INTEGRAL WORLD MAILING LIST
 
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Newsletter Nr. 872
Amsterdam, July 7th, 2020


SHAMANIC AND TAOIST ORIGINS OF CHINESE TRADITIONS - Part Two - JOSEPH DILLARD

Essentially animistic, Chinese folk culture never separated man and nature, and requires an understanding of shamanism.[5] The shamans of ancient China, called the Wu, were believed to be able to communicate directly with plants, minerals, and animals, to journey deep into the earth, and visit distant stars. They were able to invoke, through dance and ritual, elemental and supernatural powers, and enter into ecstatic union with them. Not Tao, not some God, but a countless host of greater and lesser deities, spirits of humans, animals, plants, stones, stars, rivers, and mountains, accounted in the popular mind for what went on in the world. The forces of nature, personified as spirits, exerted a direct influence in daily human affairs.

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CORE CONCEPTS OF CONFUCIANISM - Part Three - JOSEPH DILLARD

Confucianism is highly unusual because it embodies a secular humanism that was incorporated into the governing structures of entire civilization, in fact, the oldest continuous civilization on the planet. Master K'ung's ethical philosophy springs from a desire to create and defend order as well as a desire to minimize chaos. This is because Chinese society, as noted above, was regularly and catastrophically upended by disastrous floods along its great rivers, by earthquakes, and by invasion, as China has no border mountain ranges to provide natural defense. 

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http://www.integralworld.net/dillard45.html