Word: confucianism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...techniques outweighs all other considerations, the attention you paid to the Vietnamese traditions and culture as some of the factors upon which either the shortening or the lengthening of this conflict rests, demands my respect. If I am correct, in your lectures you mentioned that the Vietnamese, being mostly Confucians, usually behave according to the Confucian ethics. That is to say they seldom remain neutral in a conflict in which one side to the struggle turns out to be the decisive victor, since the victor is also the carrier of the "Mandate of Heaven...
...think that Confucianism in Vietnam is as different from its Chinese counterpart as the Vietnamese themselves from the Chinese. In Vietnam, people operate less on Confucian doctrines as such than on Vietnamese principles. It is not the winning side in a struggle that usually carries the Mandate of Heaven, but rather the side which carries out the traditions or behaves according to the principles of the country. Vietnamese history is full or examples illustrating this point. And the present conflict is but only another of such examples...
These comforting paradoxes provided mental escape for the Chinese in times of stress. Thanks to the unique Chinese gift for blending all manner of faiths, Taoism managed to coexist with Confucianism over the centuries. A Chinese in power, it has been said, is a Confucian: out of power, he is a Taoist, and when about to die, a Buddhist. China absorbed Buddhism, too; in China, somehow, the evanescent idea of nirvana became transmuted into a far earthier notion...
...China, anything resembling nationhood was understood only in terms of a kind of superfamily, with the Emperor as the patriarch. Ultimately, in the Confucian view, all government was based on virtue. So long as the head of the great Chinese family was virtuous, all was well with the land; but if the country fared ill, it must be because the Emperor had fallen into evil ways and the "mandate of heaven" had been withdrawn. That was the traditional rationale for the periodic rebellions that brought down every Chinese dynasty. Mencius, a revered follower of Confucius, proclaimed the people...
...distaste for force in the Confucian order is profound, one indication being the low social status of the soldier. Men who know how to employ ruse, the traditional weapon of the weak against the strong, are particularly admired. A famous Chinese story describes how a poet wrote a novel considered dangerous by the Emperor and was summoned to court to be punished; he bribed the boatman to travel as slowly as possible, and by the time he arrived, he had written a new novel so fantastic that the Emperor decided he must be insane and spared his life. To many...