The Sage as Truth:An Analysis of Jiao Hong's View of the Saints
Jiao Hong,a Confucian scholar of the late Ming Dynasty,under the influence of the ideology of the three religions,put forward the idea of the consistency of the three religions,and established a distinctive conception of the saint by using Buddhism and Taoism as the wings of Confucianism in its study of the nature of mind.Jiao Hong's view of the saint takes the unity of heaven and mind as the formal premise from which he derives the proposition that the saint is united with heaven,respects the Tao,and is one with human nature.Taking Confucius as his ideal personality,he argues that a saint must possess the virtues of the three religions,Confu-cianism,Buddhism,and Taoism,and thus affirms that ordinary people can learn to be saints.Scholars can then follow the path of"cutting down the will,cleaning the feelings,exhausting the heart,knowing the nature and restoring the nature"and give full play to the cultivation method of"Bowen and Counter-contemplation"to go from understanding to enlightenment,and ultimately give full play to the inherent self-explanatory and self-sufficient saintly nature and thus be the same as the Way of Heaven.The practice of cultiva-tion emphasizes the importance of intellect on the basis of intuitive realization,opening up a new path of intellectualization for Yang-ming's philosophy.
Jiao Hongview of the saintsthe three teachings consistency
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