Among the "Five Sons of the Northern Song Dynasty", Cheng Hao was the most respected by later generations, and his ideas were generally rated as "pure" and belonged to the Orthodox Confucianism, which was beyond the reach of the other four sons.
Confucians criticized Zhou Dunyi's Taiji Tushu as a mixture of Buddhas, belittled Shao Yong's Yishu as close to Jingjiao, and said that Zhang Zai's Zhengmeng was "sincere", and they were somewhat ill. When talking about the second journey, Lu Jiuyuan said: "Yichuan is deep, but the Ming Dao is unblocked", thinking that there is something wrong with xiaocheng, and the big cheng is impeccable. Psychologists have a lot of criticism of Cheng Yi, but few people criticize Cheng Hao. Whether it was Cheng Zhu's disciples or Lu Wang's private shu, it seemed that everyone agreed that Cheng Hao was indeed like Yan Hui, a pure Confucian in their minds.
Five sons of the Northern Song Dynasty: Zhou Dunyi, Shao Yong, Zhang Zai, Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi
<h1>Why are cheng hao's writings rarely circulated? </h1>
Cheng Hao's works are the least in the "Five Sons of the Northern Song Dynasty", nearly 70% of the "Ercheng Collection" are Cheng Yi's works, and few of Cheng Hao's works have been circulated in the world, which is caused by many reasons.
First of all, Cheng Hao died too early, and his life expectancy was the shortest of five sons, so that he did not have time to write a systematic work. Cheng Yi confessed in the "Letter of Conduct" that "Mr. Jin will be a Juesi person, and the book of retiring will be Ming, unfortunately in his early life, and none of them have reached it." ”
Second, writing a book is not Cheng Hao's ambition. His disciple Xie Liangzuo had read a lot of books and was very knowledgeable, and wanted to compile a collection of ancient and modern texts, but when Cheng Hao found out, he criticized it as a "plaything" and not a true learning path. He told his disciples that those who were good at writing were "scribes", those who liked to talk about the scriptures were "lecturers", and only those who really knew the "Tao" were "Confucians". Books and words and deeds are only means of preaching, and cannot be stuck in this; and articles are only written for the sake of "rhetoric to establish sincerity."
Finally, according to the "Song Yuanxue Case", at the time of the Yuanyou Party case, Cheng Yi "chased down the writing since his birth" in order to avoid persecution, which caused many of Ercheng's autographic works to be lost.
Most of the contents of the Ercheng Collection are quotations recorded by the disciples, not the original works of the Ercheng. Most of these quotations are unsigned, making it difficult for us to know which words were spoken by Cheng Hao and which were spoken by Cheng Yi. Therefore, in order to clarify Cheng Hao's system, we must not start with quotations, but from the two letters he personally wrote, which are the "Qualitative Book" and the "Zhiren Chapter".
Cheng Hao, Zi Bo Chun, Mr. Ming Dao
<h1>The logical starting point of Cheng Hao's philosophical system</h1>
Cheng Hao was a disciple of Zhou Dunyi, and Zhou Dunyi proposed at the end of the Taiji Tushu that the method of "establishing the human pole" lies in "fixing it with the righteousness of zhongzheng" and "the main jing". It is believed that only by fixing one's nature on the basis of righteousness and righteousness, and by holding on to "stillness", not wavering, not giving up on oneself, and thus practicing, can one become a "human pole" standing above everyone and become a saint through self-cultivation.
The "Xingzhi" says that after Cheng Hao studied under Zhou Dunyi, although he already had the ambition to seek the Tao, he still "didn't know what he wanted", so he flooded the families and went in and out of the old for nearly ten years, and then returned to the Six Classics, and finally got something. In the second year of Emperor Renzong of Song's reign, Cheng Hao and his cousin Zhang Zai served as local officials, and they exchanged letters and knowledge with each other. One day, Zhang Zai wrote a letter to Cheng Hao, questioning "characterization", in which he said:
"Qualitative failure to move, like a burden of external objects, how about it?"
