later historiographies.
Sima Qian tells us that he saw how the patterns of heaven and humankind were parallel. He sought
and failed to find universal patterns in history. What he did find, however, was that while lists of
facts and events and court records provide the warp and weft of history, it's the motivations of the
most powerful individuals, revealed through their biographies, that colors the past and gives us
understanding.
Sima Qian is neither a fan of the Qin or of Wudi and his expansionist policies. But he also says that
the problems of the Han did not occur overnight, nor could they be changed overnight.
Here's a story of Sima Qian: he defended the honor of an official accused of being a traitor. In punishment for
speaking out, Sima Qian was sentenced to castration. Because of his rank, he could buy off the punishment but
lacking the money he chose painful humiliation rather than suicide. He writes a letter explaining that he accepted
castration so he could finish his book.
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Sima Qian: The Sacred Duty of the Historian

This is a pdf from Chapter 12 of the Sources of Chinese Tradition, Vol 1. The Chinese
historian transmits his sources as accurately as possible, adding only enough color and
conjunctive text as necessary. Han scholars believed that history followed the cycles of
yin/yang and the five phases of CRT.
Sima Tan began The Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) and his son, Sima Qian finished
them. He divided the work into five sections: Basic Annals, Chronological Tables, Treatises,
Hereditary Houses, Memoirs. Subsequent historians followed this pattern.

Confucian Classics as an Answer

Dong Zhongshu was considered the great Confucian of the Western Han. He writes a book on cosmic resonance.
He's interested in governance. He believes the Classics are the model for the Han, that the Zhou provided
normative models for governance.
The Documents record the achievement of agents.
The Classics of Odes, the unspoiled naturalness of human will.
The Classic of Changes explains heaven and earth.
The Spring and Autumn Annals judge right and wrong.
The Rites regulate distinctions and introduce self-cultivation and his rule in
politics.
So what made the Han accept the Classics as an authority? They began with Confucius, cosmic resonance, and
Daoism. Because the Classics had become popular with people at all levels of government and because they
represented educational achievement that was valuable in a meritocracy.
The Classics said: we need a ruler, but above the ruler are standards of governance.
Yu Wen Explains the Five Classics (Wujing)
The Classics are living traditions.

The books are read like Hebrew, back to front, left to right, but the text is in columns, with pages folded, which
traces back to the original bamboo strips on which they wrote.
1. The Classic of Odes (Shi Jing) is an
anthology of 305 songs or poems. They
contain within them a spontaneous spirit that
shines a light on the morality of rule in
society.
2. The Classic of Documents (Shangshu) is the record of
political actions of the Sage kings. They teach the reader the
deeper political and moral principles of the sage kings.
3. The Book of Rites (Liji) is a collection of essays, believed
to be from Confucius and his followers, about self cultivation.
4. The Book of Changes (Yijing - I Ching). Contains 64
hexagrams: stacked lines, some broken and some solid, each
of which has a different name. The 64 hexagrams are
different combinations of eight trigrams. Scholars believe
each hexagram was originally created by the sage kings, through their ability to see the deeper mechanisms of the
cosmos. We might use them today to explain human affairs. When we have questions or troubles, people arrange
milfoil stalks to generate certain hexagrams.
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The Yijing also has an appended verbalization, the Xici Zhuan, which philosophized how the hexagrams were
created by the sage kings and why they link the natural world and human affairs.
5. The Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu), a historical record of the history of the State of Lu, written by
Confucius to let people know his political and moral opinions.

Interpreting the Portents from Heaven

We see accounts in the Western Han of officials recording natural events - eclipses, floods - as signs that the cycles
of heaven and earth, as described by cosmic resonance, were not in balance. These events were seen as evidence of
evil lurking at court. The Han took this seriously, sometimes making tax remissions to the entire empire, not just the
region affected by a flood.

Conclusion
These three forces - the sense of history, the Classics, and the natural portents - all came together in the usurpation
of Wang Mang.

Discussion
The discussion of Qin imperial ideology noted the belief in the emperors power to control the universe. In what
ways do the three forms of scholarship discussed in this module challenge or reinforce a conception of imperial
power. Write a sentence or two about each:
Following are my thoughts:
History
Perhaps the greatest influence of the historian is to create the fear of legacy. If not for history, if not for a
sense of one's position in a stream of events, of being judged in the future, what restraint would emperors
feel? We talk about a U.S. President burnishing his legacy in his lame duck years when he no longer
strives for reelection.
This is the fear the great man has of that little man or woman, fifty years hence, writing the definitive
history of the emperor's reign.
Sima Qian was that little man. His sacred duty was to do in years hence what he could not do while alive,
to wake the emperor at night with the fear of what others might say.
Confucian Classics
What's a legacy without a standard for comparison? Confucius presents the highest standard, heaven, with
the sage kings as an example of how to meet its standards.
Portents from Heaven
This was a belief in a greater power which exercising its right to discipline the ruler's moral failures.
Confucius shows the past, Sima Qian threatens future judgment, and right now the heavens are flooding the
rivers and eclipsing the sun. It gives the emperors something to think about.

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Week 9: State and Society in Western and Eastern Han

Historical Overview: Wang Mang and Eastern Han
9 CE:

Wang Mang overthrew the Han and created the Xin Dynasty. This is the interregnum referenced in Week
8. The Xin was a failed attempt to recreate the ideals of the Zhou.

25-220 Liu Xiu founded the Eastern Han in Luoyang and reigned for 27 years. The Eastern Han would continue,
slowing weakening its grip amid the growing influence of Religious Daoism, which inspired a rebellion
named the Way of Great Peace (Taiping Dao) in 184 CE. The rebellion continued to burn for 40 more
years before the Han ended.

State and Society in Western and Eastern Han

How did the Han State relate to the common people? The last week we focused on the bureaucracy, the
centralization of power, the politics of the courts of the empire. This week is about the average Joe paying his taxes
and occasionally getting sufficiently fed up with the empire to take part in rebellion.
There were more internal rebellions than foreign invasions. So how the government relates to its own people is
fundamental to its success.
A. Given the location of county seats, where do you think the bulk of the Han population was located?
the Northern Plains
B. Based on the series of maps of Western and Eastern Han territory, what in your view were the most important
areas of Han territorial expansion?
They almost always held the SE and always held the north China plain. When possible, they expanded up
toward Korea and NW to the silk road.
C. What is the relationship between territorial expansion and population/county administration?
They located county administration sparsely, and with likely logistical issues SW toward Sichuan and NW
toward the mountain passes.

What is State? What is Society?

These terms are not well-defined until the 19th century. What meaning do they have in
retrospect? Ideally, and in accordance with Chinese tradition, the political order defines the
social and cultural order.
Places, People, Practices
What are the places, people, and practices that make up state and society?

State: Places, People, and Practices

Places

Capital city
Secondary & tertiary (regional?) capitals
Government centers to administer taxes, adjudicate law
Military bases and border garrisons

People

Civil officials
Military officers and soldiers
People working in court

Small percent of the population

Practices

Tax administration
Criminal justice
Defense and territorial expansion (fielding an army)
Education

The Chinese term for education was not the modern word (jiaoyu) but jiaohua, which means to transform through
instruction. Not entirely clear, this may mean the government carrying out rituals, worship the gods, hold proper
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celebrations. It may mean teaching moral and ethical values. It may mean training civilized, literate members of
government.

Society from the State's Perspective

Guan Zhong, from the Warring States period, defines four groups of people

What criteria define the hierarchy? What alternative hierarchies might there be?
It is often said that in the four-part social order (first mentioned in the writings of Guan Zhong), the merchants are
ranked lowest because they do not produce more resources for society, unlike the farmers or the artisans. But when
you think about it, the shi, or the officials, dont exactly bring food to the table either. What do you think might be
the real logic behind this hierarchy? What alternative hierarchies might there be?
My answers (a little disjoint)
Closeness to Heaven
The officials are closest to heaven, through their relationship with the government, particularly in the Zhou
system where the government has Heaven's Mandate. Farmer's are next, as they work the land and are
closest to nature (Zhuangzi). Artisans work with nature less directly than farmers, but they have creative
aspects to their work, like the Butcher Ding. Merchants do not work with nature.
Mohist Logic
Officials, Artisans/Farmers, Merchants. Officials are highest because the ancients think it's right (heaven's
mandate). Artisans serve at the pleasure of the officials, making the bronze vessels and other ritual tools.
Farmers supply the goods. You can argue for farmers or artisans, either way.
In retrospect: I got completely lost in the philosophy of the warring states period and forgot that it was all about the
state.
The State Hierarchy
The hierarchy is about the value to the state: officials, then revenue-producing farmers, then artisans who work the
goods and the merchants at the bottom.

