If there is one topic in Vietnamese history that I think people today have the hardest time understanding it is the topic of “Confucianism.”
Why is that?
Well, it’s a long story, but we can start with the Japanese.
In the nineteenth century, some Japanese intellectuals tried to learn about Western societies and they discovered that the way Westerners organized their knowledge about the world was different from the way that Japanese and other peoples in Asia did.
Westerners had categories of things like “philosophy,” “religion,” “literature,” and “history” that did not have exact equivalents in Asian societies. This does not mean that there was no “philosophy” or “religion” in Asian societies. Instead, it is that these beliefs/practices were not conceptualized and “packaged” in the same way as they were in the West, and terms like “philosophy” and “religion” did not exist.
So, perhaps in part out of an effort to demonstrate that a place like Japan had knowledge that was equivalent to that in Western countries (or perhaps because they just found it interesting), in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Japanese intellectuals began to write books about subjects they had never conceived of before like “the history of Buddhism” and “the history of Chinese philosophy.”
Chinese scholars then did this as well, and finally Vietnamese scholars did so too. As such, you had Matsumoto Bunzaburō write his History of Chinese Philosophy (Shina tetsugaku shi 支那哲學史) in the late-nineteenth century, and then Xie Wuliang published a History of Chinese Philosophy (Zhongguo zhexue shi 中國哲學史) in 1916, and then came Hu Shi’s famous Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy (Zhongguo zhexue shi dagang 中國哲學史大綱) in 1919, and on and on to Feng Youlan’s 1934 History of Chinese Philosophy (Zhongguo zhexue shi 中國哲學史), and Trần Trọng Kim’s 儒教 Nho giáo: La doctrine des Lettrés published in three volumes in the 1930s and as a combined single-volume book in 1943.
The knowledge that was produced in the process has a lot of problems. First, it was “Westernized” in that it was presented a way that emulated how Westerners wrote about the same topics.
Second, in the case of Confucianism, a major distortion was created as it was categorized as a “philosophy” when there were many Confucian beliefs and practices that were clearly religious.
Third, these writings were elitist. They focused on the ideas and practices of the elite, not those of common people.
The writings on various topics by modern Western historians then relied heavily on these modern writings by Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese scholars.
So, by the middle of the twentieth century, it became common to find people saying that Confucianism was all about things like the “Five Relationships” or concepts like nhân/ren 仁 and nghĩa/yi 義. . . etc.
All of this is a distortion of reality.
One way to understand this is to think of food.
It’s a common phenomenon to see people set up restaurants in a foreign country and to change the way they make the food out of a belief that doing so will fit the tastes of the local people.
This is why in places outside of Japan you can find sushi with ingredients like mayonnaise and cream cheese. . .
I once heard Anthony Bourdain say something like “God doesn’t want mayonnaise on sushi!” Neither do Japanese, but Japanese food has been transformed to fit (what people perceive to be) non-Japanese tastes.
Let’s now say that someone wants to learn about Japanese food, and they do it by looking at the mayonnaise and cream cheese on sushi. . . That’s not going to work, because those ingredients are a distortion of the Japanese historical reality.
Now, the same thing applies to subjects like Confucianism. If you look at the way that it has commonly been written about since the twentieth century, you are not going to find it in the past, because the common way it has been written about in modern times is a distortion of the historical reality.
Confucianism encompasses a wide array of beliefs and practices that are held by people who believe in a power (or god) called Heaven, and who also believe that a group of ancient texts (the “Confucian classics”) contain the model for the proper ways to order society and to live.
Since the people who held these beliefs also held political power throughout much of East Asian history, they also developed a lot of ideas and practices over the centuries about how to structure and run a government, while still believing in the ultimate power of Heaven and in the wisdom found in the Confucian classics.
Finally, when Buddhism spread to East Asia, it presented certain challenges to the Confucian worldview. First, it didn’t always highlight the importance of filial piety, a core Confucian value, and ultimately Buddhism had to transform to make that one of its core values as well, as this belief was too strong to change.
On the other hand, the Buddhist idea of karmic causation (that the things you do, good or bad, later bring about consequences) was extremely powerful, so much so that Confucian scholars eventually appropriated it and made it part of the Confucian tradition.
One of the things that made this possible was the existence in the Classic of Changes (Yijing 易經), a text that predated the advent of Buddhism and which was important to both Daoists and Confucian scholars, a line that described the act of causation.
That line was the following: “Families who accumulate goodness will surely have an excess of occasions for celebration. Families who do not accumulate goodness will surely have an excess of calamities.” (積善之家，必有餘慶，積不善之家，必有餘殃。)
The key word here is “goodness” (thiện 善). This became a key concept in the promotion of the Confucian version of karmic causation. Further, this concept of goodness was used to encourage common people to behave morally, following the norms of Confucian morality.
In the process, there were many texts that were created that are collectively known as “thiện thư/shanshu” 善書. This term is usually translated into English as “morality books,” however, the literal meaning of this term is “goodness books.”
When Matsumoto Bunzaburō, Xie Wuliang, Hu Shi, Feng Youlan, and Trần Trọng Kim wrote their modern works on Confucianism, they didn’t talk about goodness or goodness books because this was the Confucianism of the common people, and they focused on the ideas of the elite and talked about things like like nhân/ren 仁 and nghĩa/yi 義.
If you look through historical sources for things like nhân/ren 仁 and nghĩa/yi 義. . . yea, you can find those terms here and there. However, not really in the ways that they were presented in the twentieth century, because as I said, that was a kind of modern/Westernized/manufactured version of Confucianism, a “mayonnaise and cream cheese” version of Confucianism.
Meanwhile, if you look for “goodness,” you won’t find it mentioned much in elite texts, but if you look at texts that were meant for a common audience or which relate more to the world of common people, then you will find many examples of it.
I was recently looking at a stone inscription from 1582 called the Granting Alms of Faith to Pháp Vân Temple Inscription (Tín thí Pháp Vân tự bi 信施法雲寺碑; 05261).
It was written by Student of Refined Writing of the Secretariate Supervisor (Trung thư giam Hòa văn học sinh 中書監華文學生) Nguyễn Đức Thông 阮德聰, a title that suggests to me that this was a scribe who worked for a government official.
The purpose of the inscription was to document the donation of money and land to Pháp Vân Temple by a certain Nguyễn Thị Lũy 阮氏壘.
This is how the inscription begins.
夫福善者，乃天至公之道，好善者，斯人秉彝之性，人能行善，則天心以福報應，理之自然，無毫髮爽，故經云積善之家，必有餘慶，良有以也。
Goodness that brings blessings [phúc thiện 福善] is Heaven’s way/law of impartiality. Being fond of goodness [hiếu thiện 好善] is the character of those who uphold the constant [moral] norms. For those who are able to carry out goodness [hành thiện 行善], Heaven will recompense them [báo ứng 報應] with blessings [phúc 福] as a natural matter of course, without even the slightest error. Thus, the Classic [of Changes] states “Families who accumulate goodness will surely have an excess of occasions for celebration.” That is indeed the case.
今順安府嘉林縣朱橋社阮氏壘號慈在，斅善心，損家美財田土信施與法雲寺佛，其所以做善緣培福基，種福根浚福源，至深至廣，諒知其天道感應福善之報，悠久延長，曷有窮也。
Nguyễn Thị Lũy of Chu Kiều Village, Gia Lâm District, Thuận An Prefecture, embodies a heart of goodness [thiện tâm 善心], and has offered some of the family’s wealth and land as alms of faith to the Pháp Vân Temple and Buddha*. With the karma [thiện duyên 善緣] she has made, the foundation for blessings [phúc cơ 福基] she has developed, the roots of blessings [phúc căn 福根] she has planted, the sources of blessings [phúc nguyên 福源] she has dredged, ever deeper and ever more broadly, you can know that the resonance [cảm ứng 感應] of Heaven’s way and the recompense of blessings and goodness will long endure seemingly without end.
[“Temple and Buddha” (tự Phật 寺佛) sounds strange to me. I wonder if these two characters are reversed and it should be “Buddhist temple” (Phật tự 佛寺).]
This is Confucianism. Notice how the main power referenced here is Heaven. Notice how it cites that famous line from the Classic of Changes.
Notice also that there is no mention of the types of things that have commonly been talked about in modern times in reference to Confucianism. There is no mention here of the “Five Relationships” or nhân/ren 仁 and nghĩa/yi 義, etc.
Instead, it is all about goodness (thiện 善), and the blessings (phúc 福) that carrying out goodness could bring. Such behavior could bring blessings because it resonated (cảm ứng 感應) with Heaven, or more literally, Heaven would “feel and respond” to such behavior.
These are all key concepts in popular Confucianism, and they became so widespread that they essentially came to constitute what we can call East Asian “popular culture.”
What constituted goodness? That is not explained here, but if you look at works of popular Confucianism that give examples of people who “carried out goodness,” it is precisely Confucian values like filial piety that are highlighted and emphasized.
Also, goodness was particularly used when talking about karmic causation. That is what this passage is about, however, the only term here that is clearly Buddhist is the one that I have translated as “karma,” and that is “thiện duyên” 善緣, which also has the term for “goodness” (thiện善) in it.
As such, there was some overlap in the ways in which Confucian scholars and Buddhists communicated, but this passage here, with its references to Heaven and that extremely famous line from the Classic of Changes, is clearly Confucian, or more specifically, it is the Buddhist idea of karmic causation as it was appropriated by Confucianism.
Further, it is important to point out here that this is not an example of “mixing.” Mixing only works when the parts are relatively equal. Confucianism and Buddhism were not equal. There was a hierarchy, and Confucianism was at the top of that hierarchy because it was the ideology of those who held power, and it legitimated that power.
This made it possible for a Confucian scribe to place his views in the space of a Buddhist temple.
As this inscription makes clear, goodness was a very important concept. However, I haven’t seen any articles or books on goodness in Vietnamese history (other than this great recent article by Cuong Mai).
Why is that?
Again, it is partly because modern scholars created a Westernized/elitist/distorted picture of what they labelled the “philosophy” of Confucianism. What they wrote made it difficult for people to understand what was written in an inscription like this one.
Additionally, there have simply been too few people who can read (and who have read) inscriptions and the many other sources that exist that are in classical Chinese. However, for anyone who can read those sources, it becomes quickly obvious that they contain a lot of goodness.
This is because premodern Vietnam was Confucian. All you need to do is to look for the goodness, and not the mayonnaise and cream cheese, to understand that.
