Saints & Sages Part V: 王善人 Wang, the Benevolent

Saints & Sages Part V:

王善人
Wang, the Benevolent
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Who was Wang Feng Yi 王鳳儀? What are the underlying principles of his healing system which emphasizes that all diseases spring forth from the Heart-Mind? Could he rightfully be called the inventor of Chinese psychology as an equivalent to Western psychology?

The following is the foreword by renowned scholar Catherine Despeux, in the book « Discourse On Transforming Inner Nature » by Wang Fengyi ; translated by Johan Hausen and Jonas Akers. Catherine Despeux is also the author of « Women in Daoism»

Foreword
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The text translated here, Discourse on Transforming Inner Nature [hua xing tan化性談], introduces the reader into the heart of Neo-Confucian thought. The author Wang Fengyi [王鳳儀1864-1937] was a Mongol from a simple background, as his biography portrays him as a poor and illiterate peasant, a herdsman who watched over animals. He, however, was not without culture and worked to defend Confucianism. After being married at twenty-three years to a woman named Bai Shoukun [白守坤], with whom he would have a son. At the age of thirty-five Wang Fengyi would come to « realize the Way » according to Chinese terms, which means he would have reached some kind of self-accomplishment and found the meaning of his life and his Way.

Wang Fengyi lived at a time of great changes in China, shaken by the confrontation with Western modernism. The Manchu Qing dynasty [1644-1911] was collapsing and making place for a republic seeking to enter into modernity while keeping its national identity in front of the western model that was imposing itself. There were several scholar movements rising from multiple pockets of resistance against the foreign Manchu dynasty and the western invaders. These movements took part in the emergence of so-called societies of redemption, including the one to which Wang Fengyi belonged.

As a movement of defending their own culture, the Universal Society of the Way and Virtue [wan guo dao de hui 萬國道德會] was formed at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was one of the best examples for a movement of spiritual transformation. It was inaugurated on the 28th of September, in 1921, on Confucius’ birthday, by Jiang Shoucheng [1875-1926], a member of the Confucian community of Kang Youwei, and one of the most famous Confucian of the nineteenth century, who elaborated the ideal theory of 《Great Harmony》[da tong 大通] and was just before he died the president of this universal society [1926-1927].

Wang Fengyi gave great impetus to this society had eight million members in the north-east of China in the years around 1930. This was a quarter of the population of this area. He became an itinerant doctor and a preacher of Confucian morals; and as such he was celebrated as a saintly peasant, a virtuous man, and often nicknamed ‘Wang the Benevolent’ or ‘Wang the Virtuous’. He contributed to a volunteer movement to develop schools for girls that in 1925 had established around two hundred and fifty schools across Manchuria. He adamantly insisted on the role of women, mothers, wives and step-daughters to maintain social harmony and the well-being of the family.

Wang’s schools emerged under the umbrella of the Universal Society of the Way and Virtue and in 1933 this society comprised five hundred branches, four hundred schools and two hundred thousand students in the north-east of China. Its activities were stopped with the advent of Mao in 1949 as being recognized as social activities by the authorities, however they continued in secret. With the policy of openness toward religions in the years around 1980, the movement re-emerged, especially in the north-east of China [Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang], where its members preached filial piety and Wang Fengyi’s healing methods.

Indeed, one main characteristic of Wang Fengyi’s thought lies in the link he establishes between the ethical and spiritual behavior of an individual for him/herself and for others, as well as health. That is how in the north-east lineages of local therapists re-organized in so-called « farms », preached stories, held conferences, confession sessions, or produced writings introducing the cosmological order of the Five Elements, and the way to reach this ideal harmony. This idea is not new. Since antiquity medicine scriptures have been insisting on the correspondence between the cosmological order and the order in the country, as well as in society and in the human body; however Wang Fengyi makes associations of the cosmological order and the ethical order of Neo-Confucians in much more detail.