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Society: Places, People, and Practices

Based on a kinship system, less hierarchical, more horizontal.
Places

Villages
Markets
Roads

Local, regional, with their own characteristics.

People

90% are farmers

Households and families
Hierarchy based on wealth, family power, culture

Practices

Farming, food production

Procreation
o Marriage with kinship ties to other families
Education in society meant learning how to work: weaving textiles, raising silkworms, farming.
Religion: how to please the local gods and ask favors of them

Marriage Networks
Until the 2nd half of the 20th century, you were not supposed to marry within the same
surname. In China, with a limited set of surnames, ten or fewer for most of the
population, this practice often forced people to marry outside of their village.

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The Different Logics of State and Society

The state follows the abstract hierarchical logic of bureaucracy to command people. Society uses the personal logic
of kinship to connect people. Kinship, however, doesn't scale like bureaucracy.
Viewing China from the top down, it makes sense to see the state in terms of the policy decisions at court. But deep
inside rural China, far from the center, we think in terms of the families and of farming and trade among a local
network of roads and villages.

What's the balance between state and society? Who has the upper hand?

Extracting Resources: The Han Taxation System

What demands did the Han impose on the population after overthrowing the Qin and establishing its empire?
Agricultural Taxes
Agricultural taxes were a percentage of production. The Qin assessed 1/15th of production. The Han reduced that
to 1/30th.
Production
4-5 bushels of wheat per acre
5-7 acres in a typical family farm
20-35 bushels per farm
No household could reasonably farm more than 10 acres without oxen. By comparison, a 1935 U.S. wheat farmer
produced 12 bushels per acre, barely doubling production in two millennia. Not until Norman Borlaug's green
revolution did agricultural production soar to its current levels, tripling in a few decades to 35 bushels per acre.
Borlaug won a Nobel Peace Prize and is known as The Man Who Saved a Billion Lives.
In the late '70s, a group of Chinese agronomists toured the United States and were told about the high levels of
production in North and South Dakota. They refused to believe it was possible.

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Poll Taxes
Families paid a head tax for each person in Chinese cash.
Age
15-56
7-15

Adults
Children

Assessment
120
20

How do we measure the value of these amounts? A wealthy Western Han merchant might make 20,000 cash. A
typical tax on a three-child family might then be 300 cash, or 1.5% for the wealthy merchant.
Wanting to increase the population, in 189 BCE the Han imposed a tax of 600 cash on unmarried adult women. One
can surmise that 600 cash is a large enough amount to change social behavior, so we can assume the poll tax was not
insignificant.
Property Taxes
Assessed at a rate of 1.2%, or 120 cash per 10,000 in property on farmers.
Corve Labor
During the offseason, when not farming, adult males were expected to provide one month of labor to the state,
building roads and dikes, digging canals, etc. This practice continued right through the 1960's.
At the age of 23, males received military training and were liable to be called up in a draft to the age of 56.
Overall Impact of Taxes
The average farm in the early Han dynasty would pay:

1 bushel of wheat (1/30th of the 30 or so bushels)

poll tax: 300 cash
property tax (100 or so cash)
1 month of labor per adult male

My thoughts: this is not insignificant, especially considering how remote the government must have seemed to a
rural farmer.
Even though the Han rolled back the taxes imposed by the Qin Dynasty, since the government was
not active in using its wealth, a great tax surplus accumulated. Perhaps there's truth to the notion
that if the government has money, it will find a use. When Wudi took the throne, he used that
surplus to fund a huge territorial expansion (see Han Military Expansion on page 16) into Korea in
the NE, against the Xiongnu in the north, along the Silk route in the NW, and Vietnam in the SE.
The expansion exhausted the surplus, forcing the empire to raise the state's income.
How do you get the state to extract more funds from society?

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Four Options for State-Society Relations

1: Emperor Wu's Expansion of State
Wudi's court wanted to increase production rather than raise taxes on farmers. How?
a. Urge farmers (Nudge them ala Cass Sunstein?) to move to under-populated open land near the borders, to reduce
the logistics of getting grain to the garrisons.
b. Have large land owners expand their estates and use their servants and tenants farm the land, through the owner's
private investment.
c. Doubled property taxes on merchants and artisans from 3% to 6%. Guan Zhong would approve. Since these
folks could easily hide their wealth, they offered a 50% reward for informers. (How effective would this be in
rural society where the dominating force is kinship? Perhaps that's not where the artisans and merchants live.)
d. Lastly, they took over industries.
i) Iron became a state monopoly.
ii) Salt became a state monopoly. Salt was the main preservative for food.
iii) The state played a role in wholesale trade, moving goods to equalize trade and taking some of the profits.
These policies worked to raise revenue. One could argue that they hurt merchants and harmed the commercial
economy, but they also funded the military campaigns that opened the trade routes in the N and NW, connecting SE
Asia and the Han dynasty, which helped the market economy.
The policies caused a backlash among those people known as the Confucian officials.

2: Confucian Resistance to State Expansion

The opponents of Wudi's expansionist policies looked to a different society:

with less need for cash, where taxes were collected in kind.
with less need for commerce, where state-owned industries like mining and smelting and trading, were
returned to private industry and merchants.
where there was less of a difference in wealth between large landowners and small farmers
where agrarian society was built upon self-sufficient villages with a simpler and less commercial economy

They got their day in Court and some policies were retrenched, some State intrusion into private wealth was
reduced, but they weren't able to limit the size of land holding.
The Salt and Iron debates took place in this year.

3: Wang Mang's Interregnum

Wang Mang was the Confucian-trained bureaucrat who usurped the Han throne to return China to
the ideals of the Zhou dynasty, creating the Xin dynasty that lasted from 9 to 23 CE. His goals
combined Wudi's statist policies with the demands of the Confucian officials.
One difference, however, was the Confucian scholars wanted to reduce the military expansion, to
eliminate the need for raising revenues. Wang Mang wanted a wealthy expansionist state, with state monopolies
that brought in revenue.
He agreed with the Confucian officials on the control of private wealth, forbidding the private sale of land, returning
the land to the state, instead, for redistribution, to limit the size of private estates.
He forbid the slave trade. He forbid private lending for interest.
In a move to absorb the fortunes of the wealthy, he introduced a new currency, turning existing wealth worthless.

Han Coin
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Wang Mang's policies were terminated by a rebellion in 23 CE. In fact, Wang Mang's policies were
far more statist than Wudi's. While Emperor Wu increased private wealth and estates, Wang Mang
took over the economy and the wealth of private society, creating a more equal society with his
dynasty in control of the distribution of wealth.
The word Xin, for new or renewing was adopted in the 1070's under Wang Anshi, and in the
1950's with the policies of Xin Zhongguo under Mao Zedong, for the same statist approach as
Mang Wang.

4: Eastern Han
The fourth option is the gradual withdrawal of state from society, from
responsibility for social and public welfare.
There was a great flooding of the Yellow River in the north that was part
of the reason for the rebellion in 23 CE that brought down the Xin. The
resulting disorder encouraged banditry, including military bandits.
Great families took control over their own protection from violence,
diminishing the state's role and therefore its powers.
Scholar-officials (the Confucian officials) plotted against the eunuchs of
the inner court, in the famous proscription of 167-184 CE. The eunuchs
found out and attacked the officials, forcing them out of government and
into the countryside where they built their own rural estates.
Above is a mural taken from the Wuliang
Shrine of the Wu family, showing the river
god Hebo driving a chariot pulled by fish.
On the heels of the proscription came the Yellow Turban Rebellion, led by the faithful of the
Way of Great Peace (Taiping Dao). The generals who quelled it gained power in government
and began to fight each other.
In 220 CE, the Han is divided into three kingdoms each led by a general.
The rebel movements were often religious. Between 132 and 193 CE, at least 14 rebels proclaimed themselves the
Son of Heaven. Each time a rebellion was suppressed, the generals gained in power and the state withdrew further
from society.
As the state withdraws from local society, private power rushes in, forcing state monopolies and state factories to
shut down. The state buys weapons from contractors instead of its own industries. It stops providing relief from
natural disasters, fails to control bandits, fails to limit the great families.
Between 2 CE and 140 CE, the population recorded by the state census diminishes from 60 million to 10 million, a
combination of loss of life and a loss of state control over populated areas.
Confucian Magnates. These are the families of the Confucian officials that had been forced
into the countryside. They build walled estates with watchtowers (we know this from the
pottery models found in tombs). They had private armies, yet they represented culture and
leadership.

