What are the influences on traditional Chinese culture

We must come up with the culture of our own nation if we want to stand on our own feet and be strong in the forest of the world's nations.

I

The development of culture is closely related to the development of economy and politics. A life is not only physical, but also spiritual, and the spirit is dominant over the physical. The same is true for a country, the economy is the foundation, but how can the economy develop healthily? But how can an economy develop healthily? It needs its culture to play a role. For more than 100 years in the modern era, the Western countries invaded the Eastern countries by virtue of their powerful material civilization, and the whole Asian region, except Japan, was successively turned into Western colonies and semi-colonies. However, in the last century, especially after World War II, national liberation movements took place in the East, and these countries successively freed themselves from Western colonial rule and gained national independence. After their political liberation, these countries sought economic autonomy and development. After the 1960s, some Asian countries also developed economically and gained autonomy, and began to revitalize after the 1980s. With the revitalization of their economies, these countries began to reflect on their cultural traditions. Before that, these Asian countries, having been colonized and semi-colonized, lacked confidence in their own cultural traditions and had a tendency to deny them. However, after the political and economic recovery, these countries began to have a kind of cultural self-awareness. This is very normal, because the modern economy and politics developed in the context of Western culture have many differences with the original cultural traditions of these Eastern countries. How to adjust and deal with these differences became a big problem. It turns out that these countries want to learn from the West, and even want to get rid of their own traditions, but this is impossible, because tradition is always linked to modernity, which is a dialectical way of thinking about the problem.

Today, Western culture is very strong, but many of our traditions are still y rooted. For example, the concept of "father's debt to son" is unique to traditional Chinese culture and is y rooted. If you don't agree with it, you will be pressurized by public opinion, because the whole cultural atmosphere of China is like this. Why is it that after we have accepted so much Western culture, the whole society still agrees with this? It stems from a basic identity, which is how life comes about.

On this issue, different cultures have different understandings. In Western Christian cultural thought, life is an individual, both his body and soul are given by God, so each individual has a relationship with God. Although he is also born of parents, it is a responsibility given by God to his parents, and he and his parents are equally God's children, so a son is a sibling to his parents, and God has given you the responsibility to raise the next generation, and you have the obligation to raise your children to adulthood. Each individual life does not have an absolute responsibility, but everyone **** the same responsibility to God, God for everyone, everyone for God, a person's life is only meaningful if it is contributed to God. Therefore, if one increases God's honor in life, one's soul can go to heaven after death; if one does things detrimental to God's honor in life, one's soul has to go to hell after death. Therefore, the value of the individual is highlighted in Western culture, and individuals are not directly related to each other. This is life in the context of Western Christian culture.

The other view of life is represented by Indian culture. Indian culture also emphasizes that human life is individual, but can have multiple times, that is, there is reincarnation. This reincarnation is all determined by God, like Brahmanism says it is determined by Brahma. Later, after the rise of Buddhism, it criticized Brahmanism's idea that Brahma determines the fate of human beings, and emphasized that the determining factor in the cycle of individual life is the individual's behavior, or "karma" in Buddhist terminology, which includes the three karmas of the body, the mouth, and the mind. The body is the physical body, which can also be described as action; the mouth is the mouth, which represents speech; and the mind is thought. Therefore, the generation of a life and the reincarnation of that life are all determined by the three karmas of body, mouth and mind. If your "karma" is not eliminated, your life will be forever reincarnated. This view of life is also individual and has nothing to do with other people, but it is only because your own "karma" has not been eliminated that you were born through your parents, and it has nothing to do with your parents.

In these two views of life, life is an individual, not directly related to other individuals, so the problems of other individuals have to be solved by the other individuals themselves, and have nothing to do with "me" as an individual. However, the Chinese culture's concept of life is that of a clan, and each individual is only a link in the chain of life of the clan. The Chinese talk about the continuation of life, but not the continuation of individual life, but the continuation of the life of the tribe. When you die, your life is continued by your children. That's why China has the saying that "there are three unfilial things, and the absence of a descendant is the greatest", because "the absence of a descendant" can not continue life. The most powerful Chinese curse is "to cut off your children and grandchildren", after you cut off your children and grandchildren, your life will be completely over. Therefore, in China, the relationship between children and their parents is a blood relationship where blood is thicker than water, and all the things in your body are bequeathed to you by your parents, and your life is the legacy of your parents. In this concept of life, "father's debt is returned to the child" is logical.

