An Early Qing Critique of the Philosophy of Mind-Heart (Xin):
The Confucian Quest for Doctrinal Purity and the Doxic Role of Chan Buddhism [*]
On-Cho Ng

Journal of Chinese Philosophy
V. 26:1 (1999.03)
pp. 89-120

Copyright 1999 by Dialogue Publishing Company,
 Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A.

p. 89

    Xing ("human nature"), and very often in conjunction with it, xin ("mind-heart"), was a major problematique in traditional Chinese philosophical discourse. It could not be otherwise, for any discussion of human nature, to wit, the question of what humanity is, could not possibly eschew xin, the very home of volition, sentiments and intellect. But unlike the former, the mind-heart seemed to have elicited, relatively speaking, fewer disputations and focused cogitations. While the two were frequently paired in the compound term, "xinxing," to denote the quiddity of Confucian learning as the quest for inner essential human substance, the mind-heart appeared to have played an adjunct role in most conceptions of humanity. It was not until the emergence of the teachings of Wang Yangming (1472-1529) and their immense popularity in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that a coherent philosophy premised on the mind-heart as the human substance came to be a clearly identifiable orientation in Confucian learning. Indeed, in the Confucian historiographic and hagiographic literature, Wang and his supposed predecessor-master, Lu Xiangshan (1139-93), posed respectively as transmitter and founder of the so-called "learning of the mind-heart" (xinxue), which was in contention with the more dominant "learning of principle" (lixue) supposedly initiated by Cheng Yi (1033-1107) and consolidated by Zhu Xi (1130-1200). This putative bifurcation of the Confucian tradition was first clearly articulated by Chen Jian's (1497-1567) influential General Critique of the Obscurations of Learning (Xuebu tongbian). [1] With the apparent confirmation of the two sectarian intellectual lineages in the late Ming, the mind-heart became an axis around which much metaphysical and existential pondering spun. How xing related to xin, and how they both defined humanity, became subjects of much contention from the sixteenth century onward. [2]

    It should be noted that the late Qian Mu, while acknowledging some fundamental differences between Zhu Xi's and Lu Xiangshan's

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conception of the mind-heart, showed that Zhu spared no effort in propounding his own "learning of the mind-heart." In fact, Qian boldly contended that the "history of medieval Chinese thought, from the Sui-Tang Tiantai and Chan Buddhism to [the thoughts of] the late Ming, in the final analysis, may be called a history of the mind-heart and principle." He also added that it was "Master Zhu who most meticulously analyzed the human mind-heart and therefore knew it the best." [3] Following Qian Mu's lead, Wm. Theodore de Bary, in his 1981 book on the formation of the Neo-Confucian orthodoxy in the Song-Yuan period, likewise avers that in Neo-Confucianism, there is "a strong emphasis ... on the creative mind, responsive to human needs." Its early teaching "was identified with this Learning of the Mind-and-Heart (xinxue) rather than with principle understood as a given structure of laws." [4] De Bary's central argument is that prior to the splintering of Neo-Confucianism into the two schools of mind-heart and principle, there had already been a large "mind-culture." The learning of the Way (daoxue) was synonymous with the "learning of the Mind-and-Heart" that presumed the possible attunement of every individual's mind-and-heart to the sages'. Zhen Dexiu's (1178-1235) Xinjing (Mind-Heart Classic), according to de Bary, was a classic statement of this learning. [5] Significantly, de Bary draws attention to the role of Buddhism in the process of the formation of the Learning of the Mind-and-Heart. This learning was meant to be "an alternative to the Buddhist view of the mind, ... a method of mental cultivation consistent with the Confucian view that value distinctions were intrinsic to the natural order in both the mind and things." [6] Through the notion of jing ("reverent seriousness"), Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi arrived at a consistent and practical philosophical method of cultivating the mind-heart in terms of quotidian action in this world. According to de Bary, Zhen Dexiu's Mind-Heart Classic may be viewed as the Confucian counterpart of the Buddhist Heart Sutra. [7] From Zhu Xi's time onward, much discourse on the xin had the Buddhist mind as the subtext.

    This is not place to examine Qian Mu's and Theodore de Bary's understanding and interpretations of the Neo-Confucian tradition. To refer to their works is to drive home the point that both in present-day hermeneutics on Neo-Confucianism and in Confucian writings since the Song-Ming days, the question of xin looms large. [8] Ever since the famous Goose Lake Monastery Debate between Zhu Xi and Lu Xiangshan in 1175, the divergent conceptions of the mind-heart,

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which in turn led to different valuations of methods of moral self-cultivation, sparked many sectarian polemics concerning who best represented the authentic Confucian messages. The advocates of the mind-heart as ontological substance almost invariably faced the charge of contamination by Chan Buddhism. The debate between the two schools intensified in the late Ming and early Qing, and took on political and cultural overtones, when many scholars blamed the fall of the Ming dynasty on the popularity of Wang Yangming's learning of the mind-heart, which, to them, emptied moral cultivation of practical contents and standard values. Its alleged identification with Chan emptiness or abstruseness bred moral laxity and chaos, resulting in ethical breakdown and dynastic collapse.

    The present paper aims to illustrate this debate by focusing on a seventeenth-century early Qing text, Zhang Lie's (1622-1685) Questioning the Doubtful in Wang [Yang-ming's] Learning (Wangxue zhiyi), with a preface dated 1681. Two most illustrious and influential Cheng-Zhu scholars in the Qing court, Lu Longqi (1630-93) and Zhang Boxing (1652-1725), wrote preface for the book and aided its publication. Thus, the work in many ways represented the official orthodox Cheng-Zhu critique of Wang Yangming and his learning of the mind-heart. By detailing the arguments in this critique, we first gain a better understanding of the important bones of contention between the two schools. Second, to the extent that any attack on the school of the mind-heart involved the accusation of Chan perversion, this paper addresses the question of the role of Buddhism in Confucian discourse. With reference to Pierre Bourdieu's theories of "habitus" and "doxa," I will argue that the Buddhist ideas were not castigated simply as heterodoxy, the direct obverse of Confucian orthodoxy, but were actually embraced unconsciously as integral functional parts of the Confucian intellectual universe and cultural capital.

    A prolegomenon on historical semantics, that is, on the various definitions of the mind-heart, accommodating the cognitive, conative and affective meanings, in classical Confucianism, Chan Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism, is relevant here. Needless to say, the constraint of space necessitates many omissions and even simplifications. My goal, nonetheless, is to situate Zhang Lie's seventeenth-century text and its arguments in the context of the

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preexisting conceptual vocabulary and terminological resources. Benjamin Schwartz informs us that the graph xin in bronze inscriptions is depicted as a physical organ, and in the Classic of Odes, it already sports varied meanings: emotions, sentiments, source of morals and cognition. Hence his translation of the word as "heart/mind." [9] Mencius was one of the first classical thinkers to offer a coherent philosophic conception of the mind-heart. The mind-heart is the Heaven-endowed faculty of thinking which discriminates great people from small ones. It is that which mediates our sensory communication and engagement with things in the world:

The faculties of hearing and sight are unable to think and can be misled by external things. When one thing acts on another, all it does is to attract it. The faculty of the mind-heart can think. But it will find the answer only if it does think; otherwise, it will not find the answer This is what Heaven has given me. If one makes one's stand on what is of greater importance in the first instance, what is of small importance cannot displace it. In this way, one cannot but be a great person. [10]

    Mencius also conceives the mind-heart as empathetic and sentient sentiments (qing) from which moral virtues naturally obtain:

The mind-heart of compassion is possessed by all people alike; likewise the mind-heart of shame, the mind-heart of respect, and the mind-heart of right and wrong. The mind-heart of compassion pertains to humaneness, the mind-heart of shame to rightness, the mind-heart of respect to the observance of rites, and the mind-heart of right and wrong to wisdom. Humaneness, rightness, observance of rites, and wisdom an not welded on to me from the outside; they are in me originally. [11]

