中國思想裏天上和人間理想的構思

On the Conception of Ideals of Heavens and of the World in Chinese Thought

柳存仁(Liu Ts'un-yan)

《中國文化研究所學報》 新5期 (1996/01) Pp. 1-29

https://doi.org/10.29708/JCS.CUHK.199601_(5).0001

並列摘要

This monograph deals with the traditional beliefs of the Chinese people, including the doctrines of the Three Teachings, i.e., Confucianism, Buddhism and religious Daoism. Buddhism and religious Daoism are generally recognised as religion, while Confucianism can only be marginally counted as one in the same category. The latter may be qualified if we emphasise the influences of the apocryphal scriptures of superstitious nature dominating China during the beginning of the first century, or the tremendous importance of the Examination System for the intellectuals to serve the state since the early fourteenth century. However, Confucianism still refuses to talk either about the concept of paradise or the life in the hell. Popular beliefs that prevailed in the ancient times accept the concept of the soul which is subdivided into the material and spermatic po and the acrial hun. The po is denser and will descend to the earth when one dies and becomes decomposed, while the hun, since the Qin-Han times, wanders in the air and will report to the Lord of Mt. Tai (the first of the Five Sacred Mountains) for final approbation or inquisition. The idea of samsara (transmigration) did not exist in the Chinese beliefs until Hanayana Buddhism was introduced. When the King of the Hades, the Yamaraja, came to China, the Lord of Mt. Tai was absorbed into the Brahmanic-Buddhist hierarchy of the underworld and became one of the ten lords in the hell subordinated to Yama. The whole system was then copied by popular Daoism adding some paraphernalia of its own. Some of the Daoist scriptures composed from the fifth to the seventh centuries bear close resemblance to the earlier Buddhist works. The Pure Land belief of the Amitabha or Amitayus Cult as a branch of the Mahayana teaching provided some opportunities for exhortations for the indigenous scholars of China during the truculent time of the fourth century. The Pure Land, however, may be likened to an isolated, protected settlement where devotees may live and continue to cultivate their virtue. But the greater strength and spirit of the Mahayana as a whole in which each and every Bodhisattva took a vow never to become Buddhahood unless all the suffering beings have been redeemed and the Dirty Earth has been rebuilt echoes more with the true spirit of the original Confucian teaching.