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Simulation of the Salt and Iron Debate

Prof. Bol plays the role of Huo Guang (presumably the Lord Grand Secretary from the
readings), regent of the fourteen-year-old Emperor Zhao, the son of Wudi. Huo Guang is
from a consort family, but he has the real power.
Questions for the literati: what kind of society and economy do you want and how
would you achieve it?
My discussion post, from the perspective of the Lord Grand Secretary:
What kind of economy and why must the government intervene? In answer to the Confucians, we have
to understand that the people are simple and should pursue simple aims. It's the obligation of the Son of
Heaven (and his servant, yours truly) to allow those simple aims to satisfy their needs. Therefore, the state
should control the industries they need (iron and salt) so the people have the means for the fundamental
pursuit. It's the obligation of the Son of Heaven to equalize distribution, so the farmers that produce more
in one region can feed those with draught or flooding in another.
Future Development. China must expand to protect its pursuit of the ideal life. Barbarians who would
raid from the north must be stopped to protect our simple agrarian needs on the frontiers. Our northern
villages should not suffer for the mere fact of their geography. While the villages in the central plains may
not feel an urgency, it's the obligation of the Son of Heaven to feel each man's needs. We must expand to
protect the north and therefore we must raise revenues to fund the cost of protecting our villages.
As long as the Xiongnu dwell in the north, these policies will be necessary. While Confucius might say
that a policy of wu wei would eventually conquer the Xiongnu, Mencius would tell us that the barbarians
are indeed, not human. They do not feel the pain of a toddler falling into a well. We will have to conquer
the Xiongnu.

The State's Retreat - Harbinger of the Aristocratic Age

When the Han broke into three kingdoms, they were briefly united as one. Then the tribal peoples of the north
invaded, driving the leading clans south, and ushering in a new Aristocratic Age.
In this new age, the government ceded control over recruitment of its officials to the local
elites who made that status hereditary.
This began the nine-rank system, the jiupin system, that ranks the eligibility of individuals
to become officials, giving elite families control over who serves in government.

Reflections On China's First Great Empire

A unified empire is a wobbly pivot. It's institutions change, it's beset by court politics, it's always challenged to
balance the interests of powerful groups within and without the government.
For the dynasty to survive, it has to balance the interests of these groups. The Han did it well for 400 years.
What did the common people think? We don't have records. We do know that they staged the Yellow Turban
Rebellion and the Five Packs of Rice Rebellion. The religious quality of these rebellions tell us of their desire for
spiritual fulfillment, community, mutual aid, and help for the poor.
When and how would they get what they wanted and whose responsibility would it be?

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Week 10: Self-Realization in the Medieval World

(From the final office hours: Medieval, in this course, refers to the period after the Han empire and before the SuiTang unification of north and south.)

Historical Overview

The medieval period is a complex history of division between north and south.
Date (CE)
220

221
263
265
280
281
304

311

Event
Fall of the Han dynasty. The Yellow Turbans were a religious group that preached the Way of
Great Peace and challenged the Han. The Han built an army to suppress them, an army that grew
in power, leading to civil war. General Cao Cao joined forces with the Han, becoming dictator of
northern China. His son, Cao Pi, forced the last Han emperor to abdicate and created the Wei
dynasty.
Rise of the Three Kingdoms.
Wei defeats Shu.
Sima family takes the throne, creating the Jin dynasty.
The Jin defeats the Wu and the Western Jin is complete, briefly uniting China.
Jin Dynasty, superseded Wei, defeated Wu, briefly unified China.
In the capital at Luoyang, tensions grew between cultural Chinese (Hanren) and non-Chinese
northern tribes.
Liu Yuan, a sinified (assimilated) Xiongnu declared himself King of Han.
Liu Yuan's son sacks Luoyang, sending inhabitants fleeing south across the Yangtze.

Northern Dynasties
327

386-535

577

Sixteen Kingdoms. For a century, tribal groups dominate politics, society, and the economy.
Though the northern tribes showed some interest in Buddhism and Chinese forms of government,
most were better suited to fighting than governing.
Northern Wei. The most successful of the northern states was ruled by the Xianbei Tuoba clan,
originally from southern Manchuria. They adopted a Chinese surname and ordered the use of
Chinese language and attire at court in their capital at Luoyang, now a city of a half million with
ornate palaces and 1000 Buddhist monasteries.
The dynasty ended amid tribal feuds and civil war.
Northern Zhou. Restored unity in the north.

Southern Dynasties
316-420

548

Eastern Jin. After escaping the destruction of northern China, officials installed a Jin prince in the
new capital of the south, Jiankang (modern Nanjing).
This was followed by the southern dynasties: Song, Qi, Liang, and Chen.
The hereditary aristocracy and northern migrs identified with the Han and sought to maintain the
Chinese ideals of the scholar official while developing new forms of individual expression in
literature, calligraphy, and painting.
Chen Dynasty. The tribal leader Hou Jing laid siege to Jiankang and created the Chen dynasty.

Reunification
589

Sui Dynasty.

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Four Strands of Aristocratic Culture

Like the Mediterranean, China was hit by a barbarian invasion, diluting the ideology of the empire and creating
fertile ground for new religious movements. In the West, this led to Christianity. In China, several religions arose,
the most important of which was Buddhism.
While the West turned primarily to feudal aristocracy, China differed between north and south.
The north was overtaken by tribes that didn't speak, read, or write Chinese, and fought among themselves and within
the tribes. The elite Chinese clans that bore the authority and responsibility for governing were driven south to
establish themselves in exile. Even as the dynasties rose and fell, these clans maintained a common thread across
them.
This week, we'll look at the cultural endeavors that had a lasting impact on China and East Asia while at the same
time working against the unification of an empire, which wasn't restored until the late sixth century (I presume with
the Sui Dynasty). And when a unified empire was restored, it came from the semi-foreign clans of the north rather
than the displaced aristocracies now rooted in the south.
These aristocracies had turned away from trying to restore empire and looked deeper for a foundation upon which to
build their lives. They were discovering themselves, looking to:

revelations
heaven and earth
us
Buddhism

The Learning of Mystery

Conformity vs. Naturalness
The Learning of Mystery (xuanxue) was also known as neo-Daoism or Confucian-Daoism.
It's connected to another trend called pure conversation (qingtan). The premise is Daoistic:
that things develop on their own by their own tendencies and we should not interfere.
Guo Xiang says everything is spontaneous. (which, to me, sounds a lot like Zhuangzi)
The learning of mystery may have started as a search for a new political order, seeking that order in nature herself.
Since the political reality didn't allow for a new order, the movement shifted to a justification of non-conformity.
The idea of naturalness, of spontaneity, argues for non-conformance to social and political norms.
Ji Kang, one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, writes to Shan Tao: one who acts
naturally is superior to people who try to get ahead by conforming to society's standards or
the demands of government.
The seven men were devoted to literary creativity, song, music, and drink. And the
transcendence of all worldly attachments.
Liu Ling, one of the Seven, was naked in his house when a friend arrived. The friend is offended.
Liu Ling smiles and says, the world is my house. Who invited you into my trousers?
For people like this, refusing to serve in government is a way to show their uncorrupted purity.
In fact, their refusal to server made them even more attractive to government, as the presence of the pure blesses the
court, the government, and the ruler with their virtue.

Annotation (My Notes)

Each of the myriad things has its own natural capacity. If we include ourselves among the myriad things, then what
is Guo Xiang's message:
Do not strive to achieve, let life come to you. Find the natural being that is within you and you will
spontaneously reach your greatest potential.
If you strive for your own success, then you're assuming that striving must precede fulfillment, that there is
cause and effect. If even the Dao had no antecedent cause, then why would we as creatures of nature be
able to drive ourselves logically towards fulfillment? Instead, we must let our natural capacities lead us to
the potential that is within ourselves and within nature, spontaneously, without cause. We must not
interfere with nature or with our own natural path.

