Lu Ji once asked Confucius about ghosts and gods, and Confucius answered very simply, saying,' If you can't convince people, how can you convince ghosts?' It shows that people's affairs are not handled well, how can we deal with ghosts and gods? Use this sentence to warn disciples to learn more about the real things first and not to be obsessed with the illusory world of ghosts and gods. Lu Ji then asked,' Dare you ask about death?' Confucius said,' If you don't know life, how can you know death? "(Advanced Analects of Confucius) means that people must first know what is living life. If they don't know what is living life, how can they understand the connotation of death?
Confucius did not directly point out the existence of ghosts and gods, but skillfully used the logical relationship of learning to guide students to pay more attention to the true knowledge in life. It reflects his rigorous and serious attitude towards life. Since you don't understand ghosts and gods and death, don't draw a conclusion about this matter, don't say yes or no, and put the real thing first. This is a very dialectical attitude. In the present words, Mr. Kong rationally applied dialectics to solve the problem of cognition.
This kind of thought can easily make people with different world views accept Confucius' thought. Materialists are Xunzi, Wang Chong, Zhang Heng and Wang Fuzhi, while idealists are Mencius, Dong Zhongshu and Wang Yangming. Even Taoism and Buddhism in China have absorbed a lot of Confucianism. I think it has something to do with Confucius' argument that he shelved the world outlook and guided people to pay attention to reality. On the surface, Confucius avoided talking about the theory of ghosts and gods. In fact, Confucius realized "godlessness" with his own way of thinking under the historical conditions at that time, but put aside the controversy and put students' thinking back on the right track in real life.
Confucianism attaches importance to the "karma" of this world, while Buddhism attaches importance to the "past life" and "afterlife", but there is no gap. For Buddhists, Confucian emphasis on secularism is only a supplement to Buddhism, while for Confucianism, respecting reality is not to exclude others from believing in Buddhism or not. From this perspective, Confucianism also has the factor of freedom of religious belief. Confucianism is the knowledge of dealing with the secular world, so what it seeks is how to deal with the relationship between people, people and families, people and society, and people and the country. This thought is the main line of the development of Confucianism, the core of the thought, and the focus of the knowledge research of Confucian school. It is also the reason why Confucianism can still be applied to the world after more than two thousand years. This is also the reason why Confucianism can be valued by the mainstream of society at different social stages after its development and growth.
Ghosts and gods, life and death have never been the core issues of Confucianism, but Confucianism is constantly dealing with their attitudes correctly. This makes Confucianism a belief that has condensed the blood of China people for thousands of years, but it has not become a religion. As an idea, religion has its limits, but as an idea, Confucianism is open. Therefore, compared with religious thought, Confucianism is an idea that can keep pace with the times, so it can also become a belief that keeps pace with the times.
When I asked my university teacher why God is invisible and has no image, the teacher gave me an intriguing answer: God is like the sun, you can feel his heat, but you can't look at him with your eyes. I realized that "God" is a value that human society should generally abide by. If it is explained by China culture, I think the word "Tao" is the most appropriate. Tao is right, which is the direction of human development.
In this way, Confucianism may be regarded as the "sun" or "god" for people to treat the world. We can't see its image, but we always feel its energy. Confucianism is not a theory of ghosts and gods, and neither is "God". In other words, people's universal value itself should not have a name, and the name is only for the convenience of people's learning. Simply put, Confucianism is about God.