Classical Chinese philosophy belongs to two rich and complex historical epochs: the later part of the “Spring and Autumn” period (722–481 BC) and the “Warring States” period (403–221 BC), which ended with the unification of China under the Qin Dynasty, the installation of the first emperor, and the completion of the Great Wall. It is also known as the period of the “Hundred Philosophers,” the first and most prominent of whom was Master Kong or Kongzi.
Without doubt, no philosopher has influenced more human beings than Kongzi and he is inseparable from whatever “Chineseness” has meant for the past two and a half millennia. The suffix “Zi” or “Tzu” means teacher or master, and Kongzi's name was Latinized by Jesuit missionaries into Confucius. Apparently his mother used to call him “Qiu,” meaning “mound” or “hillock,” because of the unusual elevation on the top of his forehead with which he is often depicted.
Like Socrates, Kongzi was not particularly good-looking and he said of himself (and one thinks of the Cynics), “To say that I am like a dog from a bereaved family, that is so indeed, that is so indeed.” The great period of classical Chinese philosophy fascinatingly coincides with ancient Greek thought and just as the latter is characterized by intense disagreements between Platonists, Cynics, Stoics and Epicureans, so, too, Chinese thought finds bitter opposition between Confucian, Daoist and Mohist schools.
For Kongzi, birth and death are boundaries and the religious rites for mourning are hugely important occasions for giving proper expression to the value of human life. Kongzi revived the ancient, but in his day forgotten, rituals connected with burial and mourning, some of which still endure in China. When his mother died, she was buried with great splendour and solemnity and Kongzi resigned all his public offices and mourned her in solitude for three years. He also showed extreme grief over the death of his favourite disciple, Yen Yüan, and when his disciples suggested that he was showing undue sorrow, he replied, “Am I? Yet if not for him, for whom should I show undue sorrow?’
Legend has it that Kongzi knew when he was going to die and had the following despairing vision in a dream:
For a long time the world has been unregulated; no one understands how to follow me. Last night I dreamed that I was sitting before the sacrificial offerings between the pillars where the coffin is placed.
Kongzi died at the age of seventy-three surrounded by a large number of faithful disciples, and his coffin was placed between pillars as described in his dream. His disciples mourned him for three years before dispersing to their homes; with the exception of Tze Kung, a very close disciple, who didn't feel that the debt to his master had been paid and mourned for a further three years.
In the Lun yü or Analects, Kongzi expresses some agnosticism about the possibility of the afterlife. Chi-lu asks Kongzi, “May I ask about death?” to which the latter replies, “You do not understand even life. How can you understand death?”
It is altogether unclear whether Laozi really existed, and the connection between such a person and the author of the Tao Te Ching is weak and embroiled in legend. According to that legend, as preserved by China's first great historian, Sima Qian, Kongzi went to visit Laozi and they disagreed strongly about the importance of ritual. When the kingdom of Zhou was disintegrating in war, Laozi left his post as imperial librarian and travelled west on a buffalo. When he came to the Han Gu Pass, the border guard understood that Laozi was leaving for ever and asked him to write down some of his wisdom. Laozi immediately complied and thus the Tao Te Ching came into being. When he finished, Laozi got back on his buffalo and was never seen again. No one knows where he died.
He wrote,
I suffer great disaster because I have a body. When I have no body, what disaster can there be?
Laozi was turned into a heavenly body when asteroid 7854 was named after him. 7853 is named after Kongzi.
So the story goes, Mozi was the founder of Mohism, a philosophical school devoted to frugality, self-reflection and what would now be called distributive justice. Mozi, the neglected rival of Kongzi, believed the Confucian concern with ritual consumed too much money and impoverished the people.
Zhuangzi makes the following quip at the expense of Mozi:
He would have men toil through life, with a bare funeral at death. Such teaching is too barren. He considered self-suffering as the ideal.
