Characteristics of Three Main Schools in East Asia (confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism)

Characteristics of three main schools in East Asia

(Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism)

With the magnificent emergence of the Chinese civilization on the world stage, many people, including intellectuals, paid attention with great interest to the East Asian civilization. Chinese traditions affect East Asian civilization, and among them, especially Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism has been essence of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese culture. Confucianism and Daoism became first dominant in the Chinese history and culture for long time, and then Buddhism were appeared to China in later times. As many of other schools has been born in China, once Confucianism and Daoism came to many crisis that those schools will disappear. However, Confucianism and Daoism were harmonized and adapted each other by bit, and later another important school, Buddhism, was able to introduced and adapted to China. Later those schools have been spread out from China to Korea, Japan and other countries. Those main schools also played an important role in East Asian history, and those were showed richness of the ancient philosophies. I will tell about each school briefly; furthermore, I will show the characteristics of three main schools in comparison.

Confucianism has been the chief cultural influence of East Asia for centuries. Confucius mentioned that human relationships are fulfilling when people become fully realized human beings or 'junzi', which means 'gentleman'. He stressed the idea that the three most significant things are devotion (xiao), humaneness (ren), and ritual decorum (li). Also he mentioned when society lives by Li, it moves smoothly, and the idealized world or feudalistic government, is illustrated by five relationships. Between ruler and minister, between parent and child, between husband and wife, between older and younger brother, and among friends with friendship. These five relations include Li in all things, and those are the beginning of developing into human beings. Moreover, Confucius emphasizes devotion (xiao) among the things above. He taught that people should love one another and practice respect and courtesy. If a person harmonized with Li and Xiao, that person became a true gentleman, which is Confucian's ideal personality. The teaching of Confucius were popularized and spread by Mencius and Xunzi in next the centuries. Mencius argued that all human beings have a good mind; on the contrary, Xunzi said that nature of human beings is evil.

With Confucianism, Daoism has been one of the important philosophy trends of thought in China, and it affected many later thought and literature such as Legalism, and Buddhism. Daoism was founded by Laozi, and broadened through Zhuangzi and other followers until today. Behind all forms of Daoism stands the figure of Laozi, traditionally regarded as the author of the classic text known as the Daodejing, which is based on "the way of power". Daodejing was published by many scholars from Laozi, rather than the work of a single author, as the fundamental text of both philosophical and religious Daoism, and it is the most influential book in Chinese literature, except for the analects of Confucius. The teachings of Daoism center around the following themes: The basic unity behind the universe is a mysterious force called the Dao, which is rationalized and expressed in terms of "doing nothing" (wuwei). The chief aim of human being is to attain fullness of life by harmonized with the Dao. Live in primitive simplicity. Education, wealth, power, and family ties are worthless impediments to living. Luxurious living and glory are to be despised. Daoism was concerned about the quality of life and had interest in the heaven, god, ritual, or life after death. In contrast to Confucianism as a pragmatic school, Daoism was metaphysical school based on mysticism, which is similar as Buddhism.

The impact of Buddhism in the history of East Asia is so great that we must consider it critical to the formation of its culture. As everyone knows, Buddhism began in the India in the sixth century B.C, and reached China in the first century C.E, that had already undergone few centuries, and then it spread out other countries in East Asia. China, Korea, Japan, and other East Asian countries, are included in this vast cultural sphere. Especially, the first three adopted Buddhism in Chinese character translation even though they possess their own languages, so they seemed to have the fundamental similarities of Buddhism in these countries in contrast