Encounter with
Neo-Confucianism

Since I was a child, I’ve been rather timid, very sensitive to changes around me, and easily startled by small things. In school, something decisive happened to me in my classical Chinese classes. As I memorized and recited the old texts, I began to feel a quiet sense of comfort in engaging with words that have been passed down for generations.
That feeling has stayed with me up to now, even as I’ve gone into research. In particular, when I read the recorded sayings of thinkers from the Song and Ming periods, I sometimes feel a deep calm that’s hard to explain. It’s as if my mind becomes still, I forget myself for a moment, and my fear disappears, leaving me in a peaceful and steady state—something close to complete clarity and calm.
I feel that this experience may be similar, in some way, to what scholars of the Song and Ming periods described as going beyond the distinction between self and others, or between inner and outer. A mind in such a state can remain steady in any situation and respond to the world in a principled way. In pursuing this ideal, scholars of the past faced a difficult and often unreasonable world while continuing to cultivate themselves—sometimes studying alone, sometimes learning together with others—and in doing so, they created a rich intellectual tradition.
In my own small way, I hope to gradually draw strength from this tradition and to continue engaging with these texts in my daily life.