Chinese Religions and the Environment
Early in this chapter, we discussed the cosmological foundations of the ancient Chinese religious tradition, which subsequently gave rise to both Confucianism and Daoism.
Fundamental to this cosmology is the notion of qi, the all-pervasive energy-matter that is the building block of all the myriad things in the universe.
In other words, everything that exists is made up of the same “stuff,” only in different configurations and manifestations. The human body is a microcosm of the environment, while nature is a macrocosm of the human body. There is a porous fluidity that flows between the two. Hence the well-being of the environment is equated with the health of the human body, and vice versa. There is therefore a natural and logical inclination within the two Chinese religious traditions toward environmentalism, as no one desires ill health. To be sure, China in the modem period, thanks to full-throttled industrialization, rapid economic growth, and unrestrained urbanization, coupled with a deliberate rejection of its traditional religious values, has experienced a devastating environmental degradation evidenced by air and water pollution, as well as toxic contamination of nature. Yet there is nothing in Confucian and Daoist beliefs that regards the environment as something to be dominated and exploited, or as an entity pitted against the human body and external to its welfare. The Confucian notion of the moral elite taking on the responsibility to improve human society and its harmonious relation with nature has been noted. The Daoist love of nature as the highest form of embodying the Dao has also been observed. There is in fact a growing awareness among Chinese leaders that traditional Chinese religious views can be forged with environmental concerns as China moves forward in the twenty-first centuiy. China’s full recognition of the perils of climate change, together with its development of renewable energy projects such as wind turbines and solar panels, exemplifies this recognition.9Confucianism and Daoism have together shaped personal conduct and social behavior in China. How do the Chinese allow themselves to be guided by two very distinct religious traditions in their daily lives without much sense of tension and conflict?
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