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From Non-Conformity to Fatalism

If we each develop to our own biologically endowed inclinations, then some of us will develop as
better human beings than others.
Xie An quit government to be pure, retreating to his estate. A courtier suggested to the emperor that
Xie An had a singing girl to indulge his desires, that he's a hypocrite. The emperor replied that it's
good to know he shared the desires of men as he would also share our worries.
Eventually Xie An returned to court, became a great general, and led the south against a northern invasion in a
famous battle.
Pure Conversation (qingtan) captures the essence of a person through anecdote, like the story of
Xie An. There was an interest in collecting anecdotes as a means of judging and ranking people.
This fits with an aristocratic culture that thrives on ranking and assumes that people of the clan will
always be superior and outrank those who are not.
The notion that superior men do not compete is Confucian. Spontaneity and naturalness is Daoist. It's a paradox
that a movement that began as a search for a new foundation for imperial unity ends up as a search for selfdiscovery.
My Short Response
With the repose of that great sage and follower of Sunzi, Bill Belichick, Xie An did not react to the news of
a great victory. One assumes he would be equally non-responsive to a stunning defeat. This constancy of
emotion shows a man with a strong center, who knows that defeat and victory are driven by forces beyond
him and that all he can do is prepare his men without expectation and accept the fate that is theirs.
To show emotion, to run rampant along the sideline like Pete Carroll is to allow the hopes of your troops to
rise and fall with the turns of fate. Xie An knows that a commander cannot afford emotion if he is to inspire
the true courage and fortitude in his troops that can only come from within. He is true to himself, to his
nature and to the people around him.

Daoist Religion
Celestial Master Daoism

This is different from the Daoism of Laozi and Zhuangzi. It involves revelations from immortals in Heaven.
Tainshi Dao, the Celestial Master cult
This form of Daoism continues into the present. The teachings don't come from antiquity or from the government.
Followers of Tainshi Dao believe they can contact the immortals (xian - the perfected) who reveal or release text to
the living.
The cult began as an elite group. They believed that by following the released text, they would be freed from sin
and when the corrupt world was destroyed, those who followed the cult would be reborn as immortals in this world.
The Teachings
The ideal order, social or political, is organic, where all parts
connect. There's a circulation and mingling of qi, of matter and
energy. In politics, it means those below can rise. It means the
spirit moves through the world.
Imagine that as we dream, the spirit departs the body and travels the
world, meeting immortals, and gaining knowledge in the revealed
texts.

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Qi circulates in our bodies, beginning in the scrotum and moving up through

the arteries to the mind and to the top of the head. This circulation implies
procreation, not celibacy.
This new Daoism brought physical rather than mental cultivation. New diets
came about because immortals were supposed to survive only on the qi they
breathe.
To improve the flow of qi, men would sit in a specific posture and impel the qi
up through their arteries. Since pure qi is semen, these practices are only for
men.
Another technique is to have sex where the woman has multiple orgasms and
the man exploits her by not ejaculating, absorbing her qi and keeping his own,
retaining the vitality of both.
What is the point? Immortality!

The Maoshan Revelations And Supreme Purity Daoism

Elixir Immortality
Coffee, Red Bull, etc. Elixirs give energy and vitality. But in those days, people died who
imbibed elixirs of immortality.
Tale of Yang Xi. Some of the northern migrs that were part of the Celestial Master cult
become involved with the drug culture of the South: herbs, psychedelics, medicines. There's a
passage from one of the southern clansmen, Ge Hong, who talks about the immortals:
In the 4th century, 364-370, Yang Xi began to receive visits from immortals, who said they
were from a new heaven, not the heaven of the Celestial Master cult but the new Supreme
Purity (shangqing). They had new revelations, which Yang Xi took down in superb
calligraphy, the beauty of which lent authority to his claim of shangqing as the source.
They told Yang to share his revelations with the Xu family who where highly placed in the Southern
court. Following that, the Xu family has visitations from the Supreme Purity. The younger Xu is
told to join the heavenly bureaucracy in the Supreme Purity heaven.
How to leave this world and join the immortals? The elixirs!
How to Take an Elixir
They had names like Efflorescence of Langgan, Jade Essence, Powder of Liquefied Gold, and Dragon Fetus. We
have the recipes and an account of what happens:
After taking a spatula of elixir, you feel an intense pain in your heart, after three days you'll want to drink
and when you have drunk a container, your breath will be cut off and you'll be dead. Your body will
disappear, leaving only your clothing. You'll be an immortal released in broad daylight by means of your
waistband. If you know the secret names of the ingredients, you will not feel the pain in your heart, but
you'll still die.
The younger Xu took the elixir and died, joining the immortals.
If the adherents died, how could Elixir Daoism flourish?
First, you need training before imbibing. There's a body of authoritative text. People had shared visions, which
happens even now. Career opportunities in this world for those who promote the cult. And career opportunities in
the great beyond that are so marvelous, people are dying to get in.
Whereas some poisons embalm from within and some , like arsenic, are a great pick-me-up, but they accumulate in
the body and eventually kill.

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Alchemy
Inner Alchemy. Moving qi through the body. Special diets. That sort of thing.
Outer Alchemy. Change base metals into gold to create an elixir for immortality.
Gold balances yin and yang so perfectly that it's inert, it doesn't oxidize or tarnish in any way.
Theoretical Foundations of Alchemy
Natural things are made up of qi. Qi is changing in cycles and transformations,
smaller cycles within larger cycles.
People could see that minerals grow and change. They believed a mineral would
ultimately change into gold after 4,320 years.
Since smelting and metallurgy can interfere with the cycles of change in minerals,
and since the five phases of change imply that the next phase is inherent in the
current phase, it should therefore be possible to speed the transformation. By
changing mercury to cinnabar (mercury ore) and back, Chinese alchemist proved
the concept was viable.
12 Chinese hours per day x 360 days = 4,320 hours. If you can compress each
year's change into an hour, you can transmute a mineral to gold in a year.
If the alchemist can create a mineral with a perfect balance of yin and yang, then
he can create an elixir that balances yin and yang in a person. That person would then be immortal.
There's a long tradition of seeking immortality in China, dating at least to Qin Shi Huang, the Qin emperor, who sent
out expeditions and created the tomb with the terracotta warriors (page 12).
The philosophy of alchemy considered the furnace as a womb, where control over heat changes the cycles of yin and
yang and the five phases are controlled as well. This appeals to those who want to believe we can see the patterns of
change in the natural world.

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Literature
Third Century Writing: This section focuses on personal, occasional writing - birthday poems, letters,
inscriptions - those writings that are an authentic response of the author.
The ancient Chinese psychology behind this notion is that we all contain inchoate selves awakened
by our perception and unveiled by our writing: selfish and evil or good and humane.
We need to write our responses to ritual to learn how to behave.
Writers respond to rituals according to the rules and norms of expression, but also with individual creativity (my
thought: is this like sonnets in iambic pentameter - creativity within the rules?).
Writing, calligraphy, and painting creates immortality that transcends political station.
In medieval culture, we see a concern for the self, for one's own character. We're seeing a burgeoning concept in
third-century China that the individual can be more important than the state or even the family. Perhaps not
the first time we've seen this concept, but never before so popular.

Annotation
From Cao Pis () On Literature (, Lun Wen)
Truly, literature is a great accomplishment that brings order to the state; it is a splendor that does not
decay. Ones years stay for a while but then they expire; ones fame and happiness die with the body. A
time for both of these things to end is inevitable. How could they compare with the endlessness of
literature! Thus, the writers of antiquity entrusted themselves to their brush and ink and made known their
ideas in written documents. Without relying on the words of a good historian, and without depending on a
powerful patron, their names have been passed down to posterity. Moreover, King Wen expanded the Book
of Changes while he was imprisoned; whereas, the Duke of Zhou fashioned the Rites of Zhou while he
enjoyed great renown. The former still focused his effort, though his circumstances were difficult; the latter
did not allow himself to be distracted by his fortune. So we see that the ancients spurned large disks of
jade, but highly valued the use of their time, lest the years pass them by. However, people often do not exert
their potential: if they are poor, then they fear hunger and cold; if they are rich, then they let themselves
drift away in pleasure-seeking; their vision is stuck on just whats immediately in front of them, and they
abandon the accomplishments of a thousand years. While the sun and moon pass overhead, their bodies
languish below, and suddenly they will transform away with the myriad things this is the greatest pity to
a person of intentions!
Thus, the writers of antiquity are examples of what to us?
The writers of antiquity recorded the rituals as their contribution to Chinese culture. They are examples of
how we can contribute to the culture and thus enshrine ourselves among the ancients, immortalizing
ourselves in text.
What is it that the person of intentions hopes to achieve through writing?
To achieve our potential by adding our contribution to the accomplishments of a thousand years.