    Mencius here states that the normative ethico-moral order is in effect the extension of the morally discriminating and rational thinking mind-heart. Hence his linking the mind-heart to human nature (xing):

That which a superior person follows as his nature, that is, humaneness, rightness, observance of rites and wisdom, is rooted m his mind-heart, and is manifested in his face, giving it

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a sleek appearance. It also shows in his back and extends to his limbs, rendering their message intelligible without words. [12]

    The mind-heart-cum-nature is not only the very source of one's virtues that defines individual constitution and being, it also suggests coevality with Heaven: "To fully realize one's mind-heart is to understand one's nature. To know one's own nature is to know Heaven. By preserving the mind-heart and nurturing nature, one serves Heaven." [13] This mutuality with Heaven perforce ascertains the universality of the mind-heart:

[A]ll palates have the same preference in taste; all ears in sound; all eyes in beauty. Should mind-hearts prove to be an exception by possessing nothing in common? What is common to all mind-hearts? Moral principles and rightness. The sage is simply the man first to discover this common element in my mind-heart. Thus moral principles and rightness please my heart in the same way grain-fed animal meat pleases my palate. [14]

    In Mencius' scheme of things, the mind-heart appears to be Heaven's immanence in humanity, thereby having a supreme ontological status.

    In Mencius' views of the mind-heart, the seeds of the major points of contention concerning the mind-heart debate in Neo-Confucianism were already sown. To the extent that the mind-heart is the original substance, even in the unreflective stage, it is all-knowing, the source of natural intuitive knowledge. But on the other hand, the mind-heart does seek to think and to prompt concrete expression of virtues and suppression of evils in the form of action, so that the great human potentialities can be fully realized. This tension between the fundamental assumption of inborn knowledge of the mind-heart, and the discursive role of the mind-heart in rationally and deliberately forging willed acts was the principal animus of the Neo-Confucian polemics on xin.

    Among the Song Neo-Confucians, the Cheng brothers sought to delineate the multiplicity and complexity of humanity by pointing to the interacting and interlocking tripartition of nature, mind-heart and sentiments. They also proffered an axiology of the respective value

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and status of this trio of human substance. To Cheng Hao (1032-85), whose ideas resonate with Mencius', "the mind-heart itself is Heaven. When it exerts itself to the utmost, nature can then be known. To know nature is to know Heaven. [The mind-heart] as it is should be recognized. In particular, [it] cannot be sought from without." But when he was asked if the mind-heart embodied both good and evil, he replied: "With regard to Heaven, there is destiny; with regard to rightness, there is principle; with regard to humanity, there is the mind-heart. They are in fact one. The mind-heart is originally good. When it expresses itself in thinking and deliberation, there are then good and evil. Then it can be called sentiments and not called the mind-heart." Cheng Hao conceives the mind-heart as perfect in its incorporeal original state. If evil, or for that matter, goodness, is relevant at all, it has to do with the issuance of the mind- heart, in which case, we are already looking at the corporeal human sentiments. Thus. Cheng separates the mind-heart from sentiments. But in the final analysis, he prefers to approach the mind-heart, principle and destiny as an undifferentiated holism. Hence his refusal to single out "plumbing [deep for] principle" (qiongli) as the major way to realize one's nature and the mind-heart. [15] Because Cheng Hao is optimistic about the mind-heart's fundamental goodness and the actions that stem from it, his recipe for realizing its potentialities through "seriousness" (jing) urges wariness against anxious calculated striving which is selfishness. [16] To Cheng Hao, seriousness means "the joy of harmonizing"; for "the mind-heart in the center is unencumbered by things." [17]

    Cheng Yi (1033-1107) harbors no such optimism, even though he does say that "the mind-heart of one person is the mind-heart of Heaven and earth." [18] Despite its identification with principle and nature, Cheng argues that "the mind-heart can become lost." (fang xin) The mind-heart's degeneration into evil is the process of letting go of its original goodness. [19] Cheng is skeptical of the mind-heart's ability to remain steadfast. For one thing, the mind-heart must manifest itself in terms of will (yi) and intention (zhi); for another, it "cannot but communicate with and respond to the myriad things," and so it is "difficult to spare it from thoughts and worries." [20] The mind-heart's lacking control is like "a spinning wheel, rotating and moving without stop." What gives it control is "seriousness" (jing), by which is meant "the concentration on one, and this so-called one means ceaseless striving." This sense of the "one" is crucial to the well-being of the

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mind-heart that "cannot be applied to two things at once." [21] In fact, seriousness, as moral self-cultivation, is to be complemented by plumbing principle, extending knowledge and investigating things." [22]

    Whatever the differences and similarities between the Cheng brothers' views on the mind-heart may be, two ideas command attention. First, the mind-heart, albeit fundamentally and originally good, can go astray in the process of its issuance as the will, intention and sentiments. [23] Both brothers comment on the so-called sixteen-character core message from the Classic of Documents referring to the juxtaposition of the renxin (the "mind-heart of humankind") and daoxin (the "Mind of the Way") -- "Man's mind is prone to error. The Mind of the Way is subtle. Remain discerning and single-minded: Keep steadfastly to the Mean (zhong)" [24] -- thereby adumbrating their acknowledgment that in the domain of the human mind-heart, imperfection can arise. Cheng Hao equates "desires" (yu) with the errors of the human mind-heart, and "Heaven's principle" (tianli) with the Way. [25] Cheng Yi sees this tendency toward error as "letting go of the innately good mind-heart "(fang liangxin). [26]

    Second, to both the Cheng brothers, some procedural steps and carefully prescribed efforts need to be set up to ensure the proper manifestation of the mind-heart, so that knowledge can be acquired and moral effort undertaken, although in the elder Cheng's case, the self-cultivating, self-perfecting and self-knowing quality of the mind-heart is much more deeply appreciated. In any case, embedded in the duo's treatment of the mind-heart are keen ontological and epistemic arguments, which Zhu Xi readily took up and elaborated.

    Zhu Xi defines the mind-heart in ontological terms as "consciousness" (zhijue). [27] Once, he was asked about this consciousness: "Is consciousness what it is because of the intelligence (ling) of the mind-heart or is it because of the activity of material force (qi)?" Zhu replied, "Not material force alone. There is always the antecedent principle of consciousness. But at this [prior] stage, principle does not give rise to consciousness. Only when it unites with material force does it give rise to consciousness. Use the flame of this candle as an example. It is because it has received this rich fat that there is so much light." [28] In other words, the mind-heart comes from principle (li) which is nature (xing) in humanity, as Zhu explains elsewhere: "Nature consists of principles embraced in the

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mind-heart, and the mind-heart is where these principles are united." [29] As the mind-heart embodies nature, so it must also embody sentiments (qing)." [30] Therefore, the mind-heart is the master of the physical body is and the external world with which the body is engaged." [31]

    Inasmuch as the conscious mind-heart only comes to experiential and corporeal life by uniting with material force, evil may emanate from this union. In point of fact, Zhu plainly states that the mind-heart includes both good and evil. [32] Another way of perceiving this coexistence of good and evil in the mind-heart, according to Zhu, is the classic bifurcation of the mind-heart into the human mind-heart (renxin) which is prone to error, and the subtle inexorably moral mind-heart of the Way (daoxin), as stated in the Classic of Documents. Zhu explains, "The mind-heart is one. It is called differently depending on whether or not it is rectified." [33]

    Here, the injunction to rectify the mind-heart brings forth both the epistemic and axiological dimensions of the mind-heart. Zhu continues:

The meaning of the Classic of Documents' saying, "Remaining steadfast and single-minded" is to abide by what is right and discern what is wrong, as well as to discard the wrong and restore the right... The saying does not mean that the mind-heart of the Way is one mind-heart, the human another, and still a third one to make them steadfast and single-minded.