This question logically inherits the Taiji Tu theory, pointing out the contradiction between "fixing it with the righteousness of righteousness" and "the main jing". Thinking that "sex" will be disturbed by external objects, I am afraid that no one can do "quiet", and there will be some wavering. If there is a foreign object, then even if we know that "Zhongzheng Benevolence" is a beautiful virtue, it is inevitable that we will be tempted by external objects to deviate from the right path and be unable to keep it. What should we think of this?
Cheng Hao's "Qualitative Book" mainly explores this issue, in which he puts forward the idea of "sex has no inside and outside", and from this logical starting point, expounds the relationship between man and heaven and earth, believing that man and heaven and earth are one, only need to "conform to things", "love all things and ruthless", can not divide heaven and man into two, and then go to "unity". In this way, it is a radical monism, using the same point of view, dissolving people into the heavens and the earth, and laying the foundation for the later "heavenly reason" thought.
<h1>What does Science mean by "sex"? </h1>
In Zhou Dunyi's Taiji Tushu, "sex" means "Zhongzheng Benevolence", which is obviously very abstract. Cheng Hao, on the other hand, enriched the category of "sex", arguing that all things born of heaven and earth have their own "nature" to distinguish other things, such as the nature of cattle and cattle, the nature of horses and horses, and so on. All things develop according to their own nature, which is called the "Tao"; the horse lives according to the nature of the horse, and the cow develops according to the nature of the cow, all of which act spontaneously and follow the animal path. This is called "the predicate of destiny" and "the predicate of willfulness."
Man lives between heaven and earth, "in the same stream with all things", but also has his own nature and has a corresponding humanity. For man, there are five kinds of sex that are permanent, they are benevolence, righteousness, etiquette, wisdom and faith, in addition to love and hatred, mood and anger, shame, compassion, greed, etc. are all "feelings". Cheng Hao believes that "sex" is close to reason, and "feeling" is close to desire; many animals have desires, but only people have unique reasons:
This kind of reason makes man love all things, close to justice;
Righteousness makes human rights too important and nearly appropriate;
The reason of etiquette makes people determine the system, close to the point;
Wisdom This kind of reason makes people discern between right and wrong, close to knowing;
Faith in this kind of reason makes man honest and trustworthy, close to the truth;
How to keep these five kinds of reason in order not to be pulled by external objects, resulting in lust and confusion, is a question of "characterization". Following these five "sexes" to do things for people, which is what we call the way of the saints, so Cheng Hao said:
"The Tao is sex also. If the tao is outside the search for sex, the way is sought outside the sex, it is not. ”
If a person has lost his nature, then it is necessary to restore him to his original appearance through education, which is the "teaching of monasticism." And if people don't want to be superstitious about nature, and want to be able to stick to the five kinds of reason all the time, they need to do qualitative work.
Five permanences
<h1>Cheng Hao's idea of "the unity of heaven and man"</h1>
In the "Five Sons of the Northern Song Dynasty", Zhou Dunyi, Shao Yong and Zhang Zai all had the idea of "the unity of heaven and man". Zhou Dunyi used "renji" to combine "taiji"; Shao Yong used "humanity" to combine "heavenly way"; Zhang Zai used "wu" to combine "qian father and kun mother". Cheng Hao, however, had a different view, believing that the "unity of heaven and man" was essentially dualism, first separating man from heaven and earth, and then mechanically "merging" back. He said:
"Heaven and man are the same, there is no need to agree."
"Is there an inside and outside of heaven and earth?" Outside of heaven and earth, there is no knowledge of heaven and earth. Man is in heaven and earth, like a fish in water, he does not know that there is water, and he waits until he comes out of the water, and he knows that he cannot move. ”
Man, like all things, is born of heaven and earth, and is originally a part of heaven and earth, not a being independent of heaven and earth. When I know the "universe," I am neither outside nor within the universe, but belong to the universe itself, and I am a member of the universe, not a being independent of the universe. When we observe the universe and understand the heavens and the earth, we do not look at it from the perspective of other than it, but as a member of it, we know this whole, so it is said that "there is no two heavens and people."
One of the common mistakes people make is to try to know heaven and earth from the perspective of a third party, to put people outside or within heaven and earth, as if heaven and earth were an object that had nothing to do with man. They fail to realize that man is only part of heaven and earth, just as the fingers of the feet belong to the body. Fish must not be separated from the abyss, and man must not leave heaven and earth, do not try to know heaven and earth from "inside and outside the heavens and the earth", but regard yourself as a member of heaven and earth, and from this molecule to understand the whole.