The Mohists were bitterly opposed to what they saw as the bureaucratic elitism of Confucianism with its contemptuous and patronizing idea of the common people or “Min.” The Mohists were the proletarians and democrats in classical Chinese philosophy and their views were progressively marginalized by successive imperial dynasties. As a consequence, we know next to nothing about Mozi's life. It appears that Mozi was a craftsman from the lower classes who ended up holding an official position because of his expertise in fortification. Indeed, there is much debate about the meaning of the name “Mozi.” Initially, it was thought that “Mo” was the family or clan name and “Ti” or “Zi” his personal name. But recent scholarship suggests that “Mo” is the generic name for someone who has been branded as a criminal slave. On this interpretation, the disciples of the Way of Mo opposed the power of the ruling class by declaring themselves followers of slaves. He led an itinerant lifestyle. Huai Nantze remarks, “Mozi did not retain a single seat long enough to make it warm.”
Mengzi, a defender of an idealized and lofty version of Confucianism against the Mohists, proclaimed the goodness of human nature and sought to cultivate rightness or proper conduct in all things, what he saw as the way of Heaven or “Tian.”
On one occasion, Mengzi writes,
I desire fish and I desire bear's paws. If I cannot have both of them, I will give up fish and take bears’ paws.
Mengzi pursues the analogy by claiming that one may desire life and rightness. If one cannot have both of them, then one should give up life and pursue rightness. Therefore, as much as one may detest death, one can detest something more than death, namely not doing the right thing. He concludes, typically,
Thus, there are things that we desire more than life, and things that we detest more than death. It is not only exemplary persons who have this in mind; all human beings have it. It is only that the exemplary persons are able to avoid losing it, that is all.
As a non-exemplary person, I'll take fish and life and politely pass on rightness and bears’ paws.
To my mind, Zhuangzi is by far the most intriguing, deep and witty of the classical Chinese philosophers. Unlike the lofty moralism of Mengzi, the gnomic utterings of Laozi and the moral propriety of Kongzi, the philosophical universe of Zhuangzi is linguistically dazzling and philosophically unsettling.
The core of Zhuangzi's version of Daoism is the belief that everything should be allowed to behave according to its nature. Right behaviour consists in allowing things to be, without forcing them to be something else through an effort of will or engaging in empty speculation. This is one way of approaching the idea of “non-action” or “wu wei,” which does not mean doing nothing, but only doing what accords with a thing's nature. Thus, for Zhuangzi,
The great earth burdens me with a body, forces upon me the toil of life, eases me in old age, and calms me in death. If life is good, death is good also.
When Zhuangzi was about to die, his disciples wanted to prepare a lavish funeral in the Confucian style. But he refused, saying, “The sun and earth will be my coffin.” When his disciples objected, saying, “We are worried that your body will be eaten by crows and eagles,” Zhuangzi offered the remarkable reply,
An unburied body will be consumed by crows and eagles, but a buried body will be eaten up by ants. So you're snatching food from the mouths of crows and eagles and feeding it into the mouths of ants. Why are you showing favours to ants?
For Zhuangzi, there is nothing in existence that is not good. Death is nothing more than a change from one form of existence to another. If we can find happiness in this existence, then why can't we also find happiness in a new form of existence as antfood, crowfood or even bearfood? Existence is defined by its transitions from one form to another and all forms have to be accepted for what they are. Thus, Zhuangzi writes,
Death and life are never-ceasing transformations. They are not the end of a beginning. If we once understand this principle we can equalize life and death.
We have met this idea of the equality of life and death once or twice already in this book, but Zhuangzi is making an even more radical claim: if life and death are equal, then the dead shouldn't be mourned, but their passing should be accepted and even celebrated. This can be illustrated with the following extraordinary anecdote. After Zhuangzi's wife died, Hui Tzu visited him to offer his condolences. He found him sitting with his legs sprawled out, pounding on a tub and singing, “You lived with her, she brought up your children and grew old.” When Hui Tzu suggested that this was perhaps a little disrespectful, Zhuangzi protested, saying,
When she first died, do you think I didn't grieve like anyone else? But I looked back to her beginning and the time before she was born. Not only the time before she was born, but the time before she had a body. Not only the time before she had a body, but the time before she had a spirit. In the midst of the jumble of wonder and mystery a change took place and she had a spirit. Another change and she had a body. Another change and she was born. Now there's been another change and she's dead. It's just like the progression of the four seasons: spring, summer, autumn, winter. Now she's lying peacefully in a vast room. If I were to follow after her bawling and sobbing, it would show that I don't understand anything about fate. So I stopped.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, antfood to antfood, one might mutter. Existence is the passage from the formlessness that precedes life to the formlessness that succeeds death. One must ring the changes, pound the tub and sing.