    To abide what is right is axiological and to discern what is wrong is epistemic. To elaborate this nexus, Zhu elucidates Mencius' two statements: (1) "Hold it [i.e., the mind-heart] fast and you preserve it. Let it go and you lose it." (2) "Exert the mind-heart to the utmost and know one's nature. Preserve one's mind-heart and nourish one's nature."

By "holding fast and preserving it" is not meant that one mind-heart holds fast to another and so preserves it. Neither does "letting it go and losing it" mean that one mind-heart lets go another and so loses it. It simply means that if the mind holds fast to itself, what might be lost will be saved... "Holding it fast" is another way of saying that we should not allow our conduct during the day to yoke and destroy our inborn mind-heart characterized by humanheartedness and rightness...

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With regard to "exerting the mind-heart to the utmost," it means to investigate things and plumb their principles, and to reach broad penetration, so as to be able to fully realize the principle embodied in the mind-heart. By "preserving the mind-heart" is meant "seriousness to straighten the internal life and rightness to rectify external life." ... Therefore, one who has fully realized one's mind-heart can know one's nature and know Heaven. [34]

    This passage from Zhu's "On Viewing the Mind-heart" (Guanxin Shuo) clearly shows that the mind-heart is a holistic being which, having its own principle as nature, seeks to fulfill it by realizing the virtues of humaneness and rightness, and by knowing it through investigating things and plumbing principles. This is an eloquent expression of the authentic Confucian perspective of humanity, wherein we see that knowing is the deepest understanding of what we already know, since the mind-heart itself is one with the ultimate principle which is also the origin of the social values of human living. The epistemic quest for knowledge proceeds within the axiological framework of practical values, and both are embedded in the ontological bedrock of ultimate being -- nature-cum-principle. [35]

    Although Zhu Xi views the mind-heart in terms of a holism integrated by principle, it is nonetheless subjected to differentiation so that the mind-heart is essentially the consciousness of nature, the intelligence of principle qua nature. In contrast, Lu Xiangshan espouses a philosophy of the mind-heart's being one with principle, inseparable and undifferentiated: "The mind-heart is principle," [36] "ultimate truth is reduced to one; perfect meaning is not a duality; the mind-heart and principle can never be separated into two. [37] As with Zhu Xi's principle, the mind-heart in Lu's scheme is the absolute ontological reality. It is pan-spatial: "The myriad things luxuriate in the space of a square inch; the mind-heart manifested in full fills the universe." [38] It is trans-temporal: "The mind-heart of the sages hundreds and thousands years ago, and the mind-heart of yet another sage hundreds and thousands of years from now, are but the same mind-heart." [39] Therefore, when asked the meaning of "exerting the mind-heart to the utmost," Lu claimed that it was meaningless and erroneous to make distinctions between the putatively varying manifestations of the mind-heart, that is, capacity (cai), nature (xing)

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and sentiments (qing). [40] Thus, the ontological absolute is not only indivisible -- he also rejects pitting the so-called error-prone human mind-heart against the subtle mind-heart of the Way [41] -- it can be readily understood through individual lived experience and not the distracting bookish learning. Hence his well-known epistemic injunction: "If in our study we know the fundamentals, then all the Six Classics are my footnotes." [42] To learn is to "earnestly reflect on oneself so as to rectify mistakes and move toward the good." [43] In other words, "the pursuit of learning is merely to learn to be human." [44]

    This ready collapsing of the epistemic quest for knowledge into the practico-axiological search for human values is the contrary of Lu's ontological assumption that innate ethico-moral virtues flow naturally from the mind-heart, or as Lu sometimes describes it the "original mind-heart" (benxin). [45] Lu thus exhorts. "Collect your spirit. Be your own master. The myriad things are within me. Is there anything missing? When I should be sympathetic, I will be naturally sympathetic. When I should be ashamed, forgiving and accommodating, tender, forceful, and firm and strong, I will naturally be so." [46] Lu Xiangshan's ideas of the moral plenitude of the mind-heart and its identification with the totality of universe, together with the resulting teleology of virtuous behavior, constitute the bases of Wang Yangming's philosophy of the mind-heart.

    It is well-known that the starting point or foundation of Wang's thought is the idea that "the mind-heart is principle." This is so because the virtues of filial piety, loyalty, trustworthiness and humaneness cannot be sought in parents, rulers, friends and all other things. They are "all in the mind-heart" which, if it is not obscured by selfish human desires, is "heaven's principle" (tianli). Filial piety, for instance, is the natural and inexorable application of this unobscured mind-heart to serving one's parents. This sincere and earnest piety that stems from the mind-heart is the root which yields the branches, the specific means, of taking care of parents, such as providing coolness in summer and warmth in winter. [47] The original mind-heart is "vacuous [i.e. devoid of selfish desires] and intelligent" and so "all principles are contained therein, and all affairs proceed from it." [48]

    In a fundamental sense, Wang's mind-heart can be taken as the will (yi), whose determination and decision to engage reality produces reality with its varied manifestations, be they metaphysical principles or concrete physical things: "The master of the body is the

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mind-heart. What issues forth from the mind-heart is the will. The original substance of the will is knowledge, and wherever the will is direct, there is a thing. For instance, if the will is directed to serving parents, serving parents becomes an event; when the will is directed to serving the ruler, serving ruler becomes an event... Therefore, I state that there are neither principles or things outside of the mind-heart." [49] The mind-heart is a constant process of creativity and response, and it is in the created interactive web that the universality of the mind-heart is established as the myriad things. [50]

    This mind-heart, or the original substance, is more precisely defined by Wang as "innate knowledge of the good". [51] It may be seen as three things. First, it is a supreme good a priori, ontologically in absolute conformity with nature: "The original substance of the mind-heart is heaven's principle." [52] As heaven's principle, it is in fact "beyond ordinary good and evil" (wushan wu'e). [53] Second, it is the perceptive grasp of what is right and wrong, and good and bad, and as such, it serves as the fundamental moral criterion: "The superior persons in the world strive to exhaustively develop the innate knowledge of the good, so that there will be universal good and bad, and right and wrong, and common likes and dislikes." Third, innate knowledge is self-referential and non-discursive so that one can "know it without thinking, and practice it without studying." [54] True, material desires do arise to becloud this original substance. Hence the need to constantly "develop the innate knowledge of the good to the utmost" (zhi liangzhi). But this process involves no investigation of external things, since all principles are in the mind-heart, but rather the practical realization of innate knowledge in action -- unity of knowledge and action (zhixing heyi). The ultimate reality, the mind-heart, with its innate knowledge of the good, in the process of creating and interacting with realities, simultaneously demands the fulfillment of this knowledge by acting upon it. [55]

    To be sure, the evolution and development of Confucian thought cross-fertilized with that of Buddhism. It is a well-known fact that the Cheng brothers, Zhu Xi, Lu Xiangshan and Wang Yangming all absorbed in varying ways and in different degrees Buddhist thinking, although all repudiated any suggestion that they were Buddhists. [56] Since the days of Zhu and Lu, Confucian assertion of truths used Buddhism -- Chan Buddhism in particular -- as a sort of

