Confucianism and Daoism

In China, people often speak of the “three teachings”: Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism. Most people did not choose one; they mixed all three with honouring ancestors and local gods.

Scholars still debate whether Confucianism is a religion or a philosophy of life. Daoism is both: a philosophy, and an organised religion with priests, temples and scriptures.

The Shang kings asked their royal ancestors and the high god Di about harvests, wars and illness. Diviners cracked ox bones and turtle shells with heat and wrote the answers on them: the oldest Chinese writing.

Around 1046 BC the Zhou overthrew the Shang. They justified it with a new idea: Heaven, Tian, gives a mandate to rule to a virtuous king, and takes it away from a wicked one.

Honour for ancestors and for Heaven, and the link between virtue and the right to rule, run through all later Chinese thought.

From 770 BC the Zhou kings lost real power. Their vassal states fought each other, first in the Spring and Autumn period, then in the Warring States.

Old rituals and loyalties broke down. Rulers needed advisers, and wandering teachers offered them answers: the “Hundred Schools of Thought”.

Their great question was practical: how can people live together in peace and order?

Kong Qiu, Master Kong, known in the West as Confucius, was born in the small state of Lu in 551 BC. He failed to win high office, and spent his life teaching.

He looked back to the early Zhou as a golden age. A good society, he taught, rests on ren, humaneness; li, ritual propriety; and xiao, respect for parents and ancestors.

Rulers should govern by moral example, not by force. Anyone could become a junzi, a person of noble character, through study and self-cultivation.

His sayings were collected by his students in the Analects. He spoke little of gods or the afterlife: “Not yet able to serve people, how can you serve spirits?”

Mencius, in the 4th century BC, taught that human nature is good, like a sprout that needs care. A ruler who oppresses the people loses Heaven’s mandate.

Xunzi argued that human nature tends to selfishness and must be shaped by ritual and education.

The Legalists went further: only strict laws and harsh punishments could create order. The Qin state followed them and unified China in 221 BC (World Empires, Episode 05).

Legend says Laozi, “the Old Master”, was an archivist at the Zhou court who, as he left China through the Hangu Pass, wrote down five thousand words for the gatekeeper: the Daodejing.

Historians think the Daodejing was compiled over time; bamboo slips found at Guodian show versions existed by about 300 BC.

It teaches that the Dao, the Way, is the source of all things, beyond words. The sage follows it through wu wei, effortless action, like water that is soft yet wears away stone.

Zhuangzi, in the 4th century BC, added playful stories, like the dream of being a butterfly, questioning the line between dreaming and waking.

After the harsh Qin fell, the Han emperors looked for a gentler ideology. In 136 BC Emperor Wu made the Confucian Five Classics the official learning of the state.

An Imperial Academy trained officials in them. Confucius was honoured with state sacrifices, and temples to him were built across the empire.

For two thousand years, Confucian ideas of loyalty, hierarchy and family would shape Chinese government, law and family life.

In 142, according to tradition, Laozi, now worshipped as a god, appeared to Zhang Daoling on Mount Heming in Sichuan. Zhang founded the Way of the Celestial Masters, with priests, communities and rituals of healing.

Daoists sought long life and immortality through diet, breathing, meditation and alchemy. Daoist and Buddhist ideas competed and borrowed from each other.

Under the Tang dynasty, whose emperors claimed descent from Laozi, Daoism enjoyed royal favour. Its huge canon of scriptures was collected and printed in later centuries.

Buddhism’s deep metaphysics challenged Confucian thinkers. Zhu Xi, 1130 to 1200, answered with Neo-Confucianism: a philosophy of principle, li, and vital energy, qi, running through all things.

From 1313 until 1905, the imperial examinations tested candidates on the Four Books, with Zhu Xi’s commentaries. Passing them was the road to power for over five centuries.

Confucian rites honoured ancestors in every family hall, and Confucian temples stood in every county town.

Confucianism became the state ideology of Korea’s Joseon dynasty from 1392, and deeply shaped Japan and Vietnam.

Chinese migrants carried Daoist and folk shrines, ancestor halls and festivals across Southeast Asia, including Thailand.

In Phuket, the yearly Vegetarian Festival honours the Nine Emperor Gods, a tradition brought by Hokkien Chinese settlers in the 19th century. Chinese shrines, san jao, stand in towns across Thailand.

After the exams ended in 1905 and the empire fell in 1912, reformers blamed Confucian tradition for China’s weakness. In 1919, students of the May Fourth Movement called for science and democracy instead.

During the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976, temples were wrecked, including the Confucius cemetery at Qufu, and religious practice was suppressed.

Since the 1980s, Daoist temples and Confucian ceremonies have revived, and the Chinese state again promotes Confucius as a symbol of Chinese culture.

Confucius sought harmony through human relationships and ritual; Laozi through returning to the natural Way. Chinese civilisation kept both, like yin and yang.

Next: Shinto, Japan’s way of the kami, which grew from local spirit worship into a national tradition.