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Who is Zhu Xi
 ?
Zhu Xi (¦¶¿Q, Hanyu Pinyin: Zhū Xī, Wade-Giles: Chu Hsi) (1130 -
1200) in China was a Confucian and one of most significant
Neo-Confucians. He taught at the famous White Deer Grotto Academy
for some time. Considered unorthodox in their time, the Song
Dynasty (960-1279), he and his fellow scholars added additional
classic books: the Four Books, the Great Learning, and the
Doctrine of Mean. Their writings were not widely recognised in Zhu
Xi's time; however they subsequently became accepted as standard
commentaries on the Confucian classics. He was ranked the 45th
Most Important Person in the last millennium by the Life magazine.
This article is on the exploration of Zhu Xi¡¦s (1130¡V1200)
discussion of ghosts and spirits (guishen ).
Zhu Xi used the term guishen (conventionally glossed as ghosts and
spirits) to refer to a wide range of mysterious and subtle things
and events. For instance, he remarked:
Rain, wind, dew, and thunder, the
sun, the moon, day, and night¡Xall these are ¡¥¡¥traces¡¦¡¦ of guishen.
These are the fair, even, correct, and straight guishen of the
bright day. For example, what are called ¡¥¡¥ghosts howling from the
house beams and striking people¡¦s chests¡¦¡¦ refer to those guishen
that are incorrect, wicked, and dark, ¡¥¡¥sometimes existing and
sometimes not,¡¦¡¦ ¡¥¡¥sometimes going and sometimes coming,¡¦¡¦ and
¡¥¡¥sometimes aggregating and sometimes dispersing.¡¦¡¦ There are also
sayings that offering a prayer to them, it is responded to, and
addressing a wish to them, it is obtained. And all of these are
the same li [conventionally glossed as principle, pattern, or
coherence]. The myriad things and events in the world are all this
li; there only are differences of being exquisite or coarse, and
small or large.
Thus, in the first sense, guishen
refers to the natural function and operation of all things in the
universe. Utilizing the notion of correct and proper guishen, Zhu
Xi pointed to nature¡¦s spontaneous, but still mysterious,
operations, such as the regularity or constancy of the seasons and
the growth cycle of plants. This sense of guishen as contractive
and expansive forces in all phenomena is what most studies of Zhu
Xi¡¦s statements on guishen have discussed, because the focus in
mainstream scholarship has been his philosophical system.
Guishen Are Paranormal Phenomena?
In the second and more restricted sense, Zhu Xi used guishen to
refer to markedly mysterious and particularly unfathomable
phenomena, such as ¡¥¡¥ghost whistles
and ghost fires.¡¦¡¦ He discussed such ghosts and monsters not only
because some passages in the classics had mentioned them but also
because he was willing to
concede that the testimony of later people about ghosts could be
accepted as partially true. On several occasions he specifically
addressed the case of Boyou
(d. 534 B.C.E.) and endorsed Zichan¡¦s 
(581¡V521 B.C.E.) interpretation, which is widely regarded as the
locus classicus of orthodox Confucian views of a deceased
person¡¦s spirit.9 The nobleman Boyou took revenge on his murderers
for depriving him not only of his life but also of his hereditary
office and thus depriving his spirit
of sacrificial offerings. To satisfy this ¡¥¡¥hungry ghost¡¦¡¦ so that
it would disappear, the wise statesman Zichan placed Boyou¡¦s son
in the father¡¦s former office. Synthesizing
the North China notion of the human spirit as p'o
and the South China notion of the human spirit as hun
 ,
Zichan explained:
When man is born, that which is first
created is called the p'o, and, when the p'o has been formed, its
positive part (yang  )
becomes hun or conscious spirit. In case a man is materially well
and abundantly supported, then his hun and p'o grow very strong,
and therefore produce spirituality and intelligence. Even the hun
and p'o of an ordinary man or woman, having encountered violent
death, can attach themselves to other people to cause
extraordinary troubles. . . . The stuff Boyou was made of was
copious and rich, and his family great and powerful. Is it not
natural that, having met with a violent death, he should be able
to become a ghost?