In a debate about death among four masters, Master Lai says, “If I think well of life, for the same reason I must think well of my death.” We mustn't disturb the process of change from life to death, but affirm it, for it is a necessary transformation. When Master Yu fell ill, he was not sad, but genuinely curious about what change awaited him: maybe the creator would transform his left arm into a rooster, in which case he would be able to watch all night; or his right arm might become a crossbow pellet, in which case he'd be able to shoot down an owl for roasting; or his buttocks might be turned into cartwheels, in which case he would save a huge amount of money on underwear. Master Lai looked at Master Yu and said,
How wonderful the creator is! What is he going to make of you next? Where is he going to send you? Will he make you into a rat's liver? Will he make you into a bug's arm?
It is not difficult to imagine how such behaviour infuriated the moral propriety of Kongzi, who allegedly exclaimed,
What sort of men are they anyway? … They look upon life as a swelling tumor, a protruding wen, and upon death as the draining of a sore or the bursting of a boil. To such men as these, how could there be any question of putting life first or death last?
Unlike Kongzi, who ended up a police commissioner, Zhuangzi refused all public office and spent his whole life in destitution and often appeared malnourished. One day, when Zhuangzi was fishing in the Pu River, Lord Wei from the state of Chu sent two ministers to invite him to run the state's affairs. Holding the fishing rod in his hands, Zhuangzi said,
I've heard that there is a sacred turtle in the state of Chu, which was dead for three thousand years. The lord keeps it in a bamboo case covered with a kerchief. Would this turtle prefer to be dead and kept in such a grand style or to be alive and drag its tail through the mud?
The ministers said, “It would prefer to be alive and drag its tail in the mud.” To which Zhuangzi replied, “Please go away, then. I'd rather drag my tail in the mud.” Even if our buttocks might have been transformed into cartwheels, I suggest that we follow Zhuangzi and drag our tails through the mud.
Han Feizi was the author of The Way of the Ruler. He met an ugly end at the hands of a wayward ruler. In an age when eloquence was the most potent political weapon, Han Feizi stuttered badly. However, he wrote well, but this was the cause of his undoing. His writings fell into the hands of the King of Qin, who would eventually ascend the throne as the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. The king expressed his deep admiration for Han Feizi's writings to his minister, Li Si. Now, Li Si was a former fellow student of Han Feizi and bitterly jealous of the latter's literary brilliance. Sometime later, the King of Qin had laid siege to the ruler of Han, King An, who had always refused to follow the Way of Han Feizi. In the hope of saving his state from destruction, King An dispatched Han Feizi to the King of Qin, who was initially delighted. However, green-eyed Li Si persuaded the king that Han Feizi would always have the interest of the enemy Han at heart and never the king. Han Feizi was imprisoned and before the king had the chance to regret his decision (which he apparently did), Li Si sent poison to the prison. Han Feizi drank it and died. Li Si became prime minister to the first Emperor of China. This is another reason why philosophers should keep out of politics.
I am not an expert in Zen Buddhism and some of its Western variants invite my scepticism. Yet what is fascinating is the tradition of Japanese death poems written by Zen monks on the verge of death. In addition to leaving the usual will, Zen monks would write a farewell to life in the form of a haiku or other short elegiac poem. Ideally, the dying monk would anticipate the moment of his death, write his poem, set aside his ink brush, cross his arms, straighten his back, and die.
An extreme and slightly comical example of this can be found in Eisai (1141–1215), one of the founders of Japanese Zen. He went to Kyoto to show people how to die. To this end, the monk preached to the crowd, sat still in the Zen position and died. But when his followers complained that his death had been too sudden, he revived and died in exactly the same way five days later. These death poems display extreme economy, formal rigour and beauty, such as in the following haiku from Koraku (d. 1837).
The joy of dewdrops
In the grass as they
Turn back to vapour.
Or this, from Dokyo Etan (d. 1721),
Here in the shadow of death it is hard
To utter the final word.
I'll only say, then,
“Without saying.”
Nothing more,
Nothing more.
However, many of these death poems are wonderfully self-deprecating and humorous, as in the following haiku from Mabutsu (d. 1874):
Or the following excerpt from Kyoriku's kyoka death poem which reminds us of Zhuangzi's idea of the corpse as antfood: