A Study On Ma Yifu's Religious Thought

Ma Yifu lived in a special period of disorder when the once magnificent Chinese culture has already failed due to the declining of humanity. The old civilization was totally disintegrated under the intrusion and pressure of western civilization. The declining and sufferings of modern Chinese peole forced Ma Yifu to think of the source of all this. He began to seek the road to revive Chinese civilization by pondering over the essence of various phenomena, such as Chinese history and politics. However, differing from other men and women with lofty ideals, Ma had a heart of mercy, and his thought was not limited within the consciousness of nationality and state, he made up his mind to seek the way of salvation to the world, especially in the period of wars, calamities, and destruction of cultures.It is self-deceiving to wait for the salvation of God, and abandonment to fall into the last judgment, so the ark to save the people resulted from the right thought of human being. All the great religious thoughts were communicative based on the common sense. The thought is the motivation of actions, revolutionary has the power to know the past, to judge the present, to create the future. Specifically, all phenomena should be within the cause and effect, the past cause brought forth present effect; the present cause would lead to the future effect. So if one wanted to change the present society, who suffers from five great pains, and to create a better future society, it was not a fancy, but a truth. So an ideal country is not a Utopia, but a freedom via the way of truth.Ma pointed out, truth is "human nature". The human being had lost their true nature because of empty habits and selfishness, which led to the quarreling between men, and wars between kingdoms. So the restoration of human nature was the basic principle of all religions. The restoration of human nature was to make the deviation of humanity back to the right way of the unity of heaven, earth and human on the way to restore human nature. Outside human nature there wasn't humanities, outside of humanities, no teaching and no culture. The body of religions was humanities, not a God of two bodies. Only the religious renovation of human culture can human being truly grasp the truth, thus, freedom was realized. The body of the culture was disposition, just as the body of academy. The manifestation of the Way was called culture, so culture was the cultivation of the Way. So the Way of great learning is the way of awareness. From the awareness of others, it was called the teaching; from the self-awareness of a person, it was called the learning. Therefore, the revival of culture was the revival of religions, and revival of religions was renovation of academy.Ma thought traditional Chinese culture was based on disposition. But Chinese culture fell from high, from fullness to drying up, and from clearness to muddiness. So the living water as the source of classics must be sought, which can refresh the Chinese culture. Ma traced back to the source of Chinese culture----Six Arts. Six Arts referred to the book of poetry, the book of history, the book of rites, the book of music, the book of I, and spring and autumn, which all edited by Confucius.It was called classics according to the constant way; and it was called arts according to the teaching of religions; it was called culture from the perspective of manifestation of the Way; and it was called Books from the perspectives of bamboo and silk cloth. Ma Yifu didn't copy ancient thoughts and then explained, for he thought that religious thoughts were not rigid and fragmentary knowledge. Knowledge was dead and external dry bone, but thoughts were living and flew from the inner hearts. Ma,by way of experience, combined the ancient classical academy, and revealed the true principles, and systemized the whole Chinese academy, thus formed the thoughts of six arts and one heart.The Six arts are the comprehensive use of one heart, later the academies were the divisions of six arts, and the western academies were also be included by six arts. He thought, religions were independent of each schools, and all academies held their opinions, various conflicts appeared, which stemmed from one indulged into bad habits, and fell into his selfishness. Thus, the restoration of his human nature was the same. All the hearts of entire human being, whose performance could not be separated from six arts. The lives of entire human being, and their evolution was nothing more than six arts. Outside the way, there was no things; outside the things, there was no the way. Ma Yifu had borrowed the methods of exegesis of study and judge the teaching, such as to speak of six arts, and revealed the comprehensive classification of six arts? The classification of six arts was owned in nature, the teaching of six arts was not taught by the great sage, but the human nature owned the dogma. At present, people were lost in the bad habits, so they didn't know these dogma. To know the classification of six arts was to begin dogma and demonstrate human nature. More should be said is to get human nature exhaustive, that is to learn the way of great sage. These were the general dogma. So the study of six arts was Kongfu, and reasonable life of human being, not to speak of things far from life.To judge six arts was demonstrated the dogma of body nature by way of language, and was popular by the natural display of body. By comparison, the modern classification of academic discipline was the study of bodiless. So, Ma proposed six arts should be the academic system of Chinese culture in the time of westernization.Ma Yifu's theory of Six Arts and One Heart symbolized his comprehensive recognition and orderly judgment to Chinese culture, and expressed his thoughts of knowing the past, judging the present, and creating the future. So in this sense, his thoughts combined three lifetimes together, namely,the past, present and future.He realized that history will be the performance of the heart and culture will be the whole use of one heart, so the life of a country will be determined by culture, and the root of culture will be determined by human heart. All these ideas made him propose the thought of Six Arts and One heart, for thoughts would cause actions, if Chinese people understood that truth that six arts were the comprehensive use of one heart, then aimed to revive the six arts, then propagate the way of six arts, and create the beautiful future of China, and then make the culture known to the whole world, the true equality, liberation and freedom of the entire world could be realized by renovating the loss of good habits of the whole human being, restoring his good nature, perfecting the truth of his nature and virtue, and making the great achievement of perfecting self and other things, making the ultimate of his own nature and others' nature.Ma Yifu's religious thought was conceived in a special period, when humanities declined, and the civilization of politics and church dismantled, and the ancient Chinese classics were revaluated and rearranged, he alone made great efforts to investigate the true source of humanities and rebuilt the system of Chinese academy. Comparing with the transformation of modern academy, the study of six arts were the systematized academy with its own body, which was the humanitization of heavenly way. So it was lively, full of life. Although it was referred as extreme conservation and, but as a matter of fact, it was open and refreshing, and characterized by its consciousness beyond religious schools and beyond the universal of nationalism and ultimate value.I think, in the history of Chinese and western thoughts, Ma Yifu can be compared to Hegel, for both of them were the summarization of ancient classics and great philosophers regardless of the fact that one lived in the Chinese tradition, while another lived in western tradition. Their academic systems was communicable, because truth is the whole.