There are many traditional concepts that are y embedded in our blood and can never be removed. Therefore, when it comes to traditional culture, we can neither abandon it completely nor preserve it intact, which is in fact impossible. That being the case, we have to deal with the relationship between culture and tradition properly. The competition between countries and nations will ultimately be realized in culture, not just in economy. Therefore, the inheritance and development of culture is a very important issue, because, without culture, the identity of a nation is gone, and it is impossible for this nation to exist. We often talk about patriotism, patriotism, we have to identify with the history of the country, history and the implementation of the culture, because culture is the carrier of history, identify with the history is to identify with the cultural tradition. Gong Zizhen studied the history of the Spring and Autumn Period and came to this conclusion: "To destroy a country, you must first destroy its history." To extinguish a country first to extinguish the history of the country, the people do not know their own history, do not know their own culture, the country and what feelings it? In this respect, the identity of history and cultural tradition is not a general issue, but a fundamental issue concerning the survival of our country and nation, and culturally speaking, it is also the place of the spirit of a country and nation.

In recent years, I have been talking about this issue: we need to establish the subjective consciousness of culture. In the modern world, cultural exchange is a very important driving force for cultural development. This is also true in terms of the history of cultural development in our own country. Chinese culture is a cultural ****similarity formed by many cultures exchanging and absorbing each other. We know that in the pre-Qin period, there were a hundred schools of thought, and by the Warring States period, this situation had begun to exchange and influence each other. Through such exchanges, by the beginning of the Han Dynasty, some schools of thought began to grow, and some began to decline. Sima Qian's father, Sima Tan, introduced the ideas of Confucianism, Taoism, Mohammedanism, Nomenclature, Dharma, and Yin-Yang in his Essentials of the Six Schools, and the Hundred Schools became the Six Schools. These six schools of thought became six schools of thought. These six schools of thought were eliminated after cultural exchanges and mutual absorption during the Han Dynasty, and finally two schools of thought, Confucianism and Taoism, were formed. The reason why these two families can continue to rely on what? It is by maintaining their own subjectivity. A thought cannot maintain its own subjectivity, it can not have development itself. Later on, Buddhism was introduced into China during the time of the two Han dynasties, and began to join as a foreign culture, which had a great impact on the thinking of the Confucian and Taoist schools at that time. The Confucian and Taoist schools also absorbed the ideas of Buddhism. By the time of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, through such mutual exchanges, Buddhism had penetrated into all aspects of Chinese culture, especially into some of the customs of Chinese folklore. An idea is only as strong as its implementation into the customs of life, otherwise it is just some empty theories and understandings.

We are now talking about China's traditional culture has been greatly impacted, from China's modern historical process can be divided into so many stages: the first stage is that China's original spiritual culture is still very meaningful, but also very strong, China's weak weak in the material culture, so to catch up with the West as long as the material civilization of the active learning and development can be, which is the time of the foreign affairs movement This was the idea of the foreign affairs movement: "Middle school for the body, western learning for the use". However, the foreign affairs movement ended in failure. After 30 years of foreign affairs movement, a very powerful Beiyang navy was established at that time, but it was defeated in a Sino-Japanese War. We then started to consider the issue of institutions and mechanisms, and the issue of institutional civilization. The Confucian civilization did not work, so it had to be criticized and changed, so institutional reforms had to be carried out. The West provided us with two examples, one of which was to follow the path of constitutional monarchy like Britain and the Netherlands, where the king was hollowed out and the real power was put into the parliament, which was the Hundred Days Reform led by Kang Youwei. However, the Hundred Days Reform did not succeed either. In the second stage, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, like the French Revolution, completely overthrew the feudal dynasty and established the **** and system. But the Xinhai Revolution was both successful and unsuccessful, for although the Emperor was brought down, the old warlords were again very powerful. So people began to think about the factors at the level of spiritual civilization. The New Culture Movement was about transforming spiritual civilization, and at that time, the first thing to bear the brunt was Confucianism, so Confucianism was fiercely criticized. However, this actually remained at the socio-political level, and did not have much impact on the traditional things in general secular life. Finally, in the Cultural Revolution, culture was fundamentally eradicated from daily life, and many customs disappeared. After the "Cultural Revolution", we also cut off our traditions in the basic family life, so many of us nowadays are not very clear about the basic concepts of family ethics, and some of them don't agree with them at all.