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Interview With Professor Tian Xiaofei

Her work is in medieval literature in the period after the Han collapses and through the reunification and the Sui and
Tang dynasties. She published her first book at the age of nine (she blushes when Prof. Bol mentions that).
The statecraft view says the medieval Chinese, in particular the Southern dynasties (Song, Qi, Liang, Chen), shrank
from the task of reunification. Prof. Xiaofei feels this appraisal comes from the winners (the conqueror gets to write
the history). As a literary scholar, she feels this downplays the influence of Southern literature, because pre-modern
Chinese state-sponsored histories pass judgment on the literature and letters of the Southern dynasties, associating
their political failures with moral inferiority and thus with bad literature.
But the Southern dynasties influenced the conquerors and the northern dynasties. The influencers included the poets
Tao Yuanming and Xie Lingyun and also court poets, who suffered the brunt of the condemnation.
The South was fascinated by innovation (xinqi). In later periods, there's a condemnation of the new and different, so
how could this ever be good?
In this period in the South, they emphasized literary excellence, for two reasons:

Early Sixth Century (502 CE) The Liang dynasty was an aristocratic culture based on family lineage.
Emperor Wu tried to change the recruitment from hereditary to a meritocracy based on literary excellence.
What happened to the second reason?

Some say the Liang dynasty fell because Wudi invested too much in Buddhism. Prof. Xiaofei feels that Buddhism
and literature are the two scapegoats.
There's a lot the north and south had in common. Both were passionate about Confucian learning and Confucian
classics. They were equally passionate about Buddhism, which you can see from the Buddhist statues at Luoyang.

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Professor Tian Xiaofei: A Close Reading Of Two Poems

Wu Se The sensuous appearance of material things.

In Buddhism, a flame in the wind is symbolic of the fragility of life. The brocade is a belt that can be
worn by a man or woman. The focus of the poem is on small details, the wu se. The wax tear of the
candle on the flowers, probably woven into the sash and the wax is staining it, destroying it, like the wind flickering
the candle threatens the life the flame represents.
Wu Li The nature of things.
The second poem comes 700 years later. High poetic image: purple curtain brushing the sky. A
process of discovery: finding the source of the wind, not entirely absorbed in the wu se, but seeking
the wu li as well.
Prof. Xiaofei recently finished an annotated translation of a 19th century memoir about Taiping Tianguo, a terrible
rebellion in South China that took place when the man who wrote the memoir was seven years old.

Discussion of A Candle Within a Curtain

We invite you to comment on the following poem by the court poet Liu Xiaowei, translated by Professor Tian
Xiaofei in the interview. What are your impressions? What connections can you make between what you find in the
poem and issues discussed in the lecture? In the next module on Buddhism, you will learn more about the
importance of the appearance of things "" and destruction, two themes already seen here.
I see a door to a foyer, opening not on a breezy day, but a day where the movement of air is felt as a
coolness rather than a rush. The light outside glows in contrast to the quiet darkness within. The flame
flickers without diminishing, casting a brightness at the edge of the shadows where the curtain slides away.
A man was in the room, his ritual robes stretched along the table. He was at the funeral of a friend. The
passing of a life leaves a stain on his sash, a sadness in his heart, a memory that lingers as the flame
quickens. It serves a reminder that our own lives touch others and we leave behind not ourselves but our
impressions. Not only do we live on in our poetry, our revealed text, but we immortalize those we write
about.

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Interview With Professor Kuriyama

Chairman of the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations. He's an authority in the history of science
and medicine in East Asia.

Two two-term sets: Yin Yang and the Five Phases (wuxing), or Wood,
Metal, Water, Fire, Earth (mu jin shui huo tu).
Western metaphysics focuses on the underlying composition of
structures, whereas in China, the patterns of change were crucial and
intrinsic to the world.
The Greeks pondered first what are the elements of a thing and if it
changes, what causes the change. The East Asians thought of change as
natural, wondering how things change rather than why. Yin yang and
the Five Phases are two different ways of analyzing change.
Zi ran er ran: spontaneous change. Is there an endpoint, a destination? Is
it a teleological change1? No, it's a constant process of change without
beginning or end.
In fact, a problem with Western metaphysics is with assigning teleology to change, which begs the question of how
change begins. If things naturally change, then the focus is no longer on why it's happening, instead on how it's
happening.

Why is yin/yang a way of analyzing change?

Although they're opposite extremes, yin and yang are not in tension. Much like night and day, there's a natural
rhythm. But what about male and female, the way yin and yang are joined with qian and kun in the Book of
Change? The single versus the double?
Professor Kuriyama answers that these are extremes that are in combination rather than in tension. The male has
more yang, the female has more yin and neither is purely one or the other. Thus, male and female are joined in a
complementary unity.

A thing, process, or action is teleological when it is for the sake of an end, i.e., a telos or final cause.

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Five Phases (wuxing)

One way to think of the five phases is as a more refined version of yin and yang. But another way is that they
incorporate space in addition to time. Wood is east, Fire is south, Metal is west, and Water is north, with Earth in
the center.
One problem with the early translations is the focus on the composition of things, or that they are actors, whereas
[later translations consider that] they are more appropriately propensities and directionalities of change. A food diet
affects the direction of your body's physical change. A type of grain with wood properties pushes you in the wood
direction. Since your body already has a direction, this changes the vector.
One can think of these vectors of change affecting the body politic.
An interesting contrast between Western and Eastern philosophy is that Chinese medicine is built around many
vectors, a republic of forces, whereas Greek medicine has a single controlling force, the heart or the mind.
Yet Chinese medicine is built during the time of the central authority of the Han dynasty. And, of course, the
Greeks had their political republic.

Change is how things work

Change happens regardless. To be moral is to go with the change, but with the possibility of intervening and
redirecting the flow. This fits with the Qin/Han cosmic doctrine of empire. By getting the empire in order you can
affect the flow of the weather and natural events.

Pulse Taking
How do you analyze the dynamics of change? In the Western view of the human body,
actions are born from the body's structure. In the dynamics of yin yang wuxing, different
places in the body have different propensities, like a field. The five organs have five fields.
There are many different pulses depending on where and how deeply we probe.

Qi, Life, and Medicine

How do we translate qi? It's the stuff that makes up the world and is therefore intrinsically dynamic. Two models
for qi: a) yin and yang and (b) a vital resource. We're born with a certain amount of qi and when it's gone, we die.
Much is consumed during maturation. Sexual expenditure is the most extravagant use of qi, hastening death. Also,
as you pay attention to external matters, qi flows from your body. Curiosity and distraction are expensive.
Chinese medicine preserves the supply of qi as long as possible. In contrast, western medicine is concerned that
food in the body becomes poison, which must be expelled, which is why bloodletting, enemas and purgatives are
important. But in the 19th century, as the theory of energy became important, western medicine moved toward
Chinese medicine, focusing on calories, resulting in today's Western fascination with Chinese medicine.

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Zhang Zai and Cheng Yi and the source of Qi

Zhang Zai was an 11th century neo-Confucian philosopher with a theory that the universe is a
finite container of qi. We come to life with a subset and returns it to the universe when we die
(ashes to ashes). There is dense qi and light qi. The qi condenses from the air into the dense qi
our bodies.
Cheng Yi, another neo-Confucian philosopher, disagrees, stating that we generate yuan qi from
our bodies. If we can think in the proper way, we'll generate the good qi and the world will get
better.

