RELI 2732 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Religion In China, Orthopraxy, Taoism
2 May 2018
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March 19th, 2018
Chinese Religion Views on Death and Afterlife
Four Areas of Influence Related to the Development of religion in China
• 1. Ancient indigenous beliefs – concerned with spirits
o Triple world of gods, humans, and the underworld
• 2. Confucianism – concerned with proper behavior
o Emphasis on this life towards the living and the dead
• 3. Daoism – concerned with the natural way of things (the Dao)
o The way of the mystical way of nature
• 4. Buddhism – concerned with karma and rebirth
• Religion is not what you believe, but what you do
o Orthodoxy vs orthopraxy – belief in faith VS belief in action
• Easter traditios are ore orthopra ad that’s h i Chiese
religion you can be part of more than one religion
Chinese Life, Religion and Death
Taiwan
• At first there was chaos which morphed into the yin and the yang to
create balance
• For the Chinese, good and evil are not different
o A balance of the yin and the yang is good, an imbalance is bad
• Gods are local and are part of certain villages
• If the god is not present, you do not worship him, but if he is present
ou ad the god ust aser the hua’s alls
• Death is joyous affair because it is celebrating the renewal of life
• At the height of death you think of life, at the height of life you think
of death (yin and yang)
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2
Themes in Chinese Religion
• Life and death for a continuum
o You are a part of community whe ou’re alie, ad he ou
die you join a community of death
• Religious activity maintains and enhances their physical, mental, and
economic vitality (gods of longevity, prosperity, posterity)
• There is ongoing concern of the welfare of the person after they die
• Ideas of the end of time and eternal salvation do not have much effect
on how religion is practiced
Ideas of Soul in Chinese Religions
• Being and existence is based on the symbols of yin and yang –
everything is a balance
o Everything is understood in complements
• Yang
o Qualities of light, heat, height, expansion, activity, masculinity
• Yin
o Qualities of dark, cool, depth, contraction, tranquility, femininity
• There is no condition that is entirely Yin or Yang, the dots in Yin and
Yang represent that everything has an opposite and eventually can
transform into its opposite
• Chinese Soul Theory
o The soul is a balance of yin and yang elements
o Upon death, they separate into two souls (hun/yang soul and
p’o/yin soul)
o The hun or yang soul is associated with chi (breath/cosmic
energy) and with heaven and the ancestor spirit tablet
▪ Yang is the soul that becomes an ancestor or deity
o Chinese spirit tablet is put in the home of the deceased to
represent them
o Deity spirit tablet can also represent gods (Earth God, Sun God,
etc.) – is held in an ancestral hall
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
