| The kindness of human nature, and the positive of heart, are nature of morality. The evil lust of human nature is also included in the form of human beings, this refer to the term "body". The body is a perceptual existence. However, it could not exist without the dominant leading by both human nature and mind. On the other hand, there is no human mind without sensible and experienced content, the acknowledge of non-mind or non-body is unilateral. In fact, the body and the mind, the rational spiritual awareness and the sensible emotion are all united. This unity is not rigescent. It is no doubt that the Confucianists admit the priority of principle of reason. However, we can not ignore the effect of sensible content on principle of reason. Form mind, lead by mind, do not result to the disregard to the existence of body and its meaning.The topic of body and mind was keeping developing in the history of Chinese thoughts. It goes deeper and deeper nowadays. There are large mount of literatures by the ideologists, refer to the thinking and discussing on the problem about body-mind. This dissertation firstly introduced the awareness of the Confucian concept about body-mind, as well as its development, followed by the discussion and analysis in present, pointed out the problems and shortages in those concepts, launched the exploratory discussion.As the science of body-mind, Confucianists paid much attention to the body-mind issue on themselves. The scope of body-minded intension is extensive in Confucian culture. The investigation of body-minded thoughts of Confucianists in history started from the distinguish of the scope of body-mind in this dissertation, as a proceed research. This dissertation tried to analyze and categorize the different intensions represented from development of scope of body-mind. The intensions of mind were divided into three hierarchies:form-superiority, form-inferiority and meso-hierarchy. The analysis to body was conducted from three hierarchies as well:body of physical form, body of social culture, and body of transcendence. Normally, the body-mind in Confucian thoughts should be considered as an integrity, the segments to body-mind in this dissertation were aimed to generate new awareness to this issue. However, the investigation of history of Confucian thoughts on body-mind can not overstep the historical development itself. The awareness of body-mind issue in the Spring and Autumn Period, the identity of basic form of body-mind thoughts by Mencius and Xun Zi, the freely development of metaphysics on body-mind issue in Wei and Jin dynasties, the extremely development of lust-ignored thoughts in Song and Ming dynasties, and the transformation of the thoughts in post-Ming and Qing dynasties, all indicated that the development of body-mind thoughts was constantly related to the existence of individual life. This relationship made the thoughts about body-mind abundant and deep.This dissertation discussed the ethical intensions of Confucian body-mind thoughts from its theoretical characteristics, significances and essences. The theoretical significance of Confucian body-mind refers to the result of development and improvement of human value. It is an extension of moral experiment to consider the human being themselves as the subjects. It is the perfect solution to the conflicts between moral ethics and sensible desire. The syncretism of body and mind is the original objective of Confucian body-mind thoughts, it emphasizes the attitude of leading by mind and functioning by the body, take self as the starting point, start from the internal nature of mind, positively accept the value of body, result into the improvement of the human being through the integrity of body-guided and desire-guided. This is indeed something rare and deserving praise. This theoretical characteristic of Confucian body-mind thoughts was revealed prominently and exactly under the compresence and interchange of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, as well as the challenge of Western culture. The theoretical essence of Confucian body-mind thoughts is the expansion of discussion of relationship between principle and desire.One of the important issue in this dissertation is that why the body-mind had been divided. This dissertation discussed the divide of body-mind is unavoidable during the process of improvement to human being. From the practical hierarchy, as the moral ethical existence, the human beings have the demand to the pursuit of essence of human. Emphasizing the morality, and the rational morality, would easily lead to the depreciation of sensible desire, cause the situation of admiring the mind and restraining the body, thus the consequence of divide of body-mind is a must. However, refer to the reason of the divide, this dissertation sought answers from the traditional situation of issues on relationship between body and mind. For example, the trends of organicism, the tradition of moralism, and the approaches of internal transcendence. It also discussed this issue from the theoretical background of divide of body and mind, such as the distinguish of nature and human, the distinguish of principle and qi, the nature of fatal