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negative yardstick for measuring the extent of authenticity, that is, Confucian thinking all smacked of Buddhist distortion and contamination. Specially in the seventeenth century, the so-called Lu-Wang school of the mind-heart came under heavy fire primary because of its putative ties to Chan. It is therefore pertinent here to take a brief glance at the Chan concept of the mind. [57] In Chan, the mind is the key to understanding: "If you do not know the original mind, studying the dharma is to no avail. If you know the mind and see its true nature, you then awaken to the cardinal meaning." [58] Enlightenment (bodhi) and intuitive wisdom (prajna) are possessed by all, and if the mind is not deluded, everyone can attain awakening to oneself. [59] Nirvana is really one with the original substance of the Buddha-mind, which is in essence Buddha-nature (Buddhata) that inheres in every human being: "If men ... wish to seek the Buddha, they have only to know that the Buddha mind is within sentient beings... In our mind itself a Buddha exists. Our own Buddha is the true Buddha." [60] But this mind is the mind of "no-thought" (wunian): "it has nothing to do with thinking, because its fundamental source is empty." [61] It is also separate from forms, untainted by environment, and eluding deliberate viewing. [62] Yet, the "straightforward mind (zhenxin) is the place of practice." [63] Being broad and huge, like the vast sky, it is nonetheless empty. But one should not "sit with a mind fixed on emptiness"; for emptiness includes everything in the universe, and a "wise man practices with his mind." [64] In other words, it is in the trans-metaphysical, trans-material and trans-moral interstice between the mundane external this-world of forms and the created idealized internal space of emptiness that true emptiness is located:

If on the outside you are deluded you cling to form; if on the inside you are deluded you cling to emptiness. If within form you are apart from form and within emptiness you are separated from emptiness, then within and without you are not deluded. If you awaken to this Dharma, in one instant of thought your mind will open and you will go forth in the world. What is it that the mind opens? It opens Buddha's wisdom and the Buddha means enlightenment. Separately considered there are four gates: the opening of the wisdom of enlightenment, the instruction of the wisdom of enlightenment, the awakening of the wisdom of enlightenment, and the entering into the wisdom of

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enlightenment and [with this] you see into your own nature, and succeed in transcending the world. [65]

    In short, the true mind opens up the ultimate reality of non-forms and supra-emptiness -- that is, the trans-metaphysical emptying of all dharmas, enabling the seeing into one's own nature, thereby achieving enlightenment. [66]

    The Cheng-Zhu school of Confucianism, on the basis of the supposed Lu-Wang identification with such Chan Buddhist conception of the mind-heart, touted their own native purity and lambasted the latter's un-Chineseness, as it were. But if one looks at Lu-Wang learning carefully, one would be very hard pressed to have to agree with the Cheng-Zhu characterization of the former. Let us use Wang Yangming as an example. Wang clearly repudiates the fundamental Chan notion of the mind as "no thought." [67] Second, although Wang's central idea of innate knowledge of the good is premised on the repudiation of discursive knowledge and the duality of ordinary good and evil in a relative sense -- and against that sense, it is beyond good and evil -- it is ascertained as the supreme good. Spontaneously, moral actions do stem from it to confront affairs of the world, that is, what the Buddhists call forms. [68] Furthermore, Wang claims that the Buddhist striving toward detachment from all forms is, in the final analysis, a kind of attachment to fear and self-benefit. The Buddhist non-attachment expresses fear of the burden of human relationships -- hence their continued attachment to those relationships -- whereas the Confucians, in a supremely natural manner, accept and fulfill them with appropriate virtues and therefore experience no sense of onus. [69] The Buddhist idea of "non-being" (wu) is derived from the "desire to flee from the sorrowful sea of life and death." The Confucian sage, on the other hand, achieves true vacuity, in the sense of lacking selfish desires, by simply returning to innate knowledge of the good. [70] This returning is the direct and instantaneous awakening to the truth of reality. But this returning or awakening does not leave behind the world of action. The unity of knowing and acting, and the activating force of the will, dictate that the "vacuously intelligent and illuminatingly conscious innate knowledge of the good," or the mind-heart, be applied to things and affairs. [71]

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    Nevertheless, the differences between Wang's xin and the Chan Buddhist version did not stop the Cheng-Zhu devotees from using the former as a wedge to break into the alleged flaws of his thought. In the late Ming and early Qing periods, critiques of Wang's learning abounded. Two stood out for their length and systematic analysis. The first was Chen Jian's General Critique of the Obscurations of Learning. The other was Zhang Lie's Questioning the Doubtful in Wang's learning. [72] It is on the latter text that we shall focus. In separate fascicles (zhuan), point by point, Zhang took issue with Wang Yangming's thinking on the three following subjects found in his Record of instructions for Practical Learning (Quanxi lu): "the mind-heart is principle" (xin zhi li); "extending knowledge and investigating things" (zhizhi gewu); "unity of knowing and acting" (zhixing heyi).

    Zhang first tackles the following statements in Wang's text:

To seek the highest good in various things and affairs is extraneous to rightness. The highest good is the original substance of the mind-heart. It is simply the manifestation of one's luminous character to the point where there is supreme and refined single-mindedness, But it is never detached from things and affairs... The mind-heart is principle. Under heaven, are there things outside of the mind-heart? Are there principles outside of the mind-heart?

    Zhang retorts by saying that such assertions amount to the rejection of the Classics and the teachings of Confucius: "If it is, as Yangming says, that where there is the mind-heart, there are laws, then is it not the case that even the Classic of Odes and Confucius are extraneous to rightness?" [73] Zhang contends that Wang's method of "directly seeking [principles] in the mind-heart" as the way to "exhaust thoroughly the principles of things and affairs" cannot be accomplished by the "greatest of sages". The reverse is true. To say that there are no principles outside of the mind-heart is to say that the mind-heart communicates with, responds to, and understands principles in things. Therefore, through the pursuit of principles in things, the mind-heart can be exhaustively developed. [74] This is precisely what Zhu Xi means when he states that "the mind-heart embodies the various principles."

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    Zhang further elaborates on the untenability of equating the mind-heart with principle:

The mind-heart can know and is conscious (zhijue). Manifested in selfish desires, it is the human mind-heart. Manifested in principles, it is heaven's mind-heart. Therefore, [as the Classic of Documents says,] it is important to discriminately identify its subtlety and abide by it with single-mindedness. [The idea] of the mind-heart's being one with principle is unheard of [in the Classics]. Master Cheng [Yi] says, "Nature is principle." It is indeed true. [Mencius says that] moral principles please me as grain-fed animal meat pleases my palate. If we claim that the mind-heart is principle, then the palate is grain-fed animal meat; sight is colors, hearing is sounds. [75]

    Zhang resorts to the classic duality of human mind-heart versus Heaven's mind-heart, and follows Zhu's definition of the mind-heart as the knowing and conscious faculty, which is ontologically different from the truly holistic mind-heart in Yangming's scheme. He consequently focuses on the epistemic process centered on the mind-heart which, albeit in tune with principle, is separate from it. Mencius' metaphor of the relationship between delicious meat and our palate confirms this separation.

    Zhang continues by criticizing Wang's argument that since virtues such as filial piety and loyalty inhere in the mind-heart, they do not exist, accrue and become known through their practice on external objects like parents and rulers. To Wang, the virtues are a priori principles in the mind-heart, not sui generis discoveries. Zhang's counter argument is that first, practically speaking, it is most difficult to realize this moral effort if one does not "identify selfish desires" and "inquire into heaven's principle" with "specific reference to things and affairs." Second, phenomenologically speaking,

it is only when there is a father in my life that my mind-heart knows of filial piety. It is only when there is a ruler in my life that my mind-heart knows of loyalty... Filial piety and loyalty are to be practiced respectively only on parents and ruler, and the knowledge of filial piety and loyalty is in the mind-heart... This is what is meant by "outside the mind-heart,

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there is no principle." To pursue it [filial piety] with regard to the father and to pursue it [loyalty] with regard to the ruler is the same as pursuing the mind-heart. This is known as the way to unite the internal and the external. If now, we assert that only the mind-heart be pursued, excluding the father and ruler, the father and ruler then become external. There are then things external to the mind-heart, principles external to the mind-heart. [76]

    According to Zhang, Wang's concentration on the all-inclusive internal mind-heart ironically yields the externality of social relationships, while the Cheng-Zhu approach bridges the gap between the exponential and the metaphysical. Needless to say, Zhang here conveniently and deliberately avoids Wang's claim that the internality of the innate virtuous and the knowing mind-heart is inexorably fulfilled in action.

    Zhang's dissatisfaction with Wang's faith in the all-germinating and all-knowing mind-heart stems from his lack of confidence in its ability to issue and maintain a universal standard. Zhang asserts that since weights, lengths and heights of all things must be measured and gauged according to some generally accepted standards, the mind-heart is no exception. [77] Where and what are these standards? To Zhang, they are the normative time-honored rituals, rites and ethics (li). Zhang completely agrees with Wang Yangming's admonition that our "respectful caring [of parents] must be done with a pure mind-heart in conformity with the ultimate heaven's principle," for it is not "an effort of bookish learning and intellectual inquiry... If we say that it is the highest good when the rites and rituals are properly observed, then we can say that the actors' playing-acting the observance of rites and rituals is the highest good." But Zhang Lie has this to add: "There is a big difference between the question of the sincerity of the will [behind the rites], which entails quiet self- reflection, and the matter of whether the mind-heart is sincere in the act of respectful caring of parents, which is the main concern of being vigilant in solitude (shendu). With regard to bookish learning and intellectual inquiry, it is exactly to pursue and illuminate rites so as to seek peace for the mind-heart."

    Zhang then embarks on a defense of intellectual inquiry and learning of rites and rituals as the surest way to apprehend principle. True though it may be that the sages, with their sincere mind-heart,

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were able to care for their parents without thinking and prior ritualized social orientation, most people cannot do that. He explains:

The ethical rites bequeathed by the ancients I do not naturally know... It is only by examining past words and old deeds, every one of which touches my mind-heart, that I, with a sense of sympathy, think about filial piety. With understanding comes sincerity. This is a matter of learning... It is certainly the case that many people do not know what heaven's principles are. But when things on which heaven's principles operate are shown, they can be readily registered in the mind-heart... Heaven's principles exist everywhere... The creation of rites and rituals via the sincere mind-heart is principle; the activating of the sincere mind-heart via rites and rituals is also principle... The non-distinction between the self and the others, and the outer and the inner, is the substance of the Way as it naturally is. Therefore, the sages teach that to begin learning is to seek principles in things, and to see and hear often. In the natural course of time, the mind-heart can be reached... But if we talk of seeking the mind-heart at the very outset, then there is no one who is not conceited and boastful of oneself. [78]

    Zhang thus vigorously defends the absolute necessity to learn about the rites and rituals as the way to channel our mind-heart toward cultivating and activating virtues, in order that we eventually comprehend principle. Zhang is also worried that Wang's analogy of actors' acting out rites without proper spirit will eventually yield doubts about the validity of the rites themselves. Zhang lament that Yangming's teaching will turn the world into a world unsalvageably pervaded by corrupt Buddhist teachings. [79]

    In the second fascicle, Zhang Lie seeks to refute Wang Yangming's conception of "developing knowledge to the utmost and investigating things". To Wang, to investigate things is to "rectify" (zheng) things via the rectification of the mind-heart. Where there are the mind-heart's "will and thought" (yinian), there is the "discarding of the unrectified so that everything is rectified. This is the preservation of Heaven's principles, which takes place everywhere all the time. This is plumbing [deep for] principles." This is possible because "knowing is the original substance of the mind-heart, and the

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mind-heart naturally knows." Wang elucidates further the centrality of the mind-heart as innate knowledge of the good in the effort of "extending knowledge to the utmost and investigating things:"

If the innate knowledge of the good is manifested, there is no impediment by selfish thought. This is what is called the full expression of the mind-heart of commiseration so that the virtue of humaneness cannot be exhausted in its utility. But in [the mind-heart of] ordinary folk, there cannot be the absence of impediment by selfish thought, and so the effort of extending knowledge to the utmost and investigating things must be undertaken. To extend to the utmost its knowledge is the triumph over the self by returning to principle, so that the mind-heart's innate knowledge of the good pervades in its flow without impediment. When knowledge is extended to the utmost, the will becomes sincere. [80]

    Zhang concurs with Wang that "making the will sincere" is to discard the unrectified and to achieve complete rectification of the mind-heart. But to Zhang, Wang makes the fundamental mistake of equating "preserving heaven's principle" with "plumbing [deep for] principles". The equating and conflation of the two in effect mean failure to "distinguish what is real". To distinguish what is authentic Heaven's principle is the very first basic step. He asks, "What then should be regarded as Heaven's principles? What ends up being preserved is all selfish thought... There is then reckless and rash action. Conceitedly, one rashly regards oneself as rectified, defining principle on one's own. Eventually, one only becomes fearlessly irresponsible." [81] Only with incremental learning and extensive investigation of things can one arrive at the true principles of being.

    As a general principle, Zhang accepts Wang's premise that "the effort of making the will sincere is nothing but investigating things and extending knowledge to the utmost." But he rejects Wang's crediting "making the will sincere" for providing the indispensable sense of anchor in one's pursuit of learning and achievement of knowledge. Wang's position is that investigating things and extending knowledge in themselves are "shifting and wandering" pursuits. Therefore, according to Wang, in Zhu Xi's scheme of things, there has to be the addition of the notion of the endeavor of "seriousness" (jing) in order that the dictum of gewu zhizhi be

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complete. Wang notes the absence of "seriousness" in the Great Learning and Zhu's rather superfluous addition:

The task of the Great Learning is to manifest the enlightening character. Manifesting the enlightening character is nothing but making the will sincere, and the effort of making the will sincere is nothing but investigating things and extending knowledge to the utmost. If making the will sincere is taken as the basis on which to build the effort of investigating things and extending knowledge to the utmost, then such effort will have consequence. Doing good and removing evil are nothing but a matter of making the will sincere. If, in accordance with [Zhu Xi's] new arrangement, the first step is to investigate and plumb the principles of things, one will be shifting and wandering, leading to no result. Therefore, there must be the addition of the task of seriousness so as to relate the investigation of things to one's body and mind. But in the final analysis, there is after all no foundation. If there was the need for adding the task of seriousness, why then did the Confucian school leave out this most important item and wait for a thousand years before some later scholar made the addition? If making the will sincere is taken as the basis, there is no absolute need to add seriousness. [82]

    Here, Wang aims at the heart of Zhu's epistemological formula by showing its lack of classical sanction and pointing to its convoluted, circuitous and redundant nature as a result of Zhu's ignorance of the foundational mind-heart. Hence Wang's dire warning that "plumbing [deep for] principles with regard to things amounts to indulgent fiddling with things, killing the will." [83]

    Zhang defends Zhu by asserting that his learning is predicated on making the will of the mind-heart sincere. Zhu's reference to seriousness is "the transmission of the successive sages' message of the mind-heart" (xinfa). Even if the classics do not use the word seriousness, it is nonetheless implied: "In sum, the one word of seriousness is the foundation of establishing the mind-heart, and controls completely the pursuit of learning. The notions of investigating [things] and extending [knowledge], and making [the mind] sincere and rectifying [the will] found in the Classics may be studied individually without the need to talk about [the implied]

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seriousness." More pointedly, Zhang maintains that the will cannot be made sincere without hard-earned knowledge of principles:

Making the will sincere is for the sake of doing good and discarding evil. Who does not know the two opposing things of good and evil? But many do not thoroughly understand them... If one wishes to know them well, one must inquire into the truth and falsehood of things encountered... One must examine the classics and other writings, make inquiries among teachers and friends, and reflect upon one's self, so that social relations and principles of things are investigated to the point of irrevocable certitude. If something is true, I will courageously undertake it. If something is false, I will be determined to extirpate it. Thus, the will (yi) will become sincere... Thus, doing good out of a sincere will comes after the plumbing of principles with regard to things.

