Peace (15 page)

Daoism, in contrast to Legalism, was as much a system of religious beliefs as a body of thought, and as anti-authoritarian as Ancient Chinese philosophies of peace could be. Its origins are traced back to the Yellow Emperor, but its locution occurred with two foundational texts. The
Dao De Ching
is attributed to Laozi, an older contemporary of Confucius and Zhou bookkeeper before becoming an itinerant sage. The
Ching
, or book's title, serves well as an introduction to the complexities of its pacific contents. Dao, usually translated as Way or Path, can be understood in three related senses: cosmic-supernatural, earthly-natural and human, uniting the universe, giving entities their identities and purposes, which can be revealed but never imposed. Essentially, Daoism aims at aligning individuals and society with the Dao, bringing about inner, social and collective harmony. In each of its three senses, Dao has strong associations with Yin-Yang, the balancing female/male, passive/active, receptive/creative forces, and omnipresent energy, Ch'i. Communing with nature, paying homage to ancestors and spirits, meditating, health-enhancing activities such as Tai Chi Chuan, and the arrangement of space according to Feng Shui are all Daoist methods of achieving its inner peace (
pu
), physical and spiritual, by balancing Yin-Yang and allowing Ch'i to flow freely. They are still practiced today, increasingly in the West. Thus, a later Daoist text explains: “The correct Dao will cause no jeopardy. . . It is useful to individuals and it is also useful to the whole country. Attaining it, an individual will succeed. Attaining it, a country will be at peace. Attaining it, a small country will be able to defend its territory. Attaining it, a large country will be able to unify All-under-Heaven.”
¹³

The De in the
Dao De Ching
, crossing inner strength and virtue, results from following the Dao. The central Daoist concept associated with De is
wu-wei
, literally non-action or non-interference, letting ourselves and the world be so that the Dao may take its course. The political implication of wu-wei, a kind of stoic anarchism, is that the optimal form of government is that which is least perceptible, or does the most by doing the least. Thus, “the kingdom is made one's own only by freedom from action,” while “when opposing weapons are crossed, he who deplores the situation conquers.”
¹⁴
It follows that not participating in, nor collaborating with, violent governments is the best way to resist them, and withdrawing from warlike cultures the best way to change them. The ideal Daoist society, then, is one in which individuals are free to follow the Dao as revealed to them, regardless of class or clan. This point is where Zhuangzi (fourth
century BCE), an official of the Fengjian Meng, takes off in the book named after him, actually an evolving accretion of Daoist dialogues, narratives and essays. The Dao of the
Zhuangzi
is still universal, but takes on a less normative and more relativistic role. Pluralistically, we must find and follow our own dao within the Dao, upon which individual, social and collective peace and harmony depend. But wu-wei still plays a major part in the
Zhuangzi
:

The inaction of heaven is its purity; the inaction of earth is its peace. So the two inactions combine and all things are transformed and brought to birth. . . heaven and earth do nothing and there is nothing not done. Among men, who can get hold of this inaction?
¹⁵

Traditional yet revolutionary, Daoism was so popular by the seventh century CE that T'ang Dynasty Emperors gave it official sanction and has, with a notable exception discussed below, been a strong peaceful undercurrent in Chinese culture since inception.

Confucianism, Legalism and Daoism developed during the heyday of Mohism, the most prominent school of peace of the Warring States period and the only major one not to survive it intact. Little is known about its fifth-century BCE founder, Mozi, other than that he may have been a Song official and was possibly a former slave or convict. Guided by the
Mozi
, its collected teachings, the Mohist School was the first in the Ancient China to actively promote open debate as a means to mitigate conflict and build consensus, and persuasion rather than law or tradition to establish moral standards. Mohists were committed to exploring and applying what they saw as the complementary principles of universal love and utilitarian order:

When everyone regards the states of others as one's own, who will invade? . . . If everyone loves universally; states not attacking one another; houses not disturbing one another; thieves and robbers becoming extinct; emperor and ministers, fathers and sons, all being affectionate and filial – if all this comes to pass the world will be orderly. Therefore, how can the wise man who has charge of governing the empire fail to restrain hate and encourage love? So, when there is universal love in the world it will be orderly, and when there is mutual hate in the world it will be disorderly. This is why Mozi insisted on persuading people to love others.
¹⁶

The flexible doctrines at the
Mozi'
s core are: only meritocratic government sustains stable socio- economic and political order by being a moral model for, and accountable to, the people by the Mandate of Heaven; aggression, particularly offensive war, is to be condemned and replaced with all-inclusive compassionate care; thrift, humility and altruism lead
to prosperity; and, together, these principles bring about universal love, peace and harmony.