As long as the qi of such persons did
not disperse, it could produce strange effects: ¡¥¡¥Monstrous and
evil ghosts are often those from undispersed qi after death;
therefore,
the qi is pent-up and congealed to form the monstrous and evil.¡¦¡¦
In some cases, such evil effects could be destroyed through
firecrackers, which helped to disperse the qi. Although most cases
of residual qi becoming ghosts arose from either being killed or
committing suicide, Zhu Xi also said that an individual could have
such flourishing qi that it was not dispersed even upon a normal
death.15 Similarly, based on the Zuozhuan
 ,
he accepted the story that one person possessed such loyalty that,
upon death, his qi became an emerald.16 Moreover, Zhu Xi conceded
that spirit mediums (wu
 ,
often classed as shamans) and cult worship were not without
efficacy in dealing with ghosts because the qi in people¡¦s minds
activated and interacted with ghosts and spirits. In other words,
¡¥¡¥there is a resonance between similar qi, and thus the spirit
attaches itself to these people.¡¦¡¦
As evident in such examples, even though Zhu Xi accepted the
existence of ghosts, he sought to provide a rational explanation
within his philosophical system by discussing strange ghosts in
terms of qi, especially ¡¥¡¥incorrect or abnormal¡¦¡¦ (buzheng )
qi. Still, he rarely rejected strange things and events¡Xif
reportedly seen by people. For instance, he responded to one
disciple¡¦s skepticism about strange phenomena with the retort:
¡¥¡¥It is merely that you have never seen them.¡¦¡¦ Zhu Xi¡¦s
receptivity to stories of ghosts and strange phenomena show that
he was clearly influenced by traditional notions and the cultural
environment in Fujian, especially in his base area near Wuyishan
 .
Fujian was among the areas where belief in spirits and lore about
strange phenomena were particularly strong. Although he quoted and
approved of skeptical statements from the classics, such as ¡¥¡¥keep
ghosts and spirits at a distance,¡¦¡¦ Zhu certainly found it more
difficult than classical Confucians to remain aloof from
discussions of ghosts. After all, he was deliberately competing
with Buddhists, Taoists, and spirit mediums not only for what he
regarded as proper social customs but also for people¡¦s hearts and
minds. His philosophy of li and qi provided him a basis for
rejecting ¡¥¡¥superstitious¡¦¡¦ beliefs about strange phenomena. For
instance, by arguing that especially violent deaths produced
ghosts, he was denying the Buddhist notion that the rebirth of the
dead person¡¦s soul was routine or the norm. Moreover, by demanding
that cults be judged by the morals they encouraged among
believers, he could advocate the suppression of what he condemned
as cults worshiping improper ghosts and spirits in heterodox
temples.
Scenic pictures of Wu Yi Shan
 
 
 
Guishen Are Those Who Receive Offered Prayers And Sacrifices?
In the third sense mentioned above by Zhu Xi, guishen referred to
that to which one traditionally offered prayers and sacrifices (
jisi
 ) and from which responses came. Ancestral spirits and their
responses to sacrificial offerings had for centuries remained
crucial to Confucians and their family-centered values, including
filial piety. For instance, according to the Book of Rites (Liji
 ), ¡¥¡¥The breath hun (hunqi
 ) returns to Tian above; the bodily
p'o
returns to earth below. Therefore, in sacrificial offering one
should seek the meaning in the yin-yang
 principle.¡¦¡¦ As
Ying-shih Yu¡¦s study documents, it became widely accepted by Han
times that the hun belonged to the proactive, upwardly oriented
yang, and that the p'o belonged to the more receptive,
earth-oriented yin. Therefore, upon the body¡¦s death, the lighter
hun rose quickly toward the heavens, while the heavier bodily p'o
sank slowly into the earth. Hence, in the fu ritual, ancient
Chinese beseeched the hun of recently deceased family members to
return, but never the p'o. The dualistic conception with the hun
rising heavenward and the p'o sinking into the earth also related
to ancient Chinese assumptions about a heavenly court or world
above and an underworld below, which was early referred to as the
¡¥¡¥Yellow Springs¡¦¡¦ (huang quan
 ). It was further believed that a
dead person¡¦s ghost (gui
 ) required food presented in sacrificial
offerings; moreover, since descendants were of the same qi as the
deceased, it was crucial that the sacrificial offerings be made by
descendants. If such offerings were not received, the ghost not
only could seek revenge or retribution as a ¡¥¡¥hungry ghost¡¦¡¦ but
also be unable to serve as a medium for auspicious qi.
Since such spirits could not survive indefinitely and depended on
materialistic factors, the preservation of the corpse became a
high priority in burials. Furthermore, as the notion of immortals
(xian
 )
became popular during the Han era, it was believed that some
individuals could harness heavenly qi to transform their body and
gain longevity. As these immortals were assumed to ascend
eventually to Tian above, there was a need for a new destination
for the hun of ordinary mortals. The abode for hun became
associated with Liangfu
 ,
a small hill near the sacred Mt. Tai
in Shandong, so this site then became the capital of the governor
of the dead, that is, their hun spirits. This hill had earlier
been the spot where sacrifices were made to the supreme earthy
deity (dizhu
 ),
who was transformed into the lord of the underworld (dixiazhu
 ).