    In contrast, Wang's "investigating of things" points only to "discarding the selfish and preserving the principles, not knowing how the selfish and principle can be distinguished." This is, as Zhang characterizes it, "headless learning," for one knows not that action follows knowledge. [84]

    In all, Zhang soberly upholds Zhu Xi's epistemology, which is procedurally more precise and substantively more concrete -- the experiential striving of seriousness, by realizing the epistemological pursuit of investigating things, accomplishes the ultimate task of rectifying the will, and thus also, the mind-heart. Zhang is not convinced of the enormous creativity and transformative power of the mind-heart in Wang Yangming's terms. He does not believe that the activating will (yi) concentrates the faculties of sight and hearing, so much so that "there are no principles that are not authentically understood." He rejects Wang's conception of the innate human mind-heart, which is supposedly capable of sagaciously discriminating right and wrong without investigating things. Where Wang optimistically discerns the immanence of truth in one's mind-heart, Zhang fearfully sees potential upsurge of antinomian ethical and moral confusions -- everyone wills and claims oneself to be right, dispensing with external measures of truths. In such moral climate, it is little wonder that even Confucius' words may be contravened. Zhang laments. [85]

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    In the third fascicle, Zhang condemns Wang's affirmation of "the unify of knowing and acting." He takes on the following famous illustrative example used by Wang to explain his philosophical concept:

A person must have the desire to eat before one knows the food. This desire to eat is the will. It is already the beginning of action. The good or bad taste of the food cannot be known until the food has entered the mouth... A person must have the desire to travel before one knows the road. This desire to travel is the will. It is already the beginning of action... Whether the forks of the road are rough or smooth cannot be known until one has personally walked on them.

    Zhang counters by saying that Wang's idea actually allows two perspectives in looking at the interrelationship between knowledge and action. First, it suggests that there is knowledge before there is action. Second, it means that what one already knows receives further illumination by personal realization of that knowledge, Implying action before knowledge. Zhang subscribes to the first perspective and describes the second as "appealingly new and quaint" but it is "far from solid learning." He tells us:

To desire to eat is to know eating. How can desire be regarded as action? If desire is taken as action, then everything can be defined by the desire to perform. Is there the absolute need for the actual thing? Moreover, it is certainly so that the good or bad taste of food is known after the food has entered the mouth. But if we do not first determine which food is harmful and which is nourishing, and try to establish such knowledge after ingestion, it would be like Shen Nong's attempting to taste the hundred herbs. He would experience many poisons in a day and would have been dead before long. An infant crawls on its hands and knees, and eats worm and dirt that come its way. Do we then regard this as the innate knowledge of the good that defies learning and deliberation? It is not until the direction has been given by the protecting mother that [the infant] knows not to eat them. It is indeed quite obvious that action is preceded by knowledge, and that knowledge depends on investigation of things. [86]

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    Zhang also comments on Wang's dictum that "the genuine and earnest aspect of knowledge is action and that the supremely conscious and sagacious aspect of action is knowledge." Zhang points out that if Wang is correct, "why then did the ancients establish the two complementary words [of action and knowledge]?" The ancient sages never did combine the two but rather saw them as polarities which were nevertheless complementary. Zhang appeals to the Classic of Changes' principles of dualistic opposition and its interactive mutuality: "To establish the complementary pair of words is to ascertain then as separate matters which must not be confused with each other. This is the Changes' principle of opposition (xiangdui). It is only when there are two that there will be inexorable mutual reinforcement. This is the Changes' principle of pervasive movement" (liuxing). Yangming's insistence on collapsing the two into one is therefore merely "a bizarre newfangled idea." Zhang here criticizes both Wang's and Lu Xiangshan's penchant to talk about unities and their failure to realize that before there is unity, there must be division:

Now they adhere to unities and deny divisions, so much so heaven and earth are one thing; the sun and moon are one illumination; man and woman are one body; ruler and minister are one position; father and son are one name. How can this be right? ... They like profound synthesis and dislike small analysis. They scathingly attack plumbing principles of things, and are afraid that in clearly showing separate things, [the supposedly all-embracing principles] emanating from the self will not have a place. Invariably, there will be folly and confusion, wreaking havoc too great to be mentioned!" [87]

    Apart from critiquing the three major concepts in Wang Yangming's philosophy, Zhang also seizes upon Wang's references to Buddhism as evidence of his devotion to Chan. He quotes Wang's words: "To recognize one's original state at the time of thinking of neither good nor evil is the Buddhist expedient or convenient way intended for those who do not yet recognize their original state. The original state is what our Confucian school calls innate knowledge of the good." As far as Zhang is concerned, such words confirm Wang's Buddhist identity, and so although he is quite aware of Wang's criticism that selfish motivations are intrinsic to the Chan search for

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enlightenment, as I discussed above, he blithely casts Wang's critique of Buddhism aside as weasel words. [88] To Zhang Lie, Lu-Wang learning, by infusing Buddhist thinking, "confuses Confucian scholarship and corrupts people's mind," for

to enable good and evil to coexist eventually leads to the dominance of evil; to let the orthodox and the heterodox to stand together eventually leads to the domination of the heterodox; ... to blend Confucianism with Buddhism eventually leads to the dominance of Buddhism. An analogy is the placing of white inside black, it will for sure become black and the white can no longer be seen again. Again, placing poison inside food will only make the whole thing poisonous, and the food can no longer be eaten.

    These are very strong words and images. Zhang's fear is that if Wang's learning, which "runs counter to the sagely school of Confucianism" is unchecked, it will lead to the complete "ignorance of Confucianism." In contrast, "Those who pursue Confucius' learning will not know where to begin if Zhu Xi['s learning] is discarded." Zhu represents "the Way." [89]

    Unquestionably then, to the extent that Lu-Wang learning must be rejected because of its un-Confucian Chan elements, Chan Buddhism actually pays a crucial role in the Cheng-Zhu framework as a negative yardstick for the measurement of the degree of Confucian authenticity. To the extent that the direct obverse of orthodoxy is heterodoxy, the former needs the latter to demonstrate its faithfulness to a certain edition, just as the Cheng-Zhu school utilizes Chan to show its faithfulness to Confucian teachings. Heresiography or heresiology, that is, the discourse by the presumed orthodoxy on the alleged heresy, is an important constituent element in every religio-philosophic tradition, since canonicity and heresy are two sides of the same coin. Therefore, a St. Augustine (354-430) in the Christian tradition, a Maimonides (1135-1204) in the Jewish, an al-Ghazali (d. 1111) in the Islamic, and a Zhu Xi (l130-1200) in the Confucian, were all uncompromising in identifying the debilitating false learning that had infiltrated what they regarded as orthodox true beliefs. They were all in some way heresiographers. [90] Zhang Lie's work can certainly be evaluated in heresiological terms. By labeling

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the Lu-Wang learning based on Chan as the corrupted false Confucian learning, he touted the purity of Cheng-Zhu orthodoxy.