In Western philosophy, matter is inert and the mind animates it. If you suppose instead that the body and mind are
both dynamic, then instead of the mind directing the body, it alters the propensities, leading the qi in a new
direction. This is similar to principles of education: rather than inscribing on a blank slate, education leads students
in new directions.
Cosmic Resonance and Attractive Forces
Yin attracts yang. Lodestones attract metal filings. From this comes the notion of stimulus and
response, of resonance. Things in different realms but in the same phase will be in resonance and
attract one another. Things in musical harmony move in concert; things that are not, conflict.
Cosmic Resonance holds a place in Chinese history as the argument that events in nature - the
unpredictable disharmonious events - come from the behavior of political rulers.
Two concepts apply. First, that people in critical junctures can influence events, much like chaos theory. Second,
that superior people are more receptive to the world of changes that lesser mortals cannot feel.
This theory supposes that we are in a web of human relationships, much like an orchestra where one performer hears
the others and responds in a way that contributes to the harmony of the whole.
This brings us back to the Confucian concept that a ritual properly performed can stir people, moving them to
behave in predictable ways. (See Part 1, Confucian Magic). In society, ritual is one of the most powerful forces.
In the body, ritual in the form of visualization and breathing techniques can reorient the flow of qi.
Qi and geography
In gardening (from a 12th century manual from Japan) the way of putting stones in the garden orients the flow of qi.
A stone in the wrong place is uncomfortable.
This underlies the logic of geomancy2, which was important in world history because of the development of the
compass. Even in China today, the landscape is a configuration of the flow of qi, which has consequences for how
you live. Your position within the landscape is essential to your harmony with the world.
Qi and exercise
Chinese exercise manuals consider your orientation based on the time of year, the flow of the seasons. The Western
idea of sharply defined muscularity is in contrast with the rotund flowing harmony of the Chinese athlete.
Professor Kuriyama's philosophical travels
How is it that we have essentially the same human body, yet Western and East Asian conceptions are so different?
If we believe muscles are important, then we train them. If we don't, we turn to other techniques, training our
arteries, so to speak. Muscles are the agency of action in the West. Vitality and smooth flow is the essence of
athleticism in the East.
What is the life cycle of these notions? For many Chinese today, yin and yang are anachronisms, whereas many of
the ideas concerning the organs still affect dietary choice and physical exercise.

Geomancy is a method of divination that interprets markings on the ground or the patterns formed by tossed
handfuls of soil, rocks, or sand.
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Week 11: Buddhism

(With a thank you and additional notes from the student who goes by bricass)

Historical Overview
Same as Week 10.

Buddhism in China: Universal Religion and Foreign Teaching

Was it a Buddhist conquest of China or a Chinese conquest of Buddhism?
You might see in many places in China scenes of people counting through a rosary and pledging
allegiance to Amida Buddha.

Traveling Shrine
Unfolded, the shrine has the Buddha on one side and two disciples on the
other sides.
Buddhism was introduced by missionaries from Central Asia and India and
became the first national religion, popular at all levels, from rulers to peasants.
It left a material legacy including cave architecture, the Longmen and
Yungang Grottos in Sichuan.
Some of the oldest wooden buildings are Buddhist monasteries dating to the
Tang dynasty.

Patronage to Buddhism included the wealthy donating a mansion, the poor making offerings, and the government
building extraordinary monuments. And yet the government also tried to suppress Buddhism. Even today,
government remains antagonistic, closing monasteries during the Cultural Revolution, limiting ordination of monks.
A recent document dated May 24, 2013, has the title: Top party official affirms that party members are not allowed
to practice religion.

Introduction to Buddhism: The Three Treasures

The Buddha
The Dharma: The Teachings
The Sangha: The Community of Monks and Nuns

The Buddha
There are lots of Buddhas. A Buddha eventually becomes a transcended being, a god. But there's also an historical
Buddha born in the fifth century BCE, somewhere in northern India or southern Nepal, of the Gautama family. He
was the son of a king of the Shakya clan. He would eventually be known as Shakyamuni, the sage of the Shakyas.
His name was Siddhartha which means someone who's achieved his goal. When he was born, an astrologer said
when he grows up, he'll be either a great king or a great religious figure. His father wanted Siddhartha to be a king,
so he made sure he was not exposed to suffering. So the young Siddhartha, in his twenties, had a wife and a child
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and lived in luxury. At the age of 29, upon seeing an old man, he learns that people age and die. He sees a sick man
and learns that people suffer. He sees a rotting corpse. He sees a mendicant monk, an ascetic who has weaned
himself from worldly desires to seek salvation.
Zhongdao - The Middle Way. Siddhartha decides he will break with his family and follow the way
of the monk. For several years he practices self-discipline, never quite satisfying himself, until one
day while meditating under a tree, he has his great epiphany, that there's a middle way between selfindulgence and extreme self-denial. And that's the way he sets out to preach.

The Dharma
Four Noble Truths (shi shengdi)
1. Truth of Suffering. The one word that sums up life is suffering.
2. Suffering Caused by Desire. Why do we suffer? Because we desire and our desires will not be met. 3 The one
thing we desire most, to live our lives, will inevitably be taken.
3. We Must Cease Desiring.
4. There is a Path to Cease Desiring. The path begins by recognizing our ignorance and unless we understand that
life is suffering that comes from desire, we will never find the path to salvation. Why? Because we are reincarnated
again and again and again, and until we can halt the cycle of rebirth we continue to live a life of suffering.
During our lives we build up karmic seeds that carry from one life to the next, influencing how we'll be reborn.
Think of a candle which lights another candle and is then blown out.
The reason we desire things is that we give them value. If we take away desire, we're left with the emptiness that is
the foundation of existence.
The goal of Dharma is to empty oneself of desire. The moment desire is gone we arrive at emptiness and karma is
gone. This is nirvana (niepan). The candle blows out without lighting another and there is no rebirth. We can then
live in perfect state of reality, the reality of emptiness.
The Buddhist claim is that their teachings are the teachings of reality, passed on through sutra, such as the Lotus
Sutra (Miaofa lianhua jing).

The Community of Monks and Nuns

Chujia: those who have chosen to live apart. They live in monasteries, in their own communities,
separate from their kin and outside the government.
Is this also Sangha? Is a community of Chujia a Sangha?

Mahayana Buddhism and the Lotus Sutra

Foreign traders are the first exposure to Buddhism, during the Eastern Han, along with some
Buddhist communities in South Asia connecting to China by the sea route. The South Asian
Buddhism was called Theravada Buddhism. It was a precursor to Mahayana Buddhism, sometimes
referred to as The Lesser Vehicle.
In Mahayana Buddhism, referred to as The Greater Vehicle, Buddha is a transcendent entity who
exists to save the world from suffering, a figure in whom you can have faith. So instead of
emptying yourself of desires, you can turn to Buddha for salvation. Further, Mahayana Buddhism
offers salvation to laypeople as well as to the community of monks and nuns.
In addition to the Buddha, there are Bodhisattvas (Pusa), who are enlightened and want to save the world,
but have stayed behind, not entering nirvana, so they can help us. The most important of them is Guanyin
Pusa, who hears the suffering of the world.
The greatest text is the Miaofa lianhua jing, the Lotus Sutra. It brings with it the doctrine of expedient
means (fangbian), which means that Buddha preaches at a level people can understand. It consists of
poetry restated in prose, along with parables.
The Parable of the Burning House is the most important parable.

See Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, page 402. In examining studies measuring life satisfaction,
Kahneman notes that "One recipe for a dissatisfied adulthood is setting goals that are especially difficult to attain."
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Bodhisattva Guanyin Pusa

What about him or her appears compassionate?
The calm repose, the arm raised in welcome. Everything about the pose
encourages a follower to relax, to empty oneself, to join the Bodhisattva.
(From the office hours: the hand that's missing would be in the classic
upraised, palm-out gesture, symbolizing protection from fear. Had I seen that,
I wouldn't have thought it welcoming, but clearly it is.)

Parable of the Burning House and Other Readings

First, my interpretation:
Truth is not a virtue if it impedes a higher virtue, namely the quest for nirvana. By implication,
falsehood is wrong if it has nothing to do with the quest for nirvana (else why tell a parable excusing lies?)
What form are these virtuous lies?
In the burning house, it's a virtuous lie to make a false promise of fulfilling greater earthly desires in order
to lead the ignorant from their lesser earthly desires to the nirvana, where there are no earthly desires.
Indeed, where there's no need for earthly desires.
In the impoverished son, the father offers hard, undesirable but well-paid work eventually rewarded with
great riches, a metaphor for a life of meditation and commitment to Buddha that is paid with earthly peace
and eventual nirvana.
In both parables, the Buddha dissembles, falsely promising rewards to their earthly desire as enticement to
his followers, eventually rewarding them with the wealth of nirvana that they cannot understand in their
youth and ignorance. In the burning house, they are ignorant of true suffering, in the impoverished son,
they are incapable of recognizing Buddha even when he is right on front of them.
This is the doctrine of expedient means.
Professor Bol's Interpretation
The father is Buddha, the children are us, incapable of hearing the truth when he preaches it. We don't understand
what death means. So he offers us more toys.
What did the children learn? To have faith in the father so they can be saved.
As you read to the end of the Lotus Sutra, you find ways to improve karmic merit by copying the text and
proselytizing Buddhism. You can give to the Sangha community of monks and nuns to help build monasteries.