Two

Confucius said in the Analects of Confucius, "The father is hidden for the son, and the son is hidden for the father, and it is straight in the middle." We want to build a society based on the rule of law, the father harbors the son, the son harbors the father, this is still "straight in the middle"? This is not in accordance with the law. So the Chinese people do what we have to say sensible, reasonable and legal, in the minds of many of us reasonable and legal can be accepted, but sensible can not be accepted, that the law is no love. Is the law intolerant of emotion? I went to Korea in the early 1990s to find out what kind of influence Confucian culture still has in Korean society today. I found that in their law, there is this provision on how to deal with the crime of harboring a person: If the person who hides the person is not related to you by blood, according to his crime, he has to be sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment; however, if the same circumstance occurs between immediate family members who are related to you by blood the sentence can be reduced. This seems a little absurd to us. But when I look at them carefully there is another clause in the offense of assault, that if a person injures each other without being related by blood, the sentence is five years, according to the severity of the injury you have done, but if it is a relationship between immediate family members, the sentence is ten years. When these two articles are put together, we can see the intention of the law: to emphasize kinship. We all know that Korea is y influenced by Chinese Confucianism, so I immediately thought of this quote by Confucius when I read these two articles.

Our love on earth can be roughly summarized into three categories: one is affection, the other is friendship, and the third is love. The most unstable of these three types of "love" is love. Affection, friendship should be eternal, love is changing. Two people have love, to a certain extent after the union, this love has been transformed into affection, affection can not be as casual as love: we are good to be together, not good to break up. You have to consider the responsibility of each other, this is the requirements of affection, can not remain in love. One of the most important rites of passage that we Chinese emphasize is the wedding. Rites, beginning with the crown, this in the wedding, but nowadays the wedding can be said to have no rules, we eat and drink, noisy, by the way, spoofed on the end, did not leave any deep significance. So we must regulate the wedding, to let two people through the wedding by a kind of education, realize that the responsibility has changed, both sides have to be responsible for each other; pre-marriage, if you talk about filial piety, you only need to do filial piety to their own parents can be, but after the marriage for each other's parents to do filial piety. If you have children, you have to be responsible for them later. Why is it that in ancient Chinese weddings you have to bow to heaven and earth, and bow to the high hall? It is to be thankful, so that you can have this kind of gratitude.

Our people nowadays are rather lacking in this aspect, self-centered, never thinking that my survival, my growth, my achievement is inseparable from others. Can we live without heaven and earth? In the Chinese philosophy, heaven and earth are the source of all life, so heaven and earth are the parents of all things. Xunzi said that there are three bases of etiquette, the first of which is "Heaven and earth are the origin of life". Heaven and earth are the origin of all life, so we have to be grateful to heaven and earth. Xunzi said, "Ancestors are the origin of class." The Chinese concept of life is the concept of class, and life is given to us by our parents and grandparents. Therefore, why should we worship heaven and earth and our parents? Repayment of kindness, do not forget the original also. The most basic quality of a human being should include the idea of repaying kindness. Xunzi also said, "The ruler and teacher are the basis of governance." In the past, "Jun" also refers to saints, which means that saints and teachers are the basis for you to know how to be a human being. The meaning of "rule" is to rule others and oneself, to rule others you must first rule yourself, and to be righteous you must first be righteous. So traditional Chinese culture requires us not to forget our roots.

