4.1 NEO-CONFUCIANISM AGAINST DESIRE?

There is significant scholarly disagreement about how ascetic Song­dynasty neo-Confucianism was. Certainly slogans like “no desire” don’t sound like they place very much importance on the fulfillment of every­day wants and desires, but several interpreters have argued that super­ficial readings of this and other slogans miss the real point of neo-Confucianism.

I shall begin with Zhou Dunyi (1017-73) because it was he who first raised the slogan of “no desire (wuyu)'' among the thinkers spearheading the Confucian revival during the Song dynasty. While not all Song Confucians agreed with Zhou’s anti-desire stance, his view was widely influential and was endorsed a century later by neo­Confucianism’s great synthesizer, Zhu Xi (1130-1200). It was at Zhou’s slogan, in addition, that some of the harshest criticism of later Confu­cians - thinkers like Chen Que and Dai Zhen, whose views we will encounter later - was leveled.^[55]

Zhou is best known for two texts: the Diagram of the Supreme Ulti­mate Explained and Comprehending the Book of Changes. Both deal largely with abstract metaphysics, but both add comments on the nature of sagehood that bring up the notion of “desire.” In the Diagram Explained, for instance, we find:

The sage settles [human affairs] using the mean, correctness, human­ity, and righteousness....

Similarly, in Comprehending the Book of Changes, Zhou explains that there is an “essential way” to learn to be a sage:

Unity is the essential way. Unity is [having] no desire. If one has no desire, then one is vacuous while tranquil, straight while active. Being vacuous while tranquil, one becomes intelligent and hence penetrating; being straight while active, one becomes impartial and hence all-embracing. Being intelligent, penetrating, impartial, and all-embracing, one is almost a sage. [Zhou 1990, p. 29; Zhu & Lu 1967, p. 123]

What does he mean by saying that those on the path to sagehood should have “no desire (wuyu)''?

It is easy to read the first of these passages as advocating an extreme passivity - not desiring anything and thus being “tranquil” - but when we consider the second passage’s mention of being “straight while active,” we see that the idea is more complicated than this. Commenta­tors have long understood that the idea of “tranquility” in the first passage is different from, and more fundamental than, the “tranquility” mentioned in the second. Fundamental tranquility comes from having no desires and leads to “unity.”

We can better appreciate what Zhou is up to if we consider a few more passages from Comprehending the Book of Changes. To begin with, here is what Zhou says about the proper role of music in calming desires:

In ancient times, sage-kings instituted ceremonies and moral edu­cation.... Consequently, all people were in perfect harmony and all things were in concord. Thereupon the sage-kings created music to give expression to the winds coming from the eight directions^[56] and to calm (ping) the feelings of the people. This is the reason why the sound of music is quiescent (dan) and not hurtful, harmonious and not licentious.

Zhou contrasts this with more recent rulers, who “indulge their desires without restraint” and replace the ancients’ music with modern music, music which is “seductive, licentious, depressive, and complaining,” and which “arouses desires and increases bitterness without end” [ibid.]. Although rulers might not like hearing themselves charged with indulgence, it takes little imagination to see that they might like the idea of people who are unified and “quiescent.” I will expand on this theme later.

Even more extreme than Zhou’s description of the proper effect of music is his picture of Yanzi, Confucius’s favorite student. Zhou cites the Analects's description of Yanzi (“having only a single dish of rice, a single gourd of drink, and living in a narrow lane; others could not have endured this distress, but he did not allow his joy to be affected” [6:9]) and comments:

Wealth and honor are what people love.^[57] Yanzi did not love or seek them but instead enjoyed poverty. What does this tell us about his unique heart? There are high honors and enormous wealth that one can love and seek after, but Yanzi was unlike others since he could see what was truly great and forget what was really small. He saw the great, so his mind was at peace. His mind was at peace, so there was nothing he lacked. Lacking nothing, he treated wealth, honor, poverty, and humble station in the same way. As he treated them in the same way, he could transform them and equalize them. This is why Yanzi was regarded as second to the sage. [Zhou 1990, p. 31; Chan 1963, p. 475, somewhat altered]

This same idea, that wealth and station are as nothing to the sage, is repeated in chapter 33 of Comprehending the Book of Changes.^[58]

When we put all these passages together, it certainly sounds like some desires that most of us have are ones which the sage should not have at all.

Interpreters of Zhu Xi’s views on desires and benefit face a problem very different from that faced by those who seek to make sense of Zhou’s

ideas: Zhu was prolific, and there is a wealth of material from which to work. His enormous body of commentaries, recorded sayings, and essays represents a remarkable effort to synthesize the writings of earlier neo­Confucians into a single vision. It is easy to misinterpret Zhu if one takes passages out of context - as was sometimes done by his later critics, as we will see. When given a careful, sympathetic reading, the material all hangs together quite well. In brief, while some passages tempt one to read Zhu as advocating the radical reduction of desires, a balanced inter­pretation finds Zhu favoring the idea of the hierarchical ordering of desires. His view is thus not as extreme as Zhou’s. Still, I argue later in the chapter that Zhu’s critics were on to something: Zhu does not find an adequate place in his account of human psychology for people’s everyday desires.

The easiest way to misunderstand Zhu is to read him as opposed to all satisfaction of human desires - as, in other words, advocating a radi­cally ascetic doctrine. This kind of misreading is encouraged by the many times that Zhu contrasts “human desires (renyu)” with “heaven’s pattern (tianlι)." “Heaven’s pattern” is his ultimate standard of value, the pattern in accord with which all things harmoniously flourish. “Human desires” can look quite bad by comparison, as when Zhu says:

A mind that has never known right learning is muddied by human desire.

A great deal hangs on what Zhu means here by “human desire,” of course. In another passage, he begins to make that clear, as well as to clarify his understanding of Zhou’s “no desire” doctrine:

Zhou [Dunyi] said that one should have fewer and fewer desires until one has none, for he was afraid that people thought it enough to have few desires.... But the task of having no desire depends on one’s ability to have few desires. No one but the sage can reach the point of having no desire. [Someone then asked:] “But what are we to make of this word ‘desire’?” [Zhu replied:] “There are different [meanings]. This [idea of] having few desires - that is with respect to those [desires] that are improper: things like selfish desires. As for being hungry and desiring to eat or being thirsty and desiring to drink, are these desires that one can be without?” [Zhu 1983, p. 2414; Chan 1963, p. 155, slightly altered]

One thing we see in this passage is Zhu’s recognition that Zhou’s teach­ings are difficult, suitable only for very advanced students. Still, sages do, in some sense, reach the state of having “no desire.” In this connection it is important to see that there are two different kinds of desires, one good and one bad. A plausible suggestion, which will be confirmed as we examine more evidence, is to understand the “human desires” that Zhu directs us to “eradicate” as indicating our bad desires. This has not yet said what characterizes those bad desires, but it does at least make clear that we need not read Zhu as advocating that we rid ourselves of the desires to eat and drink.

Before trying to pin down what it is that makes certain desires bad, let us look at a fascinating passage in which it is clear that some of our desires are good.

If the human mind is so very bad, our bodies would have to be com­pletely eliminated before the mind of the way became clear....^[60] The human mind is our body with consciousness and desires, as in the case of “I desire humanity” and “I follow what my heart desires.”^[61] When “the desire of our nature” is “affected by external things and becomes activated,”^[62] how can we avoid that desire? Only when external temptation causes us to fail will it be harmful.... Take the case of food. When one is hungry or thirsty and desires to eat one’s fill, that is the human mind. However, there must be moral pattern in it. There are [times] one should eat and [times] one should not.... This is the correctness of the mind of the way. [Zhu 1983, ch. 62, sec. 41; Chan 1989, p. 202]

This is one of three passages in Zhu’s massive Classified Conversations that invoke the phrase “desire of the nature (xing zhi yu)” a quotation from the Book of Music. Since elsewhere Zhu identifies “nature” with “heaven’s pattern,” his acknowledging that the nature has desires is equivalent to acknowledging that these desires are essential to our ethical well-being. These are desires, examples of which include not only “I desire humaneness” but also appropriate desires to eat and drink, which we should never be without.

When the three preceding passages are considered together, I think we can see that desires, as well as the closely related idea of the em­bodied self, can be vexing for neo-Confucians. This is especially true for Zhu, who more than any other writer of his day seeks to synthesize the writings both of his immediate predecessors and of classical thinkers. He is committed to a distinction between human desires and heavenly pattern and to Zhou’s “no desire” thesis, on one hand, and to the cor­rectness of “desir[ing] humaneness” and the existence of “desires of the nature,” on the other. I do not want to argue that his attempt to make sense of all this is a disaster; indeed, I think Zhu’s philosophical system is a remarkable achievement. Still, in light of all he says about human desires, it is hard to know exactly what to make of comments like “The human mind is our embodied selves with consciousness and desires, as in the case of ‘I desire humaneness’.” What is the connection between the desires and the humaneness? Later thinkers like Dai Zhen will be able to say; Zhu, I think, ultimately cannot.