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Fotudeng
The transformation of Buddhism in China during the 4th and 5th centuries: Fotudeng.
As we read about three important figures in the history of Buddhism, bear in mind the obstacles in the way of its
success:

The monks bringing Buddhism to China are not Chinese

They don't even speak or read Chinese
The conceptual vocabulary of Buddhism is incongruent with Chinese, though at first they'll try to find
congruency with the language of Daoism, before realizing there is none.
The styles of argument used by the monks have no precedent in Chinese history.

And yet, Buddhism took hold more strongly than any prior faith.
Fotu probably meant Buddha, Buddha Dharma might have been his original name. He comes from
Kucha in Central Asia, having visited the great Buddhist sites like Kashmir, and in 310 CE establishes a
religious center in Luoyang.
The next year, the Jin princes fight among themselves, some bringing in the Xiongnu, who fought
against the Jin, forcing them south across the Yangtze. The Xiongnu tribes that stayed in the north were
diverse. Fotudeng joins up with a warlord named Shi Hu of the Jie Tribe, associated with the Later
Zhao Dynasty in Hebei.
Fotudeng becomes the house chaplain to the Shi, converting them to Buddhism along with other invaders and some
Chinese officials. Fotudeng achieved this by playing three roles.
The roles Fotudeng played
1.

A magician. He puts a spell over a bowl of water and a Blue Lotus flower emerges. Note that the Jesuits
were also known for practicing magic when they came to China in the 16th and 17th centuries.
When the ruler's son appears to die, he intones a spell over a toothpick and revives the son. He knows
medicine. The ruler sends his sons to live with Fotudeng to ensure their safety.
He can see across time. He can hear the bells tolling in the future and tells the ruler if he will be successful
in a military campaign. The ruler follows Fotudeng's prophecy against his generals' advice and succeeds.
He can see across space, rubbing rouge and oil on his palm.
He came to be called the Protector of The State.

2.

3.

Political advisor to the clan. In a time of harsh justice, he persuades the ruler that killing so many people is
a sin, arguing that the ruler shouldn't kill the innocent. This is not unlike the Jesuits convincing the
Japanese daimyo, who is a samurai, that the First Commandment forbids killing. The daimyo replies that
he's in the business of killing and the Jesuits explain that it really means don't kill the innocent.
Religious teacher

Who is Buddhism For?

If Fotodeng plays all these roles just for the ruler, then what use is Buddhism for anyone else? Fotudeng not only
persuaded Shi Hu that Buddhism was for the masses, but he convinced many others of the ruling clans to pay for the
construction of almost a thousand monasteries.
Is Buddhism for all peoples?
Is Buddhism only for men? There's a story of a woman who wants to be a nun. The father objects and Fotudeng
tells that she was Fotudeng's daughter in a prior life and if she becomes a nun she will help his entire family attain
nirvana. (I might have gotten that wrong - perhaps to help his entire family gain power and wealth)

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Dao'an and Building the Chinese Sangha

By the time of his death in 349, Fotudeng has made Buddhism the religion of the Xiongnu, but a
war in the north forces his disciples to flee, including Dao'an.
Dao'an eventually relocates south to Xiangyang to create the earliest known community of Chinese
Buddhists. He builds a temple for 400 monks, a pagoda, and a 16-foot, 10,000 pound statue of
Buddha. Medieval Buddhist monasteries like this were centers of Chinese agrarian life, with markets and flour
mills.
Dao'an doesn't know how to build monasteries, so he researches Indian practices on daily life, on burning incense,
on the sutra. He declares Shi, which is the Chinese equivalent of Shakyamuni, to be the surname for all monks,
enlisting them as members of a new family with Buddha as the patriarch. This was not unlike a practice of some
Chinese generals who would insist that their soldiers adopt the general's surname.
Here's what a Chinese traveler said about Dao'an's monastery:
They do not practice magical arts. They do not try to frighten people. They are a community of teachers
and students who share mutual reverence and respect. Dao'an is learned in Buddhist texts, but also in YinYang. Also in arithmetic and even Confucian learning.
Establishing an Intellectual Identity
Dao'an learns that in Mahayana Buddhism, salvation can be shared, that all people need not follow
ascetic practices.
Matching Concepts means to take a Central Asian term in Sanskrit and map it to a Chinese term. For
example, the Sanskrit term for emptiness is translated to wu, the nothingness in Laozi's Daodejing. But
Laozi's wu begets you (pronounced yo), i.e. wu is the source from which the phenomenal world arose.
In Buddhism, wu is the absolute and true reality and the phenomenal world is an illusion. (Although eventually
there's a notion that the phenomenal world and the absolute are the same).
Dao'an's breakthrough was that Buddhist ideas were new and did not map identically to Chinese terms.
Maitreya
Dao'an needed certainty that his new ideas were a correct interpretation of the original Buddhist texts
and commentaries. To break out of this hermeneutic circle, he created a cult to worship Maitreya, the
Buddha, who resides in Tushita Heaven (pronounced toosh-ta) until he will be reborn as a human and
become a Buddha. Maitreya's gift is guiding people to correct understanding.
Dao'an asks his followers to vow to be reborn in Tushita Heaven to gain the correct understanding of Buddhist
Dharma. In other words, Dao'an is relying on both the original Sanskrit texts as the foundation of his beliefs and the
Maitreya to confirm his translation of them.
The difference with Daoism. Daoism had text that came from revelations. Buddhist texts come from the West, as
the teachings from one who has reached enlightenment.

Buddhist Text and Translation

During Dao'an's time, foreign monks were bringing new texts for which the government's court
was sponsoring translation. In the beginning of the fifth century, in 402, the great foreign
translator Kumarijiva arrives in China. He's adopted the Mahayana view of emptiness. He
oversees the translation of a set of Buddhist sutra which is still regarded today as the most
readable of translations.
Translation requires the foreign monk to read and explain the text in his own language while another monk
translates before a group of scholars, who then transcribe these spoken words as literary Chinese.

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Intellectual Centrality and Political Independence

Huiyuan began his studies as a Confucian, believing in ritual as the path out of chaotic times. He
turned to Daoism, then to Buddhism, becoming Dao'an's greatest disciple. Believing that Buddhism
should be studied in the countryside, Huiyuan built the Donglin Temple at Lushan, a stunningly
beautiful intellectual retreat high in the mountains of Jiangxi, reachable by cable car today [travel
note]. Poets, writers, painters, calligraphers and philosophers flocked to his temple.
Huiyuan says, I am stranger to the world. I will not go down the mountain. He pushed the notion that
Buddhism could have intellectual centrality while maintaining political independence.
The warlords wanted him at court to support them. They don't like that monks don't pay taxes, are
excused from the military, that they have large repositories of bronze and especially copper, which is
used in coinage. At various times, pogroms are launched at the Buddhists.
Huiyuan insisted that Buddhism takes no sides, all people can be saved. He writes a treatise called
Monks Do Not Bow Down Before Kings.

Monks Do Not Bow Down Before Kings

Buddhist monks traditionally refused any display of reverence to secular rulers. As more Chinese became Buddhist
monks, during the time of the Eastern Jin, this problem came up for discussion at court. The high minister Huan
Xuan asked Huiyuan to render an opinion. The treatise was his response.
Huiyuan stated that those who accept Buddhism but remain in their homes and stay within the natural kinship of
their family, therefore benefit from the virtue of the ruler. Having benefited, they must pay their respects in the form
of taxes and secular obedience.
He further stated that the spirits of those who have discarded the natural kinship of society continue to serve filial
piety and maintain reverence through their faith in Buddhism, if not through secular obedience. Their reverence is
to that which is beyond change and therefore they are not subject to life driven by change or to the rulers who
transform their people.
Though kings and princes have the power to preserve life, they cannot take a spirit to the transcendence beyond life
and without suffering. To seek nirvana, monks must not obey change, thus they cannot revere the emperor.
My thoughts: As an emperor, would I find this argument convincing?
If I'm Buddhist, I have no choice but to agree. Monks are separating themselves from the earthly plane
and must therefore divorce themselves from any object of desire including the emperor. They bring the
light and the faith to others. A true Buddhist cannot deny them their path to enlightenment.
If I'm not a Buddhist, I care to the extent that forcing monks against their religion to obey the temporal
ruler incites rebellion among the faithful. As a practical matter, it's in my interest to let the monks follow
their course. Since it's not an easy life to disavow earthly desire, there's little chance of losing large
numbers of obedient subjects. Further, Huiyuan insists that Buddhists who are not monks must serve the
ruler. For the ruler who is a non-believer or who only feigns belief, the argument is a practical one.
So in either case, I'm all for it.

