Hsieh Liang-tso (c.1050-c.1120, known as master Shang-ts'ai) was one of the leading direct disciples of Ch'eng Hao and Ch'eng I, the two brothers who were the early leaders of the Confucian revival known as Neo-Confucianism in Northern Sung China. Hsieh was thus among the first to recognize and follow the insights of the Ch'eng brothers as definitive of the authentic Confucian tradition, a recognition that became the conviction of the majority of later Confucian scholars and practitioners. The present book is a focused analysis of the core value of Confucian thought, namely jen (humanity or...

Is the Confucian tradition compatible with the Western understanding of human rights? Are there fundamental human values, regardless of cultural differences, common to all peoples of all nations? At this critical point in Communist China's history, eighteen distinguished scholars address the role of Confucianism in dealing with questions of universal human rights.

The emergence of New Confucian Humanism as a major intellectual and spiritual tradition in the Chinese cultural area since the Second World War is a phenomenon vitally important and intriguing to students of history, philosophy, and religion. The Confucian vision, rooted in the Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese civilizations, has been sustained through more than two millennia of constant social change and holds special meaning for both industrial and socialist East Asia today. Indeed, as a living force defining our humanity and exploring our human potential for authentic...

Chinese Gleams of Sufi Light investigates, for the first time in a Western language, the manner in which the Muslim scholars of China adapted the Chinese tradition to their own needs during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The book surveys the 1400-year history of Islam in China and explores why the four books translated from Islamic languages into Chinese before the twentieth century were all Persian Sufi texts. The author also looks carefully at the two most important Muslim authors of books in the Chinese language, Wang Tai-yu and Liu Chih. Murata shows how they assimilated...

The most important work on Confucian religion, ethics, and spirituality ever to appear.

What will China look like in 2000? Tectonic forces are at work and its seeming stability has been largely lost after Tiananmen Square. Changing political, social, economic, intellectual and cultural conditions are transforming China and its neighbours with a majority Chinese population. The authors in this book show what has been going on and what has been saved but is evolving. As communism did not erase the past, so new experiences build on the past and tease out newness with great resemblances. Modernity takes many forms, memory repressed for a time may reassert itelf; myth, the invention...