In these veins, Mohist advocated extending familial feelings beyond the family, a frugal lifestyle of no waste, and livelihoods of collective benefit such as agriculture, instead of harmful ones such as the military. They protested against the wars of the Fengjian states both in person and in writing, preventing them when they could and, when not, participated in making strong defenses (in which they became experts) the best offense. As the most vocal anti-war and pro-peace activists of their times, Mohists were at greatest odds with the Warring States, which, along with the Imperial Qin, suppressed them. Mozi's influence was limited by his own radicalism, a lesson competing schools of peace were quick to learn and so better-equipped to overcome. As a whole, these Ancient Chinese schools confirm that times of widespread war can and have acted as catalysts of peace, both in thought and in action. Many of the merits of the long-lived Imperial system by which the Warring States were unified can be traced back to Confucianism, Legalism, Daoism and Mohism, and many of its faults to failures in either understanding or applying their pacific teachings, which were in time enhanced with those of an import, Buddhism. In the end, “Peace and unity were only possible if the political power could control and share the principal resources,” which the Hundred Schools of Peace could assist in but not guarantee.
¹⁷

As mentioned, the Qin (or Chin) unified the WarringStates and others, and are for this reason considered China's founders. Under Li Si's Legalist principles, which endorsed the use of coercive force in unification, and backed by the latest in iron weaponry as well as military strategy like Sun Tzu's
Art of War
, the Qin turned enemies into subjects with or without their consent, effectively ending divisive war by total war in 221 BCE. It was the Qin who initiated the transformation of the Fengjian into an Imperial system, intended to eliminate external threats as symbolized by their Great Wall, and quell internal strife by imposing peace and promoting prosperity from the top down and centre outwards. However, pacification complete, they did not change their ways and were therefore unable to maintain the oppressive peace they had made. A decade after Li Si's persecutions began, revolts did away with the Qin. But the indispensability of their socio-political infrastructure is evident in its surviving the civil war that ensued between provincial families for its Mandate of Heaven. The Han were ultimately victorious, defeating the Qin in 202. By learning from mistakes of their predecessors, and being traditionalist innovators in their own right, they ruled for 400 years. Early on, the Han fused Confucianism with Legalism to form their official policy, diffusing this synthesis by diplomatic and military annexations that brought close to 60 million people and most of Asia under their direct control, an era
sometimes referred to as the Pax Sinica. The Han achieved this by dividing territories into administrative districts owing allegiance and paying taxes to the Emperor in return for the protection, economic advantages, the rule of law and social order they received.

A sign of this more peaceful period is found in the name the Han gave to their capital: Chang'an, or Perpetual Peace. Another is a semantic shift of the word
shih
, which once referred to warrior elite and now to literates fit for civil service. Yet another is the policy of “peace and friendship” (
hech'in
) the Han adopted as part of their foreign policy, by which annexations were increasingly made by strategic marriages and diplomatic mission instead of force.
¹⁸
For example, a popular story relates that Wang Chao-chün, a princess, was sent off to become the bride of a foreign tribal chieftain as part of a peace agreement, which succeeded. Gich-03ngiving was also used as pre-emptive peacemaking, as no state “has ever made such an effort to supply its neighbors with presents, thus elevating the gift into a political tool.”
¹⁹
Buddhism's peaceful rise in China dates back to the Han's opening of the famous Silk Road in the second century BCE. Traders and diplomats came into contact with the Yuezhi, a Central Asian tribe whom Ashoka's missionaries converted. By the first century CE, their Kushan Empire was formed, whose rulers sponsored a Fourth Council to formalize the Mahayana tradition, which then slowly spread from the bottom up along the Silk Road to Perpetual Peace by being adapted to local cultures rather than challenging them. Acting on a dream, a Han Emperor sent delegates to Kushan; possibly as a consenting nod to the foreign religion's growing native numbers, China's first Buddhist temple was built upon their return. The Dharma was transposed into the language of the Dao, and was for a long time a folk religion disjointed from the gentry's Confucian Legalism by its emphasis on individual enlightenment instead of service to the state.

The rise of merchant and bureaucratic classes, large landholders and mining magnates, coupled with floods, epidemics and costs of evermore distant annexations began to accentuate inequalities. By 200 CE, rebellions at the peripheries and centre of the Han Empire reached dangerous levels. Blending their brand of Daoism with this dissatisfaction, three brothers began a peasant movement called the Yellow Scarves, which they wore, soon half a million strong. They called their sect the Tai Ping (“Great Peace”), connoting a great age of equality and collective ownership. Paradoxically, and contrary to Daoist teachings, