Confucianism And Chuang-Tzu
The brightest signs of art and thought in civilization often spring
from
turmoil, be it outer war or inner strife, as is definitely the case in
ancient
China. During one of these periods in transition of government
and ruling class,
two distinct philosophies sprang from the raging waters of
China’s ever-cyclic
river of war and rebuilding. These philosophies were the
brain-children of two
very notable individuals, Confucius and Chuang Tzu,
both of whom saw the
suffering of their country men and felt called upon to
render the way which
would relieve their people. Confucius, was a very
rational, logical man who
believed that the world could be set into its
proper order by prescribing morals
embedded in ritual’s practiced by those in
power. Therefore instilling a
desire for the people to practice these same
rituals and ultimately leading a
moral educated life. Although this is just a
very basic statement of Confucian
thought it does illustrate the great
differences in the approaches taken by
these two men. For while in all his
teachings Confucius stressed the importance
of morals and the attention that
must be paid to scholastics and the matters of
the physical world of politics
and order, Chuang Tzu, takes an entirely
different, and I believe, commonly
misunderstood approach to resolving the same
issue. In his writings Chuang
Tzu, constantly hints at the existence of this
mystical energy force, which
flows with exact order through the cosmos, a
presence if you will that has
been since there has been anything, but yet is not
old. In the mind of Chuang
Tzu, when one discovered this flow, and was able to
establish a solid
connection, one would be filled with the energy of the cosmos,
taking its’
power with them wherever they went, constantly using it to guide
them through
the labyrinth that appears to those outside of "the way" to be
the path of
life. Therefore, by establishing and maintaining this connection,
one can no
in absolute certainty what is and what should be the proper course of
action
they should take. It has been said many times that Chuang Tzu himself
was
quite a spiritual mystic, which I believe to be a fitting description.
However,
the problem arises when individuals take this description and simply
write off
his works as nothing more than complex fairy tales separated by
only a few
degrees from those of dragons and fairies in western myth. One
must not make
this mistake, for mysticism and the life and work of and
eastern spiritual
mystic has just as much validity as does that of faith and
the writings of
another quite "mystic" spiritual character found embedded in
western
thought, this person being none other than Jesus of Nazareth. There
are many
questions which modern science has no answer and for these questions
the mystics
have the upper hand, for if through their arts, one souls finds
their way then
they have accomplished a task which will forever elude the
scientific realm.