humanity and temperament humanity. As the basis of formation and development of body-mind theory, the trends of dividing into to direction deepened the distance between body and mind. Then, this dissertation discussed the expression of oppose of body and mind, such as the distinguish of cardinal and ordinal principle, the oppose of human-mind and moral-mind, the oppose of destiny and human desire. This dissertation concluded that the essence of oppose of body and mind can be summed up as the oppose of principle and the desire.In order to resolve the divide of body and mind, according to this dissertation, one efficient approach is to improve the cultivation of body-mind to weaken the oppose of body and mind. In this dissertation, the approaches of improving the body-mind cultivation was divided into "sense","feel" and "reverse", which would represent the interchange process during the improvement. Most of those Confucian approaches are not only to improve the body, but also the mind. The final objective of improvement of body-mind is the perfection of the essence of human beings, thus it require the unifying of body and mind in higher hierarchy, which would lead to the integrity of body-guided and desire-guided. This is the best approach to resolve the conflicts between moral principle and sensible desire. How to accomplish the syncretism of body and mind? Through the integrity of body-guided and desire-guided, to improve the moral principle and behavior, it would improve the awareness of human being and its essence to a deeper hierarchy. Thus the integrity of body-guided and desire-guided is the dual acceptance to body and mind as well. The basic approaches, chrematistics and essences of improving the cultivation of body-mind were discussed in this dissertation as well."Self-cultivation, family management, national administration, world maintenance":This is the representation of human essence, it discussed how to represent the syncretism of body-mind in the family, nation and the world. This dissertation indicated that the initial stage of improvement of body-mind cultivation is the perfection of individual, followed by the family, nation and world management as its extension, and it would be ended up with the interchange with the universe, as the achievement of the transcendence of the body-mind. This dissertation also pointed out that the most wonderful part of the Confucian theory is the interlink between the form-superiority and form-inferiority in the deepest hierarchy, and the interlink among body, mind, family, nation, nature and the universe. Those interlinks are based on the syncretism of body and mind. Further more, this dissertation hope to deepen the understanding of the unique characteristic of Chinese culture, via the guide of the syncretism of body and mind.At last, this dissertation evaluated the theoretical value, practical significance, and insufficiencies of Confucian mind-body thoughts. As the science of body-mind, the body-mind issue is the basic problem, it would result into the discussion related this issue such as loyalty and profit, principle and desire, public and private. The thought of Confucianism on body-mind also inspirited the moral perfection to modern people. It emphasized the guide of internal mind nature of individuals, offered the inspiration on seeking the ultimate significance of life, transcendence of the life, and the achievement of the value of human being. It also offered the important references to people who are seeking the peace of their body-mind, via its cultivation approaches on integrating the body-guided and desire-guided, and the attitude of peaceful inside.Generally, the importance of body-mind theory in Confucianism is not neither the divide of body and mind, nor the dual-aspects of same object on the naturalness hierarchy, it is the integrity on the affectation hierarchy. The Confucian moral cultivation is the feeling and understanding of the body-mind as an integrity, and the representation of the influence of moral nature. Body-mind should be interchanged and undivided, from either essences, naturalness or affectation hierarchies. Ideologists made affects on improve the cultivation of syncretism of body-mind, which is the approach started from the reduce the oppose of body and mind, followed by integrating the acknowledge and behavior, dual-cultivating the body and mind, improving the mind, controlling the body, and self-examination to improve the cultivation of both body and mind. As a result, the internal mind would not feel empty, and wasted in nihility. Through the practical behavior, the body would be more solid due to the experience of internal mind, it would not feel alusia, and lost in blind and fashion. The interaction of the internal mind cultivation and external body cultivation, will finally lead to the integrity of different hierarchies, which is the integrity of body-guided and desire-guided. The Confucianism requires the involvement and participation of both body and mind, via integrating the life into the cultivation, to display the nature of kindness and purity of humanity, and improve the boundary of human life. |
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