Young people say they want to realize their self-worth, and I'm all for that. Each of us should realize our self-worth, but how? Being recognized by others is the only way to have value, and to gain the recognition of others, you have to make a contribution to them. I sometimes joke that Confucianism tells us a secret to realizing our self-worth, but we say that it is the culprit who denies our self-worth. This is because Confucianism tells us that we have to devote ourselves to the group, and whatever we do, we have to do it for the group, and is this not the best method, way and secret to realize self-worth? But some people say that Chinese people have no ego at all. How can they have no ego? They spend the first half of their lives serving their parents and the second half of their lives serving their children, but not themselves. We say that it may look like this now, but we serve our children, we serve our parents and this is the value of the Chinese people, and this is how life continues. The respect and honor you have for your parents now is actually for your children to respect and honor you in the future. So this is how life continues from generation to generation, and this is how retribution continues from generation to generation. In fact, I think this is a very simple truth, we now also have a lot of people talk about filial piety, as if to give parents enough food and clothing is filial piety, in fact, it is not such a simple thing. In the Book of Rites, there are three books of filial piety: "Great filial piety honors the parents", which means that your parents should be respected by the society; "Do not humiliate", which means that your parents should not be humiliated by the society; and "The lower part of your parents can be raised", which means that they can be raised by the society. The second is "do not insult", do not let your parents be insulted by society; "the next is to be able to raise them".

Some people ask: Chinese culture is so good, so how much dross is there in Chinese culture? Of course there is. For example, Chinese culture says that if the king wants the minister to die, the minister has to die, and if the father wants the son to die, the son has to die. This is foolish loyalty and filial piety. In fact, Confucianism does not advocate this either. There is a story in Mencius. Someone asked Mencius whether Cheng Tang killed Xia Jie and King Wu killed King Zhou, and whether he was committing a crime against his superiors. Mencius said, "I have heard of the execution of one man, Zhou, but I have not heard of regicide." Everyone hated him, everyone abandoned him, he became a loner, how can this be said to be a violation of the law? That is why there is a saying in the Book of Zhou Yi, "Tang Wu revolutionized the old and brought in the new". In Xunzi, it is even clearer: "To enter filial piety and to leave one's home with brotherly love is a small act of a human being", that is to say, to be filial at home and to respect one's elders when one is outside is only a "small act". Then what is the "great behavior" of a person? "To follow the way and not to follow the king, to follow righteousness and not to follow one's father, this is the great behavior of a man." That is to say, filial piety and loyalty have principles, not to advocate foolish loyalty and filial piety, we are interested in reading "Xunzi - Zidao".

It can be seen that many of our interpretations of traditional culture should be the ancient for the present, so the initiative of choosing traditional culture is still in our own hands, and the responsibility of whether or not we can carry forward the good aspects of traditional culture is also in our own hands. Sometimes when there are some problems or some bad phenomena, some people say that they are caused by our traditional culture, which is shirking the responsibility. Today, we have to take responsibility for our own things, and the good or bad use of traditional culture is also the problem of our people today, not the problem of culture itself.

Three

The contents of Chinese culture are all interrelated, and we must learn them in a coherent way. In ancient times, there was a strong emphasis on learning a variety of skills. According to the Book of Rites, in ancient China, students entered elementary school at the age of eight and university at the age of fifteen. One of the things that one learns after entering elementary school is to clean up after oneself, that is to say, to clean up after oneself and to receive guests. The second component was to enter and exit in a proper manner, that is, how to enter and how to exit, which were all ceremonial things. There is a saying, "walk slowly and then grow up", which means that when an elder walks with you, you must let the elder walk in front of you, and you must slowly follow behind. The third element is the study of the six arts, rites, music, archery, the royal court, calligraphy, and mathematics. This is mainly ceremonial stuff. In addition to rites and music, archery and yu are archery and driving, shu is the calligraphy we are talking about now, and numeral refers to the art of counting, that is, astronomy, geography, and such things. We can see from the six arts that literature and art can be said to be the performance of rituals and music, and all these things are for cultivating the body and cultivating the mind. In the Beijing Olympics last year, South Korea lost the archery competition and did not get the championship, much to their chagrin, thinking they should have gotten it. Because they have been learning archery since the fourth grade of elementary school. Why is archery given such importance? According to the Book of Rites, archery is also a very important ritual, and there is a township archery rite. The most important spirit embodied in this ritual is respect for the elderly and love for the young. If there is a 90-year-old man at the ceremony, then the 80-year-old man can only sit down after the 90-year-old man has sat down. What spirit is embodied in the shooting ceremony? The body must be upright, and the heart must be upright before the body can be upright, and only when the body and heart are upright can the shot be hit. If you don't hit the target, you can't complain and say that the target is not set correctly. At this time, you must reflect on whether my heart is correct or not, and whether my body is correct or not. The rites of archery allow us to cultivate a righteous heart and a righteous body through archery and to reflect on our own character. These rites are definitely not simply entertainment items, but through them we cultivate our behavior.

