Self-cultivation Through Being Humble: A study of Confucian humility in comparison with Buddhist three-nothingness
Doil Kim
Qianxun (謙遜), Confucian humility, is one of the still vital traditional virtues in the East Asian culture. Nevertheless, it is also one of the virtues whose traditional aspects are not fully understood today. This paper seeks to find out one of such traditional characteristics of Confucian humility by raising the question of how Confucian humility helps one develop oneself to become a better person in the Confucian sense. This virtue is widely understood as an attitude, a behavior, or a tendency not to boast of one’s merits but instead to respect others by lowering oneself. Its original form, qian (謙), had been passed down since ancient times in China, and it was conceptually further deepened by neo-Confucian thinkers in the Song Dynasty, such as Zheng Yichuan (程伊川) and Zhu Xi (朱熹). They conceptualized Confucian humility more coherently with in the Confucian system of thought by linking it with new ideas such as “roushun (柔順)” and “youerbuju(有而不居).” These two expressions can be translated as the attitude or behavior of “being gently adaptive” and that of “having something without dwelling in it,” respectively. In addition, the neo-Confucians related Confucian humility to the idea of wuwo (無我), which can refer to the mental state reached by the ideal human being, shengren (聖人), namely no-self. This paper argues that this conceptual development by the neo-Confucians also served to strengthen the function of self-cultivation embedded in the practice of Confucian humility. That is, the three ideas added newly to Confucian humility enables us to get a better sense about how one can transform into a more ideal human being by being humble in the Confucian sense. Interestingly, as this paper shows, the function of Confucian humility that helps one’s self-cultivation is comparable to the traditional Buddhist concept and practice of the so-called “three nothingness (三無)” in the Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch (六祖壇經). Three nothingness is a convenient label referring to no-thought (wunian無念), no-form (wuxiang無相), and no-stay (wuzhu無住), which the sixth Zen patriarch Huineng (慧能) presents as three cardinal methods of Zen meditation. This paper first shows that an important aspect of qian, the original form of Confucian humility, resembles the Buddhist way of self-cultivation through no-form, and that youerbuju, one of the aforementioned ideas added to Confucian humility in neo-Confucian thought, is similar to the Buddhist way of self-cultivation through no-stay. Finally, this paper also explains in what sense the Buddhist idea of no-thought is partly, though meaningfully, comparable to the ideal state that one can obtain by being humble. However, it is important to note that the above comparison is not intended to determine any historical relationship between Confucian humility and Buddhist three nothingness. Rather, the comparison is methodologically adopted to understand how Confucian humility can help in self-cultivation.
Keywords: Confucianism and Buddhism, qian (謙), qianxun (謙遜), youerbuju(有而不居), wuwo (無我, no-self), Cheng Yichuan (程伊川), Zhu Xi (朱熹), Huineng (慧能), the Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch, three nothingness (三無), no-thought(wunian無念), no-form (wuxiang無相), no-stay (wuzhu無住)
Keywords: Confucianism and Buddhism, qian (謙), qianxun (謙遜), youerbuju(有而不居), wuwo (無我, no-self), Cheng Yichuan (程伊川), Zhu Xi (朱熹), Huineng (慧能), the Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch, three nothingness (三無), no-thought(wunian無念), no-form (wuxiang無相), no-stay (wuzhu無住)