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Buddhist Religious Experience

As part of an anti-Buddhist movement, a pogrom in the fifth century attempts to destroy Buddhism and fails (or is
not carried out). The Yungang Grottoes, with enormous Buddhist statuary, were built by the government as an
apology.
Huiyuan want to bring the Buddhist experience to common people beyond their
faith, which is where the Traveling Shrine icon comes into play, to allow you to
see the Buddha before your eyes.
If, for three months you should stop thinking about food or clothes or any kind of
material comfort and then travel to a secluded spot and concentrate entirely on
Amida Buddha for a period of time, a day or a week, then the Buddha will
manifest himself before you to preach the dharma.

Reasons for Buddhism's Success

Why is Buddhism ineradicable in Chinese society even today? :

We've seen a monk use magical powers to enlist the support of a foreign conqueror.
We've seen his disciple build a Buddhist community and translate the concepts of Buddhism to Chinese.
We've seen yet another disciple open the intellectual and religious pursuit of Buddhism to all and make the
monastery the center of Chinese cultural life, exempt from political demands.

That's one heck of an accomplishment, with deep roots.

Mouzi: Disposing of Error

Disposing of Error (Lihuo lun) appears to be an apology, expressed as an exchange between Mouzi and a questioner
who is criticizing Buddhism. Mouzi insists that it's possible to be a good Chinese and a Buddhist and that the truths
follow in the course of Confucianism and Daoism.
If the way of the Buddha is worth our reverence, why is there no mention in the classics?
All teachings need not be from the Classics: as Confucius learned from Laozi, so can we learn from
Buddha.
If the Classic of Filiality says we must not injure our bodies as they are the gift of our ancestors, why do monks
shave their heads?
Taibo cut his hair short and tattooed his body, yet Confucius praised him
If there is no greater unfilial conduct than childlessness, why does a monk forsake wife and children?
Simple living and wu wei are the foundation of self-worth. The monk collects wisdom instead of children.
As a Confucian believing in my part of a single ancestral line, how can I accept rebirth in another form?
The body is like the roots and leaves that come forth and then die. The spirit is in the seeds that bring new
growth. Only the body of one who achieves the Way perishes.

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Admonitions of the Fanwang Sutra

This view of Buddhism contrasts with earlier doctrine of leaving the family (chujia), allowing Chinese to fulfill the
tradition of filial piety.
A bodhisattva should always give rise to a heart of compassion, a heart of filial piety, using all expedient means to
save all sentient beings.
These are my own poor attempts at paraphrasing:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Thou shalt not intentionally kill

Thou shalt not intentionally steal
Thou shalt not intentionally fornicate
Thou shalt not lie
Thou shalt not consume alcohol
Thou shalt not criticize a bodhisattva
Thou shalt be humble and neither praise oneself nor blame others

Professor Bol's Reasons for Buddhism Success

Buddhism brought a deep civilization with tradition, philosophy, medicine, magic, and architecture.
It offered a refuge of communal life in a time of chaos.
It offered a model of how to live a frugal life.
It offered salvation to all.

Lastly, with its ideas of karmic merit, Buddhism makes the act of being good an element of self-interest.

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Lingyin Si in Hangzhou
In English, The Monastery of the Soul's Retreat, the Lingyin Temple is about 1700 years old,
founded by an Indian monk. At one time, 3000 monks were in the temple. During the Cultural
Revolution, the monks were sent here and the temple closed to the public.
Is the temple a tourist site or is it also a religious site?
It seems to me that it not only serves as a tourist site, but also as a place of active worship.

Professor James Robson

of the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Lingyin Si is the largest and wealthiest Buddhist monastery in China. Founded in the fourth century by a monk
named Huili. We may think of Buddhist monasteries as set apart for quiet meditation. But even from the beginning,
they were integral to the Chinese community, even when they were built up in the mountains. The long history of
monasteries included tourism as an essential part of its life.
There are, however, places within the monastery where tourists don't go, where the ordained monks live and practice
their beliefs.
The Peak That Came Flying (Feilai Feng). The vulture peak that Buddha preached upon
flew to China and came to this site.
The Japanese claim that it flew on to Japan.
Further in the temple is a historian Sutra building where the entire Buddhist canon is
kept. This is the collection of all Buddha's teachings and the rules that govern
monastics.
The Heart Sutra is a short text, commonly memorized and chanted. Philosophically
deep, it tells how our perception of the world and the qualities or ideas we ascribe to it
differ from the underlying nothingness that is reality.
Many of the people who visit Linying Si worship Buddhism less as an intellectual tradition than as a source of
healing and apotropaic powers.
The Happy Buddha (Maitreya)
The Laughing Buddha or Happy Buddha. The traditional icon of Maitreya
looks quite different but became mixed with the legend of a monk named
Cloth Bag (Budai), a popular figure with a sack on his shoulder, who
roamed the countryside dispensing wishes or candy to children.
If you rub his belly you would get riches or the birth of a child.
The tactile dimension - touching the smoke of incense, rubbing Maitreya's
belly - conjoins with Buddhism.
What is the state of religious practice in China today?
For at least 50 years, religious activity was suppressed. Is it returning? After a period of decline and despite the
destruction during the Cultural Revolution, religion returned. Deng Xiaoping said, let them come but treat them as
tourists.
At the end of the Tang Dynasty, in the Song, and in the Qing there were times when Buddhism was suppressed.
Some decrees, e.g. in the early 12th century, attempted to convert all Buddhist temples to Daoist temples.

Chinese Buddhist Art at the Sackler Museum

Ooops. I'd like to finish these notes but I'm running out of time. Just one item from the museum tour:

Buddha vs. Bodhisattva

Bodhisattva means enlightened being, one who has entered into the final nirvana. Buddha means
the enlightened one. The Buddha has an ushnisha or cranial protuberance, typically sculpted with
hair over the bump.

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Final Assessment - Discussion Post

The historical novel, Three Kingdoms, begins, The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must
divide.
Unity and disunity recurs throughout Chinas history. In Part 2: The Creation and End of a Centralized
Empire, we see both the creation of a united China and its disintegration following the end of Han. Based
on what you have learned so far, what are some characteristics of the period of disunity following the end
of Han? How is it different than the period united under Han?
My Answer:
The period under Han faced philosophical questions of governance: feudal princes vs. central bureaucracy,
hereditary right vs. meritocracy. Rulers questioned how to control the population to suppress grass roots
rebellion, insurrection from nobility, and threats from outside. They considered the best uses of a capital
surplus moldering in granaries. They wondered how to mobilize the population to further support
territorial expansion.
Having unified the states under one government, political intrigue became the jousting between inner and
outer court and the role of the consort families. The Han accepted the Classics as their textual authority,
elevating Confucians into the role of the Literati, the scholar-officials who advised the hereditary leaders on
the proper standards of governance. Despite the constraints upon the emperor, he was the final authority.
After the Han fell and later after Luoyang was sacked, these questions and issues must have seemed like a
quaint luxury. Where once the elite Chinese clans fought among themselves for power in the courts and
favor with the emperor, they now found themselves on the outside and unable to restore a unified empire,
or unwilling even to try.
Forced into exile, the aristocratic families turned inward to the smaller philosophy of self and away
from the larger questions of power. Ji Kang thought himself superior by refusing the demands of
government. Xie An quit government to indulge his desires. Unable to create immortal dynasties, they
sought immortality from drugs, from alchemy, and from literature.
There seems to me a parallel between this and the Warring States period, with the chaos of the times
helping different philosophies find fertile ground among the privileged. How convenient to build a
philosophy around the primacy of the individual when you've been disenfranchised by the state.
But just as the Warring States period had bad government and good philosophy, so was the literature of the
Southern dynasties artistic and inspiring. In chaos and depression lie the most fertile seeds to creativity.
Professor Xiaofei reminds us that those southern dynasties, particularly the Liang, were fascinated by
innovation.

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