The abode for p'o became associated with a place at the foot of the
Liangfu hill and fell under a separate jurisdiction of underworld
government in a court of ghosts, imagined often as in the ancient
Yellow Springs. Zheng Xuan (127¡V200) surely articulated a
long-standing conception when he said that the hun and its qi was
the basis of man¡¦s spirit and intelligence, while the p'o
functioned in hearing and seeing. The Han Confucian text, the
¡¥¡¥Meaning of Sacrifice¡¦¡¦ ( Jiyi
),
succinctly summarized these diverse notions: ¡¥¡¥[After death] the
name of hun in life is changed to shen and that of p'o to gui.¡¦¡¦
Zhu Xi¡¦s statements reveal his allegiance to major aspects of
these traditional views. As the Book of Rites had done, he
presented the hun as rising heavenward, but the p'o as descending
earthward to dissipate. It is important to note that Zhu
apparently set aside the Han development of the concept of the hun
departing to the realm of Liangfu; thus, Tian above was his single
focal point for contact with the spirits. He also approved of
Zichan¡¦s saying that the p'o was prior to the hun. Reflecting Zheng
Xuan¡¦s influence, Zhu further associated the p'o with the body¡¦s
clarity of seeing and hearing, but the hun with the qi or breath
within the throat.
 
Offerings are burning wild,
spiritual energy is flowing high. Two buckets side by side and the
street is getting quiet.
 
No human pass by. Ghosts come to
feast, eating like us although they died
Guishen Are Also Those Of Ancestral Spirits?
The third sense of guishen centered on (but was not restricted to)
the spirits of deceased ancestors, so it is not at all surprising
that guishen in this sense was what Zhu Xi most often addressed in
his discussions with students. For instance, a person¡¦s hun could
linger, or hover around, and be contacted by his descendants
during the sacrificial rites to the ancestor. As Zhu assured his
audience, ¡¥¡¥Today, when people offer sacrifices with sincerity,
their ancestors will also descend.¡¦¡¦ Here, the general principle
of resonance within the realm of vital qi was enhanced because of
the specific biological relationship and special affinity between
blood relatives, particularly on the patrilineal side. Addressing
inquiries about the existence of ancestral spirits and the
importance of shared qi, Zhu remarked:
In the end the descendants are of the
same qi as the ancestors, so even though the ancestors¡¦ qi may
have dispersed, their roots nonetheless exist right here. By fully
exercising sincerity and reverence we are able to summon their qi
so that it coalesces right here.
The word ¡¥¡¥roots¡¦¡¦ (gen) might be
glossed here as the ¡¥¡¥bloodline¡¦¡¦ of the ancestors because
ancestors and descendants had the same qi passed from fathers to
sons
through the generations.
As implicit in Zhu Xi¡¦s statement, an important issue for
discussion with his students was: since a deceased person¡¦s qi
dispersed, how could descendants reach the ancestors through the
sacrificial service? The answer centered on the particular qi that
descendants shared with the ancestors. For example, he reasoned:
When a man dies, although his qi
eventually returns to [the state of] dispersion, there also is
[some part that is] not dispersed or exhausted. Therefore, the
sacrificial service has the li of reaching and moving [the
ancestor]. Whether the qi of an ancestor of a generation far
removed [still] exists or not, it is not possible to know. But
since the person who offers the sacrificial service is his
descendant, [their qi] must be the same qi, and therefore there is
the li of stimulating and penetrating [the ancestor].
The particular qi inherited from
ancestors was so crucial that Zhu reasoned that ¡¥¡¥The ancestor¡¦s
qi exists only when the descendant¡¦s qi exists; however, when it
is not the
time of sacrificial service, how can it be aggregated?¡¦¡¦
Zhu Xi insisted that only a proper patrilineal descendant could
evoke the ancestor¡¦s spirit; this pronouncement was in line with
traditional warnings (e.g., in Analects 2/24) that it was vain and
useless to sacrifice to someone else¡¦s ancestor. For instance, Zhu
gave his philosophical basis to support a claim in the Zuozhuan:
¡¥¡¥The reason ¡¥spirits do not enjoy the offerings of those not
their kindred and people do not sacrifice to those not their
ancestry¡¦ is simply that their qi is not related.¡¦¡¦
 
Come eat lah eat lah .. all are
offered for you .. come munch on your favorite candles while they
are burning hot ..
