JCS: What does contemplation look like in Confucianism?
BS: First, it’s important to note that the term Confucianism was popularized by nineteenth-century Christian missionaries during Western colonial expansion. In its original language, this tradition has long been called the Ru (儒) tradition. Naming it after Confucius was similar to labeling Islam Muhammadism—a way of categorizing non-Christian traditions through a Christian lens, whether for study or conversion. Interestingly, unlike the Muslim world’s rejection of Muhammadism, this naming did not provoke strong resistance among Ru scholars. One reason is that Ru scholars historically placed little emphasis on affiliation with any single figure, deity, or sacred site. For them, these were secondary.
At its core, being a Ru means becoming a civilized human being. While “human” can be defined biologically, morally, or culturally, the Ru tradition prioritizes moral and civilizational self-cultivation. I mention “civilizational” because valuing education and cultural development distinguishes Ruism from another ancient Chinese spiritual tradition, Daoism (or Taoism), which seems better known in the West through the popular text Dao De Jing (the Classic of the Way and Virtue) and through its perceived features of naturalism and individualism. For Ruism (or Confucianism), being human means adding unique values to the non-human natural world and expressing transcendent ideals in a distinctly human way. In other words, being a Ru means learning rituals, knowledge, and virtues for a good life. In this sense, Ru identity is more a spiritual orientation and way of life than a formal institution. Because of this orientation, the misnaming didn’t generate strong backlash; there seemed to be no great need for a counter-movement.
Contemplation in the Ru tradition is best understood as a state of heightened attention grounded in reverence. It means focusing your energy and aligning your consciousness with a guiding principle in order to gain insight into reality and engage with it.
What does heightened attention involve? It requires integrating all dimensions of the self, including understandings, feelings, emotions, actions, and more. This is traditionally described as sincerity or authenticity (cheng). You study ethical and metaphysical teachings, practice them, and cultivate a unified way of living. This coherence is what Ru thinkers mean by heightened attention.
And what about insights? As we see in Buddhism’s emphasis on mindfulness, many traditions seek direct, unclouded awareness of reality. Ruists (or Confucians) also aim for this: accessing reality free from prejudice and partiality. However, each tradition defines reality in its own way.
JCS: I’m curious about this idea of what reality is. And to go back to your first point: I hear you going back and forth between talking about Confucianism and the Ru tradition. Which is the preferred use in your opinion? Would you prefer the Ru tradition because that follows more the traditional ways of naming itself?
BS: I prefer the term Ru tradition or Ruism. While Confucianism is widely used by scholars and works fine in general discussions, it’s important to recognize the history behind the name. Ideally, Ru should remain untranslated, much like Christ or Zen. A Ru refers to a civilized, well-educated person. Translating Ruism as a “civilizational tradition” feels unnecessarily cumbersome. It’s fine for Ru scholars to accept the common use of Confucianism, but at some point, we should explain what Ru means and let readers decide which term they prefer.
JCS: I appreciate the response within the Ru tradition—that there is a reflexivity about what is the right way to respond to and reach out to a broad audience—meeting people where they are.
BS: It is very difficult for the Ru tradition to reach a broad audience, both for historical and philosophical reasons. Historically, Ruism was the dominant tradition across East Asia, especially in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. Before the modern era, these societies were all shaped by Ruist structures, which provided a robust foundation for pre-modern imperial East Asia.
In the modern era, however, the tradition experienced a dramatic decline, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when these East Asian countries bore the full impact of Western colonialism. Philosophically, it is also challenging because we must define many fundamental categories, such as “metaphysical,” “spiritual,” and “religious.” This is never simple in comparative studies of philosophy and religion, and for the Ru tradition, there is an added layer of complexity.
Sociologically, there was never a monastic tradition—no monks, nuns, or religious professionals. All of these roles were quite foreign to Ruism. Instead, the tradition centered on scholar-officials who passed civil service examinations and became the social and political elite. Their daily lives revolved around governance, scholarship, publishing, and teaching. If they did not have official positions, they dedicated themselves to education—often organizing local academies to teach students—or to managing family business enterprises. This was the sociological foundation of the tradition.
