On the Experience,Transcendence,and Ultimate Belief of Heaven in The Book of Songs and Its Transformative Truth
The concept of Heaven holds an extremely lofty position in the hearts of the Chinese people.Its absolute dominance was firmly established during the era of the Shijing(The Book of Songs).In the"texts"and"subtexts"of the Shijing,Heaven constructs its highest spiritual reality from the experiential realm,the transcendental realm,to the ultimate belief realm,extending into relational dynamics and structures of power between Heaven and humanity.This results in a series of ontological categories such as heavenly time,heav-enly principles,heavenly mandates,and heavenly intentions,which provide existential support for the"hu-man world"and"social realm".The Ji-Zhou interest group recognized this power and transformed Heaven as the highest spiritual reality into the supreme political power of the"Son of Heaven".Based on the con-cepts of kinship and feudalism,they established a complementary system of"royal offices"and"ritual mu-sic",achieving governance effects that peaked in the Cheng-Kang Prosperity Era.However,the social contra-dictions hidden under the rule of the Yi kings gradually became apparent,escalating to irreconcilable con-flicts during the Li,Xuan,and You dynasties,leading to a questioning of the legitimacy of the power logic and ultimately restoring social rationality.After this restoration,"Son of Heaven"no longer equated with Heaven;the latter,as the highest spiritual reality,regained its role as the symbol of power in the Shijing and its era.Unfortunately,the bureaucratic-centric views left behind by the Ji-Zhou power transition could not be simultaneously restored from the deep-seated social will and collective unconscious,thus becoming a diffi-cult burden to remove from the history of spiritual consciousness and social development in China.
HeavenSon of Heavenroyal officesrituals and musicera of The Book of Songstransforma-tion of power logicdominance
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