What was regarded by ancient Chinese philosophers as the ideal state of life

01Chinese Philosophy vs. Western Philosophy

Chinese Taoism focuses on the unspeakable, whereas Western Kant believes that things are not cognizable and equally unspeakable. The two are similar, but actually very different. In the Taoist view, Kant's self-same thing is a very misleading term because it tends to give people the wrong impression. If one follows the Kantian line of thought, anything becomes ineffable in the end, there is only silence. In silence one also crosses the line of recognizing things to reach the other side. In China, Taoists use this method, as does Zen.

But the problem comes when one wants to describe what is on the other side, one cannot put it into words, one cannot say what it is, one can only say what it is not. This gives rise to the concept of negation. Ultimately it can only lead to mysticism.

From the viewpoint of Taoism and Zen, there is a certain amount of mysticism in Western philosophy, but it is not mystical enough. The West speaks of God, of the unity of man and God, but this God, who appears to be all-knowing and all-powerful, is in fact a concept created by human reason, and is in fact a product of human history and human spiritual history, which is still on this side of the boundary. And Chinese philosophy emphasizes the unity of heaven and man, the unity of knowledge and action, and the unity of situation.

Regrettably, the method of metaphysical neutralization, i.e., logical analysis, has been underdeveloped by us, and neither Zhu Xi, Wang Yangming, nor the earlier Taoism and Confucianism have been able to form this piece into a system, and thus to disseminate and carry it forward in a philosophical sense. Taoism opposes knowledge and reason, and the debates and proofs made revolve around these, but knowledge and reason are the beginning of our understanding of the world and of nature. This is something we need to learn from the West. (Mathematics, geometry, physics, chemistry, these disciplines are almost all monopolized and spread by the West, we still have to continue to work hard)

Chinese scholars believe that the future world philosophy must be more rational than the traditional Chinese philosophy, as long as the rationalism of the West and the harmony of the Chinese idea of unity, in order to form a worthy of the responsibility of the world, the philosophy of the world.

02The Ideal Realm of Life Reached by Philosophy

According to Indian philosophy, it is believed that a person reaches the ineffable and inconceivable realm of being one with the absolute reality, and this state is nirvana. Once one reaches nirvana, one is liberated and attains the vacuum of immortality. However, according to Chinese tradition, we are born as human beings and cannot cross the boundary of the human world; otherwise, once you reach the other shore, where should you put your relatives and friends? Where to put all your memories and emotions in the world?

Traditional Chinese philosophy requires us to do a good job of improving ourselves and raising the level of our lives in order to improve our lives. According to the understanding of Chinese philosophers, what makes man different from other animals is that when man does something, he is able to know what he is doing and is conscious that he is doing it. It is this understanding and self-awareness that gives meaning to what he is doing. It is this that builds our system of meaning and values and forms our realm of life.

Different people can do the same thing, but depending on their different levels of understanding and self-awareness of what they are doing, different meanings and values will emerge, and different realms will be born. According to the tradition of Chinese philosophy, the realm of heaven and earth or the realm of the unity of heaven and man is an extremely high philosophical realm, because a person cannot just reach the realm of heaven and earth unless he has gained some kind of cognition about the universe as a whole through philosophical understanding and sublimation. Without such knowledge and understanding, he can at best reach the utilitarian and moral realms.

In ancient Chinese philosophers, Taoism emphasized that the highest living is joy and happiness, a deep peace and nothingness, but in Confucianism, it is best to improve one's living realm, and that one should not only be happy and enjoy oneself, but also take social responsibility. A person may be a great player in a certain field, but he is not yet a perfect man, for only in the highest state of life can a person become perfect. And the function of philosophy is to cultivate man into a perfect man through thinking and training, and the highest achievement of the perfect man is to be one with heaven and earth, one with the universe.

03On the Unity of the Universe and the Unity of Heaven and Humankind

The universe and heaven and earth are not objects of reason, and without the participation of human beings, the universe and heaven and earth are dead things. That is why, in understanding this reflective process, we should never give up the care of the subject.

When we think about the totality of all existence, we are reflecting on the fact that we have to include ourselves and our thinking in the totality of existence, and if we do not do so, the totality of our thinking is not the totality of existence, and there will be an omission or a loophole. The totality of all existence, strictly speaking, is an idea of human reflection.

In Plato's Ideal State, he teaches us that the philosopher must be raised from the "cave" of the sensible world to the real world of reason, and that if the philosopher is in the world of reason, he is in the realm of heaven and earth, and thus can know the world better. The unity of the individual with the universe is expressed in Spinoza as a rational love of God. He sees God as the sum of all that exists, but once this is the case, God cannot be the object of love; man cannot love it, for unless man himself can be one with it. Otherwise, we cannot know God. And with William James, it is pure experience that is primary. Pure experience allows us to become naked, to enter into the natural realm of the muddled, where all knowing is based on what we feel and experience.

Philosophy that denies reason is mostly materialistic and, like Buddhism, tends to be emergent. It aims at eliminating man's selfish and delusional nature, but this does not mean that it can exclude people's interest and care in the daily affairs of the world. A true philosopher is both worldly and worldly, and he knows how to realize the highest state of human life in the daily affairs of human life, that is, to become one with heaven and earth and to become one with the universe. This is the most central point of the Chinese philosophical tradition.

The man who reaches the realm of heaven and earth is a saint, and a saint does not do many miracles, nor does he need to do so. He doesn't do much more than ordinary people do, but he has an extremely high level of understanding and self-awareness of life, living, and even the universe, from which meaning is formed. In other words, he did things in a state of "light", while ordinary people do things in a state of "ignorance". This is the difference in understanding and realization of each of our lives, which results in different meanings and values.

Having the highest state of life and realizing it consciously in daily life is the ideal life that traditional Chinese philosophy aims to achieve.

Conclusion-

Chinese philosophy treats life as a natural fact, faces it bravely, strives to improve it spiritually, does not flinch when problems arise, and does not flaunt its accomplishments, so that life tends to be as good as possible. This outlook on life is not simply a moral sermon or a religious creed, but a time-honored attempt at survival, a system of meaning and value established through self-improvement and life experience, and the highest spiritual knowledge of man realized through the trials and tribulations of everyday ordinary life.

Chinese philosophy has no supernaturalism, no transcendentalism, but can always guide the actual life without being vulgar; Chinese philosophy does not have too many schools of thought and humanistic propaganda, but can always integrate the spirit of the times into the people-oriented without falling into the rigidity and backwardness. This is the good fortune of the people of the country, the good fortune of the nation.