Study On Ideas Of Folk Religion In Ming And Qing Dynasties

Religion is an important part of culture. In ancient history of China there are mainly three kinds of official religion, the Confucian religion, the Daoism religion and the Buddhism religion. Nevertheless, in Ming and Qing dynasties, many kinds of civilian religion came forth, which profited from those official religion. Because most of the believers are poor farmers and those kinds of religion are regional ones, few researchers study the new phenomena.The paper mainly studies the civilian religions in Ming and Qing dynasties according to a lot of Baojuan in those periods. Through researching those Baojuan by the way of logic analysis, the author tries to look for the particular contents of the civilian religions in Ming and Qing dynasties. From studying the relationship between those civilian religions and certain society, we could find their developing orderliness, which could provide modern society history experience.The paper concludes five parts. The first part is guiding discuss. Chapter One discusses the philosophy of civilian religions in Ming and Qing dynasties. Chapter Two introduces particular contents and configurations of civilian religions in Ming and Qing dynasties. Chapter Three discusses how believers to practice their religions. The last chapter mainly discusses the relationship between the civilian and society.The religionists of civilian religions in Ming and Qing dynasties hardly put forward new theories about how the universe appeared, and how nature grow. Most of them agreed with their cotemporary ideologists and philosophers, who put forward the universe mode: Taiji - Liangyi - Sixiang - Bagua - Qiankun. Taiji is the originally basis of all the things in the world. Besides, other religionists think the world comes from Xinji and Qi.On the discuss of human nature, the religionists in that period think that human nature is fate, which consists two kinds, one is Tianming, and another is Qizhi. In the face of the conference of the two kinds of human nature, the man should abbey Tianming. Following, religionists put forward the theory of Xingling, which is the purest thing in the world. But due to its pure, other things could change it easily. So human should come back to Wuji. They also think that Cheng is the law of nature. Helping himself to fulfill his wishes is Ren, and to fulfill others' wishes is Zhi. About human nature, some persons believe that it's evil, and others believe goodness. But all of them call for goodness.About the relationship between human and nature there are three theories. Some persons think human has the same nature with the nature. Some thinks human's fate is decided by the nature. And others think that human could communicate with the nature. According to above, the religionists believe that the law of nature is equally to the law of society.On the whole, there are five ideas in folk religion during Ming and Qing Dynasties. For example, the creating world idea, San-deng-xu-fo and the managing world idea, last disaster and the saving world idea, super-living and the going back hometown idea, and the idea that if one does good then he will get goodness, and evil will get punishment. Those ideas infect each other. And they are the guiding line of folk religionists.Folk religionists think that, all the things in the world are fake and empty. They mean nothing at all. And nor could escape the law from born to dead. The only way of get away from the law is taking part in those regions. Of course, those accepted ones should have some pre-conditions. The religion rules give believers guide of what to practice, and how to practice.Since folk religion is a kind of social cultural factor, it must be closely related with contemporary society. Be contained in the scope of religion, folk religion has the same ideas sources with all the religion. Changes of contemporary politics, economy and ideas and culture especially, put forward the ideas of folk religion. At this time, thinking itself the master, folk religion takes the salvation as its unshakable duty and dream then works hard for it. In religious activities, because of the unstable subjective factors of religious leaders and the influence of external social environment, the characters of folk religion are not unchangeable. Instead, it only keeps relatively stable in some specified history period. So there is several kinds of folk religion. In religious practices, folk religion displays characteristics such as integration of the three kinds of religion and the esteem of karma. These ideas can be so popular because that folk religion pays much attention to descriptions of the holy features of gods in scriptures and the religious leaders, and emphasizes the skills of sermons, the function of middle and low ranking mtellectuals as hardcore and the systematic ness of theory. Actions of disciples and organizations of folk religion show the coincidence between its own religious ideas and the master ideology of the society. But the two can have contradictions and even conflicts because of many factors. Folk religion dose not fear oppressions from the feudal government at all. Instead, it guides disciples to treat the problem from a new viewpoint and encourages them not to yield.Fork religion is the choice of low people. The force department can not eradicate it, on the contrary , it will more stronger .It is because of the Fork religion forms the relax mechanism - the more force the more expanding between religion group and country enginery throw theology which thinking much of nature not fate .Fork religion established a thinking system including a lot of ideas of Confucian, Buddhism and Daoism. It is an organic whole which is composed of the basic system, the mending system, the aim system and the explaining system. In the system, the idea of "returning to the west" was emphasized constantly and the future world was describing sweetly in order to inspiring the people's self-identity and hankering to its religion aim. Believers fill in the occult as they pursued the hope of Utopian which Fork religion promised and enter into a road from reality to extremeness constructed by theology.In conclusion, Fork religion of Ming and Qing Dynasty has its active aspects, for example, it acted as the traditional culture carrier, strengthened the behavior order, relaxed the oppressive mood of the low people. It can not recognize its own place from class standpoint, can not find the approach which can get rid of the pain indeed, but only protected the feudalistic ideas in some extent unconsciously and erected the people's consciousness of self-liberation.