From the Identity, Gender, and Self Cultivation Forum
Master of Ceremony: Hirsh Diamant
I am so much in awe of Roger Ames. I was fortunate to meet him this summer when I was a participant at the Silk Roads institute in East West Center at the University of Hawaii. Roger is a world renowned scholar and translator of Ancient Chinese classics. He always goes back to the source, to the roots, to the language and then writes in English. What is amazing is then in China the books are translated from English into Chinese. This is done, not because they don’t understand their own classics, but because they value Roger’s perspectives so much. Listening to Roger always opens up this depth and wisdom of Chinese culture.
Roger Ames
What I want to do today is get the young people at Evergreen excited about China. At the University of Hawaii we have a center for Chinese studies. It’s the largest center for Chinese studies outside of China. We have 50 faculty members that are dedicated Chinese specialists. We are really part of a very slow Western appreciation of the fact that China is coming. China is on its way and we have to change in order to understand it and to appreciate it and to grow ourselves along with it.
Economics: What I’m talking about is economic. When I first went to mainland China it was 1985. At that time twelve stories Peace Hotel was the biggest building in Shanghi. Today, twenty years later, there are 1500 skyscrapers, more than New York City. In twenty years, less than a generation, Chicago happened in this place called Shanghi. That is all over China, that economically Wal-Mart, in America, is China. Take a look at the label on your clothes, the power of the Chinese culture is absolutely staggering. So economically we have to pay attention to China.
Politically: I spent last year in teaching in China. In November 48 of the political leader of Africa descended on Bejing. All over Bejing there were these big billboards with African scenery and language meaning collaboration and cooperation. People would interview these African leaders and say, “Don’t you know that China just wants your natural resources, that there’s a sucking sound and it’s China. This new China is absorbing into itself all the resources of the world.” The African leaders said, “Yeah, we know that, we’re not stupid. But it’s a collaboration. China is not trying to make us into something that we’re not. China’s not telling us how we are to develop. China’s not saying you have to grow according to some body else’s pattern in order to move into the contemporary world.” China is not interested in heteronomy. China is interested in to you do better, we do better. It’s a collaboration and most important, there is respect. Politically, as China opens these economic markets with South East Asia that China, politically, is very quickly becoming a force in the world.
As China grows, one of things that has happened a 1500 skyscrapers have appeared in Shanghi is that this heavy equipment is digging down into this ancient earth called China and in the classical period is that people status, people of money, people of political power would not only take precious things into the tomb, their favorite clothing, jewelry and accouterments, they would also take literature, books and texts. The last generation, if this were 1980 and we were talking about the Tao Te Ching, we would be looking at a So Dynasty text, this is 1000 A.D. A new text of the Tao Te Ching was recovered. This text isn’t 1000 AD, this text is 300 BCE. Alexander the Great had just died. Aristotle and Plato were walking the earth when this was put into the tomb. In this text we have not only a good portion, about a third of the received Tao Te Ching, but we have new part. Together with my graduate students, we took this text and we translated it into English, then a year later, a Chinese translation of an English translation of a Chinese text. The Chinese have an expression that means; I can’t see the true face of Mt. Rainier because I’m standing on top of it. What does this mean? It means; What knows he of England, whom only England knows, that to know yourself, you have to be able to step out of your own world and look at yourself from a different perspective. The Chinese don’t think that Western scholars know China better than Chinese scholar, but Chinese are smart enough to know that we have a different perspective, that in appreciating the Chinese tradition from a different perspective, you grow it in terms of its importance. Is Beethoven a German musician? Do only Germans appreciate Beethoven? When Beethoven become world culture, Beethoven becomes really important.
China is coming politically and economically, but China is not yet here culturally. There is something very important to be derived from Chinese culture that can instruct the world as we try to make this 21 century better that the holocaust of the 20 century. If these young people don’t do better than the older generation, we not going to have a 22 century. What we need is to make a difference. There are elements within the Chinese tradition that are important when we look for the answer. China is not a country, China is not a Canada, France or Ukraine, China is a continent, it’s a Africa, it’s a Europe with all of the difference that entails. Within the political boundary of China resides 22.5 percent of the world population and that does not include South East Asia, Taiwan, Hong Kong or Singapore.
How does this political and economic development anticipate a cultural development, a cultural opportunity for the world to move in a different direction? This civilization is an antique civilization. Up until the industrial revolution China was the competed in the world as the abutter of culture and civilization. This idea that China is over populated and backward is a scued perception. If we go back to the beginning of the Ming Dynasty the population of China is 63 million. If we go back to the 20th century the population is 300 million, a quarter of what it is today.
I want to talk about Chinese culture around the topic of identity, gender and self-cultivation. What does China have to offer? We should be paying attention to Chinese culture. The concept of person in the Chinese tradition is a consummate person. You have the human being and the number two. In English we say, everybody please stand up or everyone, please stand up. We use our bodies. We use the idea of one to distinguish ourselves as individuals. We are individual people and then we come into some kind of relationship. In the Chinese world it’s very different. You don’t say everybody, please stand up, you say; big family, please stand up. In the classroom teacher is teacher father or teacher mother and we had student younger sister, student older sister and so on. In the Chinese world all relationships are family relationships, everybody is auntie and uncle. The Chinese feel you make your roles and relationships robust and important. To appreciate somebody is to acknowledge the magnitude and complexity of another human being. To appreciate another human being is to grow meaning in the world. As we appreciate each other the cosmos gets bigger. Appreciate means to make meaning. To love yourself in this would is not to love yourself independent of other people but to love yourself as we are constituted by the role and relationships that locate us within our world.
It is difficult to be a moral human being. Being moral is not about following rules, it ahs to do with using all the wisdom that you can in each circumstance with each unique person to try to find what is most appropriate in the particular relationship. Chinese morality begins with family. Morality merges out of family feeling. Family is at the center of Chinese morality. Confucianism doesn’t talk about being courageous, temperate, or wise. It talks about younger brothering, mothering, and friending somebody. It relies on the most concrete guidelines for prompting us to think about how to behave in our relationships with other people.
You cultivate yourself, you make the family right. You govern the country properly and you bring peace and harmony to the world, to the cosmos. Cultivate your self in the family and the world will find peace.
The logic of this tradition is a very simple:
Every moment presents you with alternative possibilities.
In order to be moral, you have to care about other people.
The way we learn to love other people is being loved ourselves.
Family relationships teach us that if someone else does better, we do better too.