Zhu Xi's Views On Burial
Selecting an improper burial site, Zhu Xi believed, would subject
the corpse to depleting underground winds that would lead to the
financial ruin of the descendants. For instance, in an 1194
memorial, his protest against the selected grave site for Xiaozong
(reigned 1163¡V1189) included the following rationale:
If the body is whole, the spirit
consciousness (shenling ) will attain peace, then the descendants
will flourish and the sacrifices will not be cut off. This is a
principle of how things spontaneously happen (ziran zhi li ). . .
. Should the selection be defective, making the spot inauspicious,
then there will surely be water, ants, and ground wind that will
damage the contents and cause the body and spirit to be
uncomfortable. And descendants will also have worries about death
and extinction [of the descent line], which are very scary.
Still, in line with the traditional
Confucian idea that the crucial consideration was the impact of
the sacrificial rites on those performing the rites, Zhu insisted
that the mind of the descendant be sincere (cheng ) and reverent (jing
) so that contact could be made with the ancestors¡¦ dispersed qi
and they could be called back to respond to the sacrificial
offerings: ¡¥¡¥If one exhausts one¡¦s sincerity and reverence in the
rites of sacrificial offerings, one can reach the guishen of the
ancestors.¡¦¡¦ He also said: ¡¥¡¥If this sincere mind reaches and
moves, how can the other¡¦s [i.e., the ancestor¡¦s] qi, which is not
completely exhausted or dispersed, not come to receive the food
offering?¡¦¡¦ The emphasis in such passages on being sincere and
reverent should not, however, obscure the fact that Zhu Xi
encouraged the expectation that sacrificial offerings presented
with utmost sincerity would indeed evoke a positive response from
the ancestor¡¦s spirit.
There is considerable evidence that Zhu Xi and his students
wrestled with the justification for offering sacrifices to those
who did not belong to one¡¦s patrilineal line of qi. Because of his
insistence on the particularly shared qi passed down through the
patrilineal line, it is not surprising that one of his students
raised the question of how to justify participation in sacrificial
services to one¡¦s deceased wife and/or her ancestors. Since one
had not inherited that particular qi and ¡¥¡¥mental spirit¡¦¡¦ (jingshen
), how could one reach one¡¦s wife¡¦s ancestors? The student even
proposed a solution that would sidestep the apparent contradiction
with Zhu Xi¡¦s requirement of directly related qi. The student
suggested that instead of qi, such contact was based on the
sincerity in one¡¦s heart-and-mind (xin ). However, rejecting this
easy resolution, Zhu evoked the philosophical principle of the
original oneness or universality of qi to justify the customary
practice of joining in sacrificial services to one¡¦s deceased wife
and her ancestors:
But that to which sacrifice is made
is their jingshen, hun and p'o, and none of these are not
penetrated. It is probably because [their qi] originally flowed
out from one source, and in the beginning there were no separate
divisions; this is also the same even for the guishen of Tien and
earth, mountains and rivers.
Such a glaring exception to Zhu Xi¡¦s
insistence on particular qi linking descendants and ancestors at
the sacrificial service provides another example of the primacy of
practical considerations over abstract principles. Nonetheless,
despite the importance of justifying participation in services for
one¡¦s wife¡¦s ancestors, the universality of one qi would seemingly
undermine Zhu Xi¡¦s grounds for objecting to Buddhist and Taoist
sacrificial services for those outside one¡¦s own lineage.
 
Lots and lots of joss sticks for
worship
 
It is a common act in burning
offerings in the Chinese communities
Spirits of Tien, Earth, Mountains, and Rivers
The passage above also draws a parallel between services for a
wife¡¦s ancestors and sacrifices to the spirits of Tien, earth,
mountains, and rivers. On another occasion, Zhu went so far as to
say that one could reach rain spirits and Buddhist deities because
they occupied particularly numinous qi sites in mountains and
along rivers:
Like praying for rain, one also acts
on them [i.e., the spirits in charge of rain] with one¡¦s
sincerity. Similarly in praying to spirits and buddhas, it is also
that the qi of the mountains and rivers where they reside can be
acted on. The places where spirits and buddhas now reside are all
the triumphant and numinous points of the rivers and mountains.
The parallels above that Zhu Xi drew
to sacrifices to spirits of Tian, earth, mountains, and rivers
prompts us to explore briefly his statements about such spirits.