What do you have to learn after entering the university at the age of fifteen? You have to learn poor reasoning, correct your mind, cultivate your body, and learn these great principles of being a human being. So in terms of the whole Chinese traditional education, we can see that it is all centered on how to be a human being, that is, the purpose and aim of Chinese traditional education is to teach people how to be a human being, that is, the way to be a human being. We say that education is the basis for establishing and strengthening a nation, but what is the basis of education? The way of being a human being is the basis of education. Our present education stays on the transmission of knowledge and skills, which has lost the meaning of education, or the meaning of traditional Chinese education. We all know the saying that it is better to teach a man to fish than to teach him to fish, so I say that the way of learning is the essence of education. The so-called formula for learning is to teach him how to discover knowledge, master knowledge, use knowledge, which is much more important and fundamental than you teach some ready-made knowledge.

Nowadays, subjects are so divided that they are completely isolated from each other, which makes it impossible for our minds to be interconnected and integrated. As far as Chinese tradition is concerned, if I teach you that you will only do this and not that, then I will never teach it again. There is a saying in the Analects of Confucius, "One does not want to speak without anger, and one does not want to speak without wanting," which means that the student must have a strong demand for knowledge, and if he doesn't have such a demand, I won't inspire him; if he has such a demand, I can go and point it out to him. Therefore, inspiration is not something that I pour into him, but something that I teach him only after he has a request. Then there is another sentence below, "If you can't counteract one with three, you won't be able to recover." If you can't counteract one with three, your knowledge is a dead knowledge. It is only when you can reflect on three things that you have living knowledge, that you can be able to integrate them, that you can learn from one to the other. Knowledge is all coherent. There is an ancient Chinese saying: "If you are not a good minister, you are a good doctor. Being a good minister is the same as being a good doctor. To be a good prime minister is to reconcile all kinds of conflicts so that the society can be harmonized. That is why the Chinese compare a prime minister to a great chef, who is able to harmonize and combine various flavors to make a pot of delicious soup, which is harmony. The prime minister is the one who does this, the senior chef. And a good doctor is also harmonizing your spleen and stomach, harmonizing your five organs and six bowels in order to achieve balance, and to relieve paralysis and congestion, and it's the same thing. There is a saying in the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine, "The sage treats the disease before it gets sick, not the disease already, and treats the chaos before it gets sick, not the chaos already." This saying is also a principle of treatment from the perspective of Chinese medicine. Xunzi once said, "A gentleman treats the disease but not the chaos." Doesn't it matter if there is chaos? No. A gentleman treats chaos by "removing it and ruling it", that is, by restoring etiquette and establishing a good order of etiquette. So it is not on the chaos to cure the chaos, the chaos is only to treat the symptoms, we must grasp the root, is to build the social etiquette system.

China's learning is also common, if you can not reflect the three words is the children can not be taught. Why can't we produce masters now? Because we can not cite a three, say one is one, say two is two, can not be integrated. The Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism in Chinese culture are all huge and complex knowledge systems, but the Way is always simple. If we can integrate and grasp the fundamental spirit of the three religions, we will be able to understand everything. The simplicity of the Way is one of the simplest ideas of the Chinese, because the Way of heaven and earth is simple, and we can read this truth from the I Ching. The word "easy" in the I Ching has three meanings: one is not easy, one is changeable, and one is simple. The so-called "not easy" is a foundation, and the so-called "not easy" is to locate the position of heaven and earth, and the position of rigidity and flexibility, that is, there are relative things. It is only when there is something relative that there will be a change, and change is the most central thing, because the development of things will often come to its own exhaustion, if it comes to the exhaustion and can not adapt itself, it will come to an end; if it can be adjusted, adaptable, it can continue to develop. That is why there are words in "Zhou Yi": "When you are poor, you change; when you change, you get through; and when you get through, you stay through". Change can also be said to be the fundamental law of all things, unchanged will die. After change, we can pass, find a new path, pass can be long. And simplicity is the great virtue of heaven and earth, respect for the original appearance of things is the most simple.

Only for this reference, thank you