The doctrine and the practices elaborated by Wang Fengyi are founded on confidence in oneself, knowledge of oneself, and realization of oneself. This way, being deeply influenced by the thought of the Neo-Confucianist Wang Yangming, seeks to find the root of life and of the links between Heaven, Earth and Humans from everyone’s own experience. There is no hesitation to borrow concepts from the three main doctrines of Chinese thought, Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism, and to draw parallels between similar notions of these three currents.

Wang Fengyi starts off with the example of Yin and Yang in nature and the theory of the Five Elements [Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water], which are simultaneously the breath of nature reigning at each season of the year. The Five Elements are predominant during each season as primordial energy of one of the Five Organs, an energy that manifests by the proper functioning of the organ and by an emotion or « movement of the soul » associated to it. Thus, in spring, the breath of Wood is dominant. In the human body the real microcosm functions like the macrocosm, the breath of Wood expresses itself in the Liver, which is associated with the normal expression of anger. But Wang Fengyi would add to those Five Elements [Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water], those Five Organs [Liver, Heart, Spleen, Lungs, Kidneys)] and their Five Emotions [anger, joy, pensiveness, sadness, fear], the Five Cardinal Virtues of Confucianism [virtue of humanity, ritual, trust, uprightness and wisdom]. If the harmony of a person and of society depends on the culture of those qualities, the health of the individual also depends on it.

Wang Fengyi’s thought is not wholly unknown to the western public, as Sabine Wilms already translated another text of this author, the Twelve Characters [wang feng yi shi er zi xin zhuan 王鳳儀十二字薪傳] into English. German doctor, Reiner Fruehauf, considers it the ideal introduction to this powerful healing method for the western world. In this work, Wang explains that humans have Three Natures: a Heavenly Nature [tian xing天性], that is his/her natural disposition, a composite nature [bing xing禀性], that is his/her propensity to impose him/herself on others, and a nature acquired by habit [bing xing禀性]. Wang Fengyi’s goal is to return to the Heavenly Nature, or Inner Nature, ordinarily obstructed by the two other types of nature.

The Discourses, very didactic, exposes the basic notions of Wang Fengyi’s thought on the Five Elements, the Five Cardinal Virtues of Confucianism, and the search of harmony between body, Spirit and Inner Nature. They reveal, maybe more than any other of his writings, the Buddhist aspects of his thought, especially in his twelfth and last chapter named « The Transformation of Inner Nature ». The emphasis is placed on letting-go, on abandoning everything, as a master of Chan/Zen Buddhism said, ’the place of awakening is where we abandon « Body and Life »’. This chapter is also the continuation of the Daoist thought of Zhuang Zi who advocated « having a mind like cold ashes ». It is not insignificant to notice that nowadays Wang Fengyi’s thought is conveyed also in a temple associated with a mountain considered to be a great Daoist center, the Wudang Mountain. This shows that beyond the cleaving into schools this thought beneficial to the health of body and mind did continue.

The Discourse on Transforming Inner Nature translated by Johan Hausen, an acupuncturist passionate for Chinese culture and having spent several years studying in China, completes the Twelve Characters purposefully. It will be especially appreciated that this translation, very elegant and remarkably right, is bilingual, and introduces not only the English and the Chinese characters, but also their pronunciation transcribed in the phonetic system named pinyin. This work can thus be a real learning manual of the basics of Chinese thought and its key concepts. It gives a concrete testimony on one hand of how Chinese medicine includes the different aspects of the individual within disease and on the other hand the role of the therapist, who, far from being content with only applying a medical technique, also plays the role of psychotherapist and advises the patient on his life choices and his behaviors. To the Westerner it sheds an interesting light on how to approach disease. Moreover it makes one ponder about the close links existing between the behavior of an individual, his/her environment and his/her disease. It invites one to take hold of one’s own destiny, and to take care of one’s health in simple and accessible ways.

Catherine Despeux
June, 2017

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Post-Scriptum: Discourse on Transforming Inner Nature is available on amazon.com and bookdepository.com

https://www.amazon.com/Discourse-Transforming-…/…/1974550613

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