The premise of the "unity of heaven and man" theory is that there is a difference between heaven and man, and that the fingers of the foot are indeed different from the whole body, but this distinction is the difference between the part and the whole, not the difference between two independent things. Since it is this distinction in identity, there is no need for "unity", because the so-called "unity" is the combination of two different things, which is dualism. Cheng Hao's "Heaven and Man are One" logically dissolves this "dualism" and advocates a thorough "monism". He said:
"It must be the way of the inside and the outside, one day people, up and down, down and up, extremely wise and moderate."
The "Qualitative Book" tries to tell Zhang Zai to think differently about the problem. This is also a significant logical difference between Cheng Hao's philosophy and Zhang Zai's philosophy.
<h1>The birthplace of Cheng Hao's philosophy, the Book of Qualitative</h1>
Zhang Zai's logic holds that heaven and earth are my parents and that all things are my compatriots. Since they are compatriots, then they are different individuals, there is a distinction between inside and outside, and other individuals may interfere with my nature; and Cheng Hao's logic holds that heaven and earth are the whole body, and that man and all things are different limbs, and although the hands and feet are different, they are not different individuals who are separated from each other, and no one has left the body and exists independently. So he said:
"Heaven and earth are one body, and between heaven and earth, all things are all limbs and hundreds of bodies."
Is there a distinction between the inside and the outside of the hand and the foot? Can the foot intervene as a foreign object in the nature of the hand? Obviously not, they are all determined by the body. If you think that sex is internal and external, and then "deliberately absolutely tempting", it is not really understanding "sex". Therefore, Cheng Hao believes that "movement is also fixed, stillness is also fixed, there is no will to meet, there is no inside and outside", the real qualitative is not the kung fu of dealing with external objects, but the practice of following the whole. "Dualism" is not enough to understand "qualitative", so he says:
"If you take both inside and outside as the two books, then you can also say it in a uulcastic language?"
The true characterization should be to make the hands and siblings obedient to the body, "but the lord is the great duke, and the things come and go", to understand that man is part of the heavens and the earth, and not to be vain and selfish, let alone selfish within the Lord. The great problem of man is selfishness and the use of wisdom, and the selfish person is like slapping himself, using his hands against the body; the use of wisdom instead encourages selfishness and intensifies the confrontation between the hand and the body. Those dualists who think that they can achieve qualitativeity by resisting the temptation of external objects, they do not know, what should be done is -
"It is not outside but inside, not inside and outside." If you forget it twice, you will be fine. ”
It is not wise to see something as my enemy and then do everything in my power to resist it. The hands and feet are all part of the body, so why should the hands resist the feet? This kind of hand-foot confrontation will only increase the trouble in vain and make the practice futile. It is better to give up the difference between inside and outside, so that the hands and siblings forget, and each of them is clear, "nothing is fixed, the rule is clear, and the clear should still be tired!" ”
Cheng Hao's qualitative theory negates the practice of shielding foreign objects, abandoning his wife and children, sitting alone in a room, and participating in the Path of Zen enlightenment, believing that excessive masters will only fall into fragmentation. It is better to "tie not to the heart but to things" and "things come and conform", when joy is happy, when anger is anger, it should be so and so, rather than blind resistance. Since we don't want lust to interfere with reason, then we should "follow all things and be ruthless", instead of trying to shield everything, we must make our hearts like wood, shaped like dead ashes.
In the "Qualitative Book", Cheng Hao's core ideas have begun to take shape. He swept away the distinction between inside and outside, recognized the heavenly beings as one, and emphasized that "things come and conform", which laid the foundation for "heavenly reason". Later, he regarded the "body" as a heavenly principle, saying that man and all things are part of it, and that when it is angry, it is angry, it should be happy, and it is qualitative to conform to heavenly reason.
However, before the introduction of "Tianli", there is still a need for an intermediate link in logic - that is, how to prove that "Tianren is one"? How can we hold on to monism without wavering? This is the content of another of his works, The Book of Knowledge.