Confucian Spirituality
Keywords:
Confucius the Model, Spiritual Guidance, Meanings of Jen, Jen as Love, Confucian SpiritualityAbstract
What "spirituality" can a down-to-earth practical morality like Con- fucianism have? This is the kind of question a Christian may pose, out of ignorance for a foreign system of thought which he or she may associate with humanism without God. This shows the ignorance of the West regarding Confucianism, an ignorance which has not been overcome by four centuries of encounter, starting especially with Jesuit missionaries in China, Matteo Ricci and his confreres. who were the earliest Western interpreters of Confucianism.
References
Translations from the Analects are all my own, sometimes adapted from James Legge, The Chinese Classics, (Oxford, Clarendon, 1893). vol. I.
Julia Ching, Confucianism and Christianity y (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1977), Published by the Institute of Oriental Religions. Sophia University, Tokyo. Japan.
