Pang Park and the Trichotomy of Three Lives and All Things

At 20:49 on January 9, 2015, Mr. Pang Park, a lifelong professor at Shandong University and an authority on Confucianism, died in Jinan at the age of 87 after failing to recover from an illness.

Pang Park, the word Ruomu. Mr. Pang was a famous contemporary Chinese historian, cultural historian, philosophical historian, and expert on Fang Yizhi. He devoted himself to the study of the history of Chinese philosophy, ideology, culture, and the excavation of simple and silk Fang. He proposed that Chinese thinking is a unity of three rather than a dichotomy, which is his most influential doctrine of one divided into three.

His major works include Studies on the Dialectic of Confucianism, Worthless Collection, Nationality and Era of Culture, White Horses, Not Horses--Chinese Famous Debate Thoughts, and One Divided Into Three--An Examination and Explanation of Traditional Chinese Thought.

Pang Park believes that we should preserve our culture and keep our tradition. If you lose your own culture, you lose the whole nation.

The Third World Congress of Confucianism awarded him the Confucius Culture Prize, the highest award in the field of Confucianism.

"Mr. Pang Park has a strong cultural self-consciousness, and he has held warmth and respect for traditional Chinese culture throughout his life." Wang Xuedian, executive vice president of Shandong University's Institute for Advanced Study of Confucianism, said Mr. Pang was the main promoter and leader of the revival of Confucianism in the past 30 years.

Wang Xuedian said the death of Mr. Pang Park is a major loss in the study of Chinese Confucianism, history of thought and traditional culture, leaving a gap that will be difficult to fill for a long time.

To observe the world and deal with problems in accordance with the true three points of the world is the method of three points. --Pang Park, "The Law of Three Thirds"

......So, fundamentally, the four points can only be said to be three points. --Pang Park, "The Four Saints and the Two Emperors and the Three Points"

"The Four Forms of the Three Points:

(1) The Three Realities, i.e., all three are entities. (There is a relationship of mutual restraint or complementarity between the three entities.)

(2) Two solids and one void, i.e. two solids and one void. (Mr. Pang Park cited the examples of "invisible hand", "chicken with three legs", and "Yao and Shun with three eyes")

(3) Two entities and one entity.

(4) "Positive and negative together".

[In the editor's opinion, the first three "thirds" are simple thirds, and the last "positive and negative merging" embodies what is considered to be the real thirds)

"The Four Forms of the Middle Way "

(1) A but B;

(2) A but not B;

(3) Not A but not B;

(4) Both A and B.

[Editor's opinion: (1) is to emphasize the "sameness" of the paradoxical AB (the endoscopic "one"), while (2) is emphasizing the "unity" of the contradiction AB (the outward-looking "one")]

"Unification of opposites in Three basic styles":

Package: the also-A-and-B unity of two opposing aspects, A and B, related to each other in an affirmative way.

Transcendence: the non-A, non-B unity of two opposites, A and B, related to each other in a negative way. (Transcendental to the opposing sides.)

Guide: Because of the special nature of the opposites, the unifier of the opposites takes one of the opposites as the main one to unify the two opposites, and forms the A-ab style. (For example, good and evil, you can not use the "package" form to unify it, also for good and evil; also can not use the "super" form to unify it, neither for good nor for evil. Rather, it can only be based on a value judgment that the good is the dominant good and evil, forming a form of unity that is both inclusive and superlative.)

[Editor's note: "package" and "super" can also be understood as one kind of thing; the last "guide" can be understood as "dominant". The last "guide" can be understood as the "dominant" and pre-qualitative content. Another example is that the real and the false cannot be unified in the form of "package" or "super", but can be unified by "absolute truth" according to value judgment; the material and the spiritual, or the so-called "thought and existence", can be unified by "absolute truth"; and the so-called "thought and existence" can be unified by "absolute truth". Matter and spirit, or the so-called "thought and existence" can also be unified by "existence" - the "value judgment" here is the "world of existence". The "world of existence" view - which combines matter and spirit into one, thus eliminating the distinction between materialism and idealism (which, of course, cannot be prevented from arising)]

- The Chinese tradition of numbering begins with one. It is said to begin at one and not at zero, because the realization of zero as a number came very late; and it ends at ten, which is of course determined by the decimal system. The most interesting and noteworthy thing is that the number becomes three. Why did it become three? And how did it come to be three?

The so-called numbering in three means that both the objective world and the subjective world's understanding of things start from one, or from chaos. Then the two opposing ends are revealed, or the two ends are first noticed in the cognitive sense, and then the two ends become two. Then, because of the two ends, there is a middle, and the middle is known, and the evolution of things is completed or fully recognized, and this is called becoming three. Abstracted as a number, it is from one to two to three, to three, the end. Lao Zi said: Tao gave birth to one, two, two gave birth to three, three gave birth to all things, is also this meaning. The three beget all things, three embodied in all things, all things are a three also.

-- The truth is that the world is originally three-part. The center and the two ends, originally existed in comparison, and were identified and named. There is an order of recognition, and the existence of things is often different, but the fact that it is divided into three is objective and ubiquitous.

But because of the preconception of dichotomy, people are accustomed to call the middle as the intermediary, only as the intermediate link between the two poles, or the middle stage of the process of change; like to emphasize that all the differences in the intermediate link fusion, all the opposites through the intermediate stage of the transition between each other; and so on. That is to say, the existence of the middle is as if it were only for the sake of the two poles, and the status and role of the middle lie in its ability to intermediate, disregarding the basis of its ability to intermediate, and disregarding the self-nature of its existence. Thus, they deny the reality of the three points. They do not realize that the center is the center in exactly the same way as the left and right are the left and right; from the point of view of their relationship, they are relative; from the point of view of their existence, they are absolute. The fact that the center can be intermediary and the center can be integrated is the manifestation of its independence from the right and the left and its independent functioning, rather than the result of its subordination to the right and the left and its dependence on the left and the right.

Also because of the preconception of dichotomy, people are still accustomed to believing that the intermediary link is temporary, and that it is bound to polarize and ultimately return to the world of duality. The familiar argument that the petit-bourgeoisie is massively, constantly, daily and hourly polarized towards the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is the most classic. This insight is valuable because it sees the world in terms of movement and change, and is undoubtedly correct in pointing out that the boundaries of the three divisions are not rigid but fluid; it forgets, however, that the flow between the center, between the two extremes, can never be merely unidirectional. Since there can be a division from the middle to the poles, there must also be a convergence from the poles to the middle; while the petty-bourgeoisie is daily and hourly divided into the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat do not fail to secrete the petty-bourgeoisie every day and every hour; the motives for this are exactly the same ****. It is important to realize that, due to the change of movement, the intermediate state, as an intermediate state, must be in the relative relation with the two ends of this rise and this fall and this fall and this fall, **** together to form a three-segmented whole; and if one segment is missing, it means that the whole has undergone a complete change and ceased to exist, and it is not possible for any one segment alone to withdraw from itself first.

There is a further view which proceeds from dichotomy, that the middle is evil and must be removed. That is the most dangerous theory of centrists in political doctrine, and the anti-middleman theory in literature. This is standard leftist infantilism. We know that a toddler's ability to distinguish between simple good and evil is a welcome advance in his understanding from chaos to order, but the toddler is not yet capable of recognizing the intermediary links between good and evil; although in most cases the middle is often the majority. The transition from toddler to adult involves a grueling process of growth. It also takes a process to be willing to recognize the legitimacy of the middle ground between the two factions.