Sacrifices to these spirits were similar to prayers that he made
to the spirits for rain: as with sacrificial prayers to ancestor¡¦s
spirits, one sought a response, so all of these spirits are
related to Zhu Xi¡¦s third category of guishen. He believed that
when such spirits were joyous, they responded favorably to prayers
and sacrificial offerings. For instance, in explaining the claim
in Mencius 5A/5 that the numerous spirits joyfully received Yao¡¦s
sacrificial offerings, he likened this case to ¡¥¡¥praying for clear
weather producing clear weather, and praying for rain producing
rain.¡¦¡¦ Some of Zhu Xi¡¦s invocations to the spirits of the land
and prayers for rain have been preserved in his collected
writings. Unlike some officials, he expressed no reluctance or
skepticism concerning performing these ritual prayers for rain.
Moreover, he claimed that he expended all of his sincerity when he
prayed for rain. Of course, prayers for rain were part of his
duties as a local official. Rather than minimizing the relevance
of these prayers, his official status while making the prayers is
particularly germane to our inquiry.
One¡¦s status and relationship to the spirits of the natural world
was apparently a crucial consideration for Zhu Xi, for there were
rules about who could rightfully offer sacrifices to great natural
objects and phenomena. Referring to classical dicta, he said:
¡¥¡¥The Tianzi [conventional
appellation for the ¡¥¡¥Son of Heaven,¡¦¡¦ i.e., the emperor] offers
sacrifices to Tian above and earth below; the heads of the various
states offer sacrifices to mountains and rivers; and high
officials offer sacrifices to the five domestic spirits.¡¦¡¦ All
these are [examples of the case of] one¡¦s mental spirit
appropriately reaching them [i.e., the spirits to whom one offers
sacrifices] and thus being able to stimulate and call them to
come. If the heads of the various states offer sacrifices to Tian
above and the earth below, or if high officials offer sacrifices
to mountains and rivers, then it is meaningless."
Hence, one¡¦s ability to reach such
spirits depended on one¡¦s relationship to them, a relationship
that was grounded in one¡¦s official status. Zhu Xi even discussed
classical rules relating official status and sacrifices relating
to the issue of the inappropriateness of offering sacrifices to
non-ancestors:
Guishen are essentially existent
entities. Ancestors are also only of one qi with these
[descendants here], and there is an inclusive or whole set [of the
family]. When the descendants are physically present here, the
ancestor¡¦s qi is also here, and they have a penetrating
consanguinity (xuemai ). Therefore, the reason ¡¥¡¥spirits do not
enjoy the offerings of those not their kindred and people do not
sacrifice to those not their ancestry¡¦¡¦ is simply that their qi is
not related. In the case of ¡¥¡¥the Son of Tian offers sacrifices to
Tian above and earth below; the heads of the various states offer
sacrifices to mountains and rivers; and high officials offer
sacrifices to the five domestic spirits¡¦¡¦¡Xeven though these are
not one¡¦s patrilineal ancestors¡Xthe emperor is the hosting lord (zhu
) of Tian above and earth below, and the heads of the various
states are the lords of the mountains and rivers, and the high
officials are the lords of the five domestic sacrifices. When
one¡¦s hosting reaches the other [i.e., the spirits of the
ancestors], then their qi also all aggregates summarily on one¡¦s
own body; when it happens like this, there is a locus of
interaction.
1. Small scale burning; 2. Large
scale burning; 3 & 4. All the hell guards, ox head horse face at
disposal to maintain order
  
1. Large paper figurine of King of
Hades; 2. A Taoist priest was initiating ("Open Light") for the King
of Hades;
3. Gee, can you see what that entity flied pass? 3. Another Hell deity
carrying flags of commands;
4. Treasure boxes and luxury cars to be burnt for offerings to the
dead
Conclusion
The present study has queried apparent tensions within some of Zhu
Xi¡¦s statements about guishen. On the one hand, he reinforced
classical pronouncements against
offering sacrifices to other people¡¦s ancestors by elaborating on
the necessity of the particular qi that descendants inherited from
ancestors. On the other hand, when
asked to justify participation in sacrificial services for one¡¦s
deceased wife or her ancestors, he called upon the universality or
ultimate oneness of all qi as the grounds
for effectually reaching and moving these spirits. This statement,
citing the oneness of all qi, might encourage us to conclude that
his endorsement of sacrifices to the
sages meant that he was opening up the tradition in such a way as
to provide access philosophically for everyone to the sages.
Indeed, his boldness in setting up shrines
and offering sacrifices to sages and worthies¡Xparticularly
Confucius¡Xwas a challenge to the state-controlled cult of
Confucius centered in the Temple of Confucius.
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