    Yet, it is not entirely satisfying and felicitous to simply use the term heterodoxy, or the Chinese term, xie, the "crooked", as opposed to zheng, the "straight" (i.e., the orthodox), in examining the role of Chan in Confucian debates and discourses. After all, Chan is Sinitic Buddhism par excellence. Its enormous influence or Confucianism and particularly Song-Ming Confucianism is common knowledge. It is inextricably a part of the cultural capital of China, furnishing symbolic resources from which many a Confucian draws, including Zhu Xi. Thus, I would argue that strictly speaking, Chan in the Chinese Confucian context is not heterodoxy; it is rather a part of, to borrow a concept from Pierre Bourdieu, "doxa," the cultural realities that are taken for granted. To understand this notion of doxa, we need to begin with Bourdieu's theory of habitus. To be sure, we may justifiably regard Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming as intrepid and ground-shaking thinkers who provided crucial glues to, and in fact defined, the tone and tenor of their historical place and time. But they were also inescapably a part of their cultural habitus, with its particular academic conventions, scholarly customs, intellectual habits and moral prescriptions. Therefore, the momentous historical roles of Cheng-Zhu and Lu-Wang and their ideas can only be located in the interplay between the larger preexisting cultural meanings of Confucianism and their specific individual philosophic and intellectual innovations. Their internecine cultural polemics must be seen as outgrowths of a particular habitus, a continuous system of dispositions constituted historically by the cultural and social conditions of a particular social group, that is, the Chinese literati. As Bourdieu explains, the dispositions are "structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles of the generation and structuring of practices and representations." Yet, this process of structuring or being structured is by no means teleologically determined "obedience to rules" or a "conscious aiming at ends." [91] Rather, as a historically acquired system of "generative schemes", it enables the "free production of all thoughts" that are "inherent in the particular conditions" of the production of the habitus. In other words, ideas and thoughts are not free-floating but are grounded in a durable repository of dispositions or predispositions. Their germination are delimited by historical and social conditions, which set certain definable limits so that the ideas

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are not aberrant and fickle novelties. Nonetheless, albeit culturally conditioned, new ideas are not simply "mechanical reproductions of the original conditioning." The habitus enables the production of all the "reasonable" and "common-sense" ideas that are in accord with the objective historical conditions. At the same time, the habitus denies a place to those that are at odds with the historical characteristics of a space in time. Habitus, according to Bourdieu, is "embodied history, internalized as a second nature and so forgotten as history." The past is the "accumulated capital" of a cultural community, the enactment of which produces ideas. In this way, the habitus "produces history on the basis of history and so ensures the permanence of change." But since such change is circumscribed, generated within the habitus, it is readily predictable and familiar. In short, habitus demands the "art of assessing likelihoods," and reaffirms the "sense of realities." [92]

    What then was the habitus in which the Lu-Wang-Cheng-Zhu debate, hinging on the nature of the mind-heart, was situated? What were the dispositions that made possible this debate and imbued it with the power of a particular cultural logic? Why was the debate so readily intelligible, and why did it proleptically define many of the philosophic issues that engaged the Chinese Confucian thinkers? Briefly put, what constituted the Neo-Confucian cultural habitus from the eleventh century onward was an unprecedented form of Confucian metaphysics, whose construction would not have been possible without the centuries-old process of infusion of Buddhist cosmology and metaphysics. Accordingly, the traditional term and concept, "mind-heart", acquired added semantic and philosophic content without losing much of its original meanings. The frequent inclusion of, and ubiquitous reference to, Buddhism was nothing out of the ordinary. It was a reflection of the growing complexity of the term as its Buddhist connotations and iterations accrued. It was in perfect concordance with the Confucian sense of limit or sense of reality. Now, the Confucian established order must perforce include Buddhism. Thus, the Buddhist mode of engagement with the existing Confucian world should be appropriately described, in Bourdieu's scheme of things, as an experience of "doxa," quite different from the orthodox or heterodox beliefs that suggest "awareness and recognition of the possibility of different or antagonistic beliefs."

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Insofar as Buddhism was an integral part of the habitus, a taken-for-granted component of the "world of tradition experienced as a 'natural world'," its encounter with Confucianism must be described as "doxic" beyond any questioning of legitimacy. The encounter of Chan and Confucianism was the actualization of the structuring dispositions in the Chinese habitus. [93] The matter-of-fact summoning of Buddhism in the battle to clarify Confucian orthodoxy bespoke not its glaring alienness, but of its self-evident domesticity. No matter how heated the debate might be between the Cheng-Zhu and Lu-Wang adherents, there was no perception of the established cosmological and political order as arbitrary, that is, "as one possible order among others." Such polemics and differences unfolded within the "unanimity of doxa." In other words, the Confucian doxa was an "aggregate of 'choices'" that ineluctably included Buddhism as a choice. As Bourdieu explains, when philosophical and religious oppositions arise, a "field of opinion" of opinion is constituted, but it is constituted within the natural and self-evident world of doxa. While competing discourses, such as those of Confucian and Buddhism, raged to establish their respective versions of truths, all these versions were intrinsic to and embodied in the traditional Chinese intellectual universe. Cheng-Zhu "orthodoxy" and Lu-Wang "heterodoxy" were "competing possibles" made possible by the Chinese cultural doxa. Their existence and expression, far from suggesting the splintering of the Chinese world of thought, circumscribed clearly the limits of "the universe of possible discourse" or "the universe of the thinkable." Therefore, Zhang Lie's heresiological attack on the Lu-Wang ideas on the mind-heart could not have much potency, poignancy or even relevance without appeal to the familiar symbolic resources provided by Chan, such as its search for emptiness, its quest for detachment, its mitigation of social ties, and its neglect of discursive thinking and intellectual learning. On the surface, Zhang was able to conjure up an apparent picture of competing cultural claims: Buddhist and Buddhist-influenced ideas versus Confucian espousals. But below the surface of a seemingly fractured world, there were recurrent intimations of a unified moral universe -- the self, be it the Lu-Wang xin or Cheng-Zhu xing, was the soteriological locus, the very site of ultimate reality.

    Given historical hindsight and armed with hermeneutic insight, as contemporary observers, we cast our inquiring glances on the mind-heart, the principle, and the Buddha-nature, but we cannot look

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at them for long without realizing that their principal message is this: there is no transcendence without immanence.

The Pennsylvania State University, Pittsburgh

ENDNOTES

*. This essay is the revised version of a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, November 18, 1995, Philadelphia.

1. See my "The Nature of a Confucian Discourse on Orthodox Learning: Chen Jian's (1497-1567) General Critique of the Obscuration of Learning (Xuebu tongbian)," in Yen-ping Hao, ed. Tradition and Modernity: A Festschrift in Honor of the Seventieth Birthday of Professor Kwang-Ching Liu (Taipei: Academia Sinica), forthcoming.

2. On the Confucian sectarianism expressed in terms of Cheng-Zhu versus Lu-Wang, see Thomas A. Wilson, Genealogy of the Way (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995).

3. Qian Mu, "Zhuzi xinxuelun" [On Master Zhu's Learning of the Mind] in his Zhongguo xueshu sixiang luncong [Anthology of essays on Chinese thought and learning] (Taipei: Dongda, 1980), p. 157. To anyone familiar with Qian Mu's scholarship, the fact that he admired the Cheng-Zhu approach and its latter-day manifestation in the late Ming Donglin school need not be belabored. See for instance, Qian's introduction to his Zhongguo jinsanbainian xueshushi [The history of learning and thought in the past three hundred years] (Taipei: Commercial Press, 1964), pp. 1-21.

4. Wm. Theodore de Bary, Neo-Confucian Orthodoxy and the Learning of the Mind-and-Heart (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), p. xiii.

5. Ibid., pp. 68-73.

6. Ibid., p. xv.

7. Ibid., pp. 67-68.

8. On the role of the mind-heart in Neo-Confucian philosophy, see Cheng Chung-ying, "Yuanxing yu yuanxing: lun xingjili yu xinjili de fenshu yu ronghe wenti jianlun xinxing zhexue de fazhan xianjing" ["On a comprehensive theory of hsing (naturality) in Sung-Ming Neo-Confucian philosophy: a critical and integrative development"] Ohu xuezhi 13 (December 1994), pp. 14-18.

