6 - The mystic as sage: religion appropriates the paradigm

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Considering the Confucian classics from the past, the wisdom of China seems more secular than sacred. The humanistic legacy has made the greatest impact on Chinese civilisation itself and most impressed the outsider. To discover the spiritual and religious richness, one has to search and to dig into this very humanism, to the heart of its wisdom, where we find a surprising core of mysticism.

In the Book of Mencius (2A:2), we find mention of him ‘nurturing the vast, flood-like ch'i^a’ as something that fills the body. The reference presumes that there is what is called ch'i^a (breath, air, energy) that constitutes the universe, and that this ch'i^a possesses a varied consistency. What is heavy in it tends to descend and makes up Earth, while what is light tends to ascend and make up the sky or heaven. The human being is regarded as possessing a mixture of two kinds of ch'i^a, the denser kind in his body, and the other in his heart or spirit.

Apparently, the belief was that yoga-like exercises could help to nurture one's ch'i^a. The passage in Mencius has puzzled many who wonder whether the Chinese already practised some form of yoga in those early days. Today, we know of the tradition called ch'i-kung / qigong with its meditative as well as gymnastic aspects, a practice that is still vibrant and even spreading worldwide.