One distinctive feature of Ruism is that institutionally, there are almost no examples of esoteric transmission of spirituality. In my study of the tradition, it is rare to find any claim that certain teachings are reserved for specific individuals or relationships and thus isolatable from the public. For this reason, the absence of institutionalized mysticism or occultism is also a striking characteristic.
However, if we define esotericism as experiential rather than institutional, the Ru tradition is actually very rich. Confucius in Analects 17.19 once said that when you feel united with reality and the universal principle, it is beyond human language—it cannot be fully described. This dimension of contemplative practice is ineffable. Yet this experience and the relationship with the transcendent are expressed in distinctive ways, integrated with ritual, language, and education.
The Ru tradition after Confucius follows the original teaching that to truly access the mystical dimension of reality, you must remain grounded. You must engage in ordinary, everyday activities—caring for your spouse, your children, and your colleagues. This is not a distraction from spiritual cultivation but a reinforcement of it. In Ruist terms, the way to become an exemplary human (junzi) is through the path of the ordinary. You achieve enlightened spirituality precisely by living a normal life and realizing the supreme within it.
JCS: Can you talk more about Ru authors and thinkers, and how they are in conversation with each other? How they are changing the landscape of contemplation in the Ru tradition along this line of connecting that oneness with normal, ordinary experience.
You achieve enlightened spirituality precisely by living a normal life and realizing the supreme within it.
BS: In this regard, I have to mention Cheng Yi (1033–1107), the founding Ruist thinker who led the revival of Ruism in the second millennium of East Asian history. I wrote an article about his contemplative practices for JCS in 2023.
There is a robust and consistent discourse of self-cultivation and contemplation in the Ru tradition, which largely falls into two major stages. The first stage, the classical period of Confucius, spans roughly from the sixth century BCE to the second or third century CE—about 800 or 900 years. The second stage begins with the time of Cheng Yi, around the ninth to eleventh centuries, and continues into the modern period: in China and Japan until about the nineteenth century, and in Vietnam and Korea even later.
During this second stage, which lasted almost a millennium, approaches to contemplation became extremely diverse. My current scholarship focuses on the formative period, from Zhou Dunyi (1017–1073), through the Cheng brothers, Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi, to Zhu Xi (1130–1200).
JCS: So why is Cheng Yi so important for understanding Ruist contemplation?
BS: Cheng Yi laid the foundation for systematically responding to core Buddhist teachings. For him, a contemplative life required both theoretical and practical dimensions. The theoretical side established its metaphysical basis, and to that end he developed a nuanced philosophical system centered on the concept of pattern-principles (li).
In Mahayana Buddhism, life itself generally is regarded as empty; no entity possesses inherent selfhood. Consequently, Buddhist mindfulness practice aims to cultivate a similar emptiness in consciousness. This is why, in Chan Buddhism, so influential in Cheng Yi’s time, practitioners emphasize no-thought thinking: when thoughts arise and pass away, you simply observe their coming and going without attaching reifying judgments.
By contrast, in the Ru tradition the nature of reality is not empty. Each entity has its own unique pattern-principle that organizes its inner components into a more or less coherent whole, which then interacts dynamically with other entities in the cosmos. In this way, Cheng Yi developed a distinctive metaphysical language to counter the Buddhist idea of no-self.
On the practical side, Chan Buddhism’s commitment to emptiness blurs the distinction between perceptions shaped by language and the realities themselves. So even simple activities, such as carrying a water jug or plowing a field, can be paths to satori or enlightenment. Although this is not an escapist attitude, Cheng Yi believed Buddhist mindfulness lacked robust ethical guidance for addressing human affairs in concrete terms.
Ruism, by contrast, focuses on reverence—a deep respect for pattern-principles that show how natural and human realities fit together in dynamic, harmonious ways, including those principles shaped by human efforts to build a humane society.
For this reason, Ruist scholars do not see self-defeating emotions as stemming from an illusory understanding of reality. The language of illusion is largely foreign to the tradition. Cheng Yi argued that inappropriate emotions arise from a failure to persist in learning and revering the solid underlying principles of reality; he consistently advocated a kind of moral realism.
Because reverence is central to Ruist contemplative life, Cheng Yi recommended various practices to nurture this attitude: participating in ritual ceremonies, observing the vitality of nature, meditative sleep, reflecting on dreams, and more. He also discussed quiet sitting, the most prominent form of meditation in many lineages of Buddhism. But for Cheng Yi, quiet sitting was not central; it was simply one practice among many that cultivate reverence.
JCS: So compared to quiet sitting, the practice of reverence is more important.
BS: Yes, exactly.
JCS: So Cheng Yi in some sense reverses the approach taken by Chan Buddhism?
BS: Although not all branches or masters of Chan or Zen Buddhism treat quiet sitting as the core of contemplative practice, it is a fundamental method in most of the tradition. Cheng Yi does reverse the focus. That is why he is so foundational: he provided the initial vocabulary and framework for engaging with the Buddhist challenge. He argued that a metaphysical force of cosmic creativity precedes everything, and human nature aspires to emulate and express it. Therefore, no single practice can access this universal power.
Instead, we must take a gradual, reflective approach that combines different practices. Meditation in action reinforces quiet sitting, and quiet sitting, in turn, reinforces meditation in action. Through this cumulative process, we can access our genuine self rooted in reality and transform our personhood accordingly.
Of course, not all Ru scholars agreed with Cheng Yi on this method of self-cultivation. For example, one of his main students, Yang Shi (1053–1135), preferred to anchor his practice of reverence primarily in quiet sitting and then carry that habit into other aspects of life. As you will see in my work, exploring the variety and relevance of contemplative practices among Cheng Yi’s followers, and in Ruism more broadly, remains one of my major areas of research.
JCS: This is all incredibly rich. I start to see where your work is fitting into this much larger context, and it makes me curious about this special issue. What do you hope to gain and learn from gathering authors and scholars on different aspects of contemplation in the Confucian or Ru tradition? What are you hoping the special issue will bring forth?
Because reverence is central to Ruist contemplative life, Cheng Yi recommended various practices to nurture this attitude: participating in ritual ceremonies, observing the vitality of nature, meditative sleep, reflecting on dreams, and more.
BS: In the most holistic, expansive sense, I hope to demonstrate the value of a humanities-based, interdisciplinary approach to Contemplative Studies. This is not only relevant for Confucian traditions. More broadly, I believe the humanities today are under significant pressure in academia for several reasons. One major challenge is that contemporary scholarship often underestimates the humanities’ irreplaceable role in studying human consciousness.
Consciousness has a deeply subjective and intentional structure, and its expression is always shaped by human languages and cultures. Because of this, the study of consciousness cannot avoid the hermeneutic and contextual approaches that are the great strengths of the humanities. Beyond interpretation, hermeneutics across different traditions often are linked to transformative practices. For this reason, the humanities’ exploration of consciousness can open new pedagogical methods in higher education—methods that support well-being and the transformation of personhood in ways other disciplines have not fully addressed. Simply put, we study texts, extract practical methods from historical lineages, and explore how to apply these methods to enrich the liberal arts.
Both I and my co-guest editor of this special issue, Professor Judson Murray of Capital University, share this vision. Beyond highlighting the significance of Confucian traditions, we aim to contribute to the Journal of Contemplative Studies at the University of Virginia and to help strengthen the humanities approach to contemplative research.
We also look forward to interdisciplinary collaboration, including quantitative research, qualitative analysis, and comparative studies. For example, Buddhist practices have increasingly been integrated into modern psychotherapy. Yet in East Asia, Buddhist contemplative methods have long been challenged, influenced, and enriched by Ruist and other traditions. So why not open up new avenues to study these interactions in fresh ways?
I also hope to connect with as many scholars as possible. In the English-speaking world, Confucian studies in the context of religion and spirituality remain relatively underdeveloped, especially compared to Daoist and Buddhist studies. That is part of this journal’s purpose: to help incubate new growth in contemplative scholarship. Ruism is a major East Asian tradition with a long history and a visible contemporary impact. Although the field is still emerging, it has much to contribute to conversations in Contemplative Studies, given the unique features I’ve described here.
JCS: That’s all wonderful. And it’s such a huge contribution to Contemplative Studies, a contribution that is currently lacking. We are looking forward to your whole issue. Thank you for joining me in this conversation.
BS: You’re welcome.