9. Benjamin Schwartz explains: "[Hsin] figures prominently throughout the Book of Poetry as the center of emotions and sentiments. The heart continually expresses grief, sorrow, disappointment, and occasionally

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there is mention of the king's heart as tranquil or calm. The sentiment of love is attributed to the heart and it is the source of moral exertion as well. King Ch'eng, we are told, 'exerted his heart to secure the peace of the realm.' Elsewhere it is made clear that the hsin is also the source of intellect and understanding. 'This king Chi-Shang-ti filled his mind/heart with discrimination.' Thus as early as the Book of Poetry the mind/heart already seems the center of all those expressions of the conscious life which we attribute to both heart and mind in the West." Quoted from his The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 184-5.

10. Ibid., p. 167. Unless otherwise stated, all translations quoted from this source have been modified.

11. Ibid., p. 163.

12. Ibid., p. 186.

13. Ibid., p. 182.

14. Ibid., p. 164.

15. Song Yuan xue'an [Records of Song Yuan Scholars], Huang Zhongxi comp. (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1929). v. 5, p. 16. This source is hereafter cited as SYXA.

16. Chan, p. 530. Translation slightly modified.

17. SYXA, v. 5, p. 2l.

18. SYXA, v. 5, p. 50.

19. SYXA, v. 5, p. 72.

20. SYXA, v. 5, p. 53.

21. SYXA, v. 5, p. 54.

22. Chan, pp. 560-1. For a recent insightful examination of these other major ideas in Cheng Yi's thinking in relation to the question of the mind-heart, see Zhang Yongjun, ErChengxue guanjian (Glimpses of the Learning of the Two Chengs) (Taipei: Dongda, 1988), pp. 134-47.

23. See for instance, Cheng Hao Cheng Yi [Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi] (Taipei: Dongda, 1986), pp. 87-118.

24. Legge, v. 3, p. 61.

25. See Zhang Dainian, Zhongguo zhexue dagang [An Outline of Chinese Philosophy] (Peking: Zhungguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1982), p. 241.

26. SYXA, v. 5, p. 72.

27. Quoted in "the section on the learning of the mind-heart" (xinxue bu) in the Gujin tushu jicheng [Encyclopedia of Writings from Antiquity to the Present] (Taipei: Wencheng, 1968), volume 608, 12 a. This particular section is a compilation of excerpts of Confucian writings that pertain to the question of the mind-heart. The source is hereafter cited as GJTSJC.

28. GJTSJC, 608/11a.

29. Chan, p. 631. Translation slightly modified.

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30. GJTSJC, v. 607/11b.

31. See Zhu's "On Viewing the Mind-heart" [Guanxin shuo], in Zhuzi wenji [Collected Essays of Zhu Xi] (Taipei: Commercial Press, 1966), v. 5, p. 469.

32. Chan, pp. 628-9. See also Julia Ching, "The Goose Lake Monastery Debate (1175)," Journal of Chinese Philosophy 1.2 (March 74): 166.

33. "On Viewing the Mind-heart," v. 5, p. 470.

34. "On Viewing the Mind-heart," v. 5, p. 470.

35. For an insightful analysis of these various interrelated dimensions in Zhu's thought, see Chung-ying Cheng, New Dimensions of Confucian and Neo-Confucian Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), pp. 375-82.

36. Xiangshan quanji [Complete Works of Lu Xiangshan], Sibu beiyao edition (Taipei: Zhonghua, 1965), 11/6a. Hereafter cited as XSQJ.

37. XSQJ, 1/3b. In the words of Julia Ching, "For Lu Chiu-yuan, hsin, the mind, is one with li, the principle of goodness, which is present in man as nature (hsing), and so constitute a single undifferentiated continuum with the whole of reality, without tension, without conflict." See Ching, p. 166.

38. XSQJ, 34/21a.

39. XSQJ, 35/10a.

40. XSQJ, 35/10a.

41. XSQJ, 34/1b. See also Ching, pp. 166-7 and Chan, pp. 586-7.

42. Chan, p 580.

43. XSQJ, 34/4b.

44. XSQJ, 35/28a-b. Lu considers his method "simple and easy" (jianyi). See Ching, pp. 167-70 and Chan, pp. 583-4.

45. XSQJ, 36/7a.

46. XSQJ, 35/18b.

47. Wang Yangming quanji [Complete Works of Wang Yangming] (Shanghai: Guji, 1992), pp. 2-3. Hereafter cited as WYMQJ. On this fundamental premise, see Julia Ching, To Acquire Wisdom: The Way of Wang Yang-ming (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), pp. 57-61.

48. WYMQJ, p. l5.

49. WYMQJ. p. 6.

50. On yi as activation of the creative mind-heart, see Chung-ying Cheng, New Dimensions, pp. 402-3.

51. WYMQJ, pp. 62-3. On innate knowledge, see also Ching, Wisdom, pp. 104-24.

52. WYMQJ, p. 190.

53. On this concept, see Ching, Wisdom, pp. 145-53.

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54. WYMQJ, p. 79.

55. Cheng, New Dimensions, pp. 410-14.

56. See for instance, Charles W. H. Fu, "Chu Hsi on Buddhism," Wing-tsit Chan, ed., Chu Hsi and Neo-Confucianism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986), pp. 377-405, Xiong Wan, Songdai lixueh yu foxue zhi tantu [An investigation of Neo-Confucianism and Buddhism in the Song Period] (Taipei: Wenjin, 1985), pp. 145-250, Zhang Liwen, Zouxiang xinxue zhi lu [Walking toward the Path of the Learning of the Mind] (Peking: Zhonghua. 1992), pp. 238-43, and Chen Rongjie (Wing-tsit Chan), Wang Yangming yu Chan [Wang Yangming and Chan Buddhism] (Taipei: Wuyinjingshe, 1973), pp. 74-82.

57. This very brief discussion is largely based on The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (Liuzu tanjing), Philip Yampolsky trans., (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967).

58. Ibid., p. 132.

59. Ibid., p. l35.

60. Chan, pp. 426-7.

61. Platform Sutra, pp. 138, 166.

62. Platform Sutra, pp. 138-9.

63.Ibid., p. 136.

64. Ibid., pp. 146-7.

65. Ibid., pp. 166-7.

66. On the Sinitic Mahayana Buddhist metaphysics, see Fu, pp. 383-7.

67. WYMQJ, pp. 34-5.

68. WYMQJ, p. 106.

69. WYMQJ, p. 99.

70. WYMQJ, p. 106.

71. WYMQJ, p. 47.

72. The edition used in this essay is the Zhengyitang chuanshu edition, with a preface dated 1681. The text is hereafter cited as WXZY.

73. WXZY, 1/1a.

74. WXZY, 1/1a-b.

75. WXZY, 1/1b.

76. WXZY, 1/2a.

77. WXZY. 1/2b-3a.

78. WXZY, 1/3b-4a.

79. WXZY, 1/4a-b.

80. WXZY, 2/1a.

81. WXZY, 2/1b-2b.

82. WXZY, 2/4b.

83. WXZY, 2/6b.

84. WXZY, 2/4b-6a.

85. WXZY, 2/4a-b.

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86. WXZY, 3/1a-2a.

87. WXZY, 3/2a-b.

88. WXZY, 4/4b-5a.

89. WXZY, "self-preface" (zixu), 1b.

90. John Henderson, "Introduction" to his Confucian and Western Ideas on Orthodoxy (Albany: State University of New York Press), forthcoming.

91. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of A Theory of Practice, Richard Nice, trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 71-2.

92. Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, Richard Nice, trans. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990). pp. 55-8.

93. Cf. Bourdieu, Outline, pp. 164-68.

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CHINESE GLOSSARY