In any event, let us allow Zhu that the “human desires” of the “human mind” can be good. Much more frequently than Zhu makes this point, though, he emphasizes their problematic tendencies. Let us now examine these problematic tendencies more closely and see if we can discern whence they arise. The following passage can be read in two different ways:

[A student asked] “In eating and drinking, where is heaven’s pattern and where is human desire?” Zhu replied: “Eating and drinking are heaven’s pattern, but demanding delicious flavors is human desire.” [Zhu 1983, p. 224; Chan 1989, p. 200]

On first reading, the passage seems to lean toward the idea, familiar from the Dao De Jing, that connoisseur-like desires need to be removed entirely.¹¹ Another possibility, though, is that the problem lies not in one’s ^[63] desiring delicious flavors, but in one’s demanding them. One puts improper weight on the food’s taste, or in other words, one’s desires are mis-ordered. That Zhu endorsed this latter interpretation of the passage can be seen from a second passage in which these matters are addressed more clearly:

[Someone asked] “Were parents to feel boundless love for their chil­dren and to desire that the children be brilliant and become estab­lished, could that be called the sincere mind [of the Way]?” Zhu responded: “It is proper that parents love their children, but to love without limitation and thus to unquestioningly desire things on their behalf is improper. One must properly distinguish between heaven’s pattern and human desires.” [Zhu 1983, p. 232]

Part of loving is desiring things on behalf of one’s loved ones. This can be proper, but when one comes to “unquestioningly desire things on their behalf,” one has slipped over the line from heavenly pattern to “human desire.” Zhu’s emphasis makes it clear that the problem is not with the object of the desire, but with the amount of the desire - its being “without limitation.” Unlimited desires would be impossible to put into any kind of harmonious ordering, since each would demand pride of place.

In a third passage, finally, Zhu is explicit about the cause of mis­ordering one’s desires: It is our inevitable subjectivity that will, unless we have undergone exhaustive cultivation, lead to partial, selfish prioritizing:

For each matter there are two possibilities: the correct one is the impartiality (gong) of heavenly pattern, the incorrect one is the self­regard (si) of human desire. One must exhaustively analyze every matter, expanding one’s work at controlling and ordering [oneself] to apply at all times. However, humans’ endowments of ether (qi)¹ all have biased tendencies, and thus what each of us sees is differ­ent.... We must make efforts to control and put in order our biased endowments of ether. [Zhu 1983, p. 225]

We all view things from our own perspectives. My mouth waters in antic­ipation when offered a delicious morsel in a way just not matched - at least for most of us - by my response to the prospect of someone else’s

¹² “Ether (qi)” has been translated by others as “material force” and “psycho-physical stuff”: It is the vital stuff that makes up the entire cosmos. enjoying a gourmet treat. It is certainly worth asking how this fate might be overcome, and Zhu has much to say on the subject. This is not the place, though, to explore Zhu’s view of self-cultivation.^[64]

Instead, let me summarize what we have seen of Zhu’s view of the desires. Many desires are clearly bad. If we read him sympathetically, though, we must conclude that it is not its object that makes a desire bad, but the strength of that desire at that time and place, in comparison with other desires one might have. Most desires can be acceptable, when felt to the proper degree. It is thus unjust to charge Zhu with advocating wholesale suppression of the desires. Still, despite oblique statements brought on by classical Confucian talk of “desiring humaneness,” Zhu has little to teach us about the positive roles that desires can play in ethically proper motivation.

Before moving on to the thinkers who develop more positive accounts of desire, it would be well to note that these matters were not of merely academic interest. Emperors throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties heard, in neo-Confucian teachings about reducing or eliminating desires, a set of doctrines very congenial to their purposes. They did their best to see that these ideas, as they understood them, were taught throughout the land. Is it any wonder that the first emperor of the Ming should have been intrigued by the teachings of Song Lian (1310-81), a Confucian who believed that “the only material wealth a man might legitimately possess was the minimum needed for the continuance of life” [Dardess 1983, p. 165]? Zhou’s no-desire dictum was featured prominently in an impor­tant Qing imperial compilation, and the civil service exams regularly contained questions about “controlling the self,” with explicit reference expected to Zhu’s interpretation of this idea in terms of self-regarding desires.^[65] Even though we have seen that Zhu’s views were not as extreme as Zhou’s (or Song Lian’s), the ways in which all of their ideas were used by power-holders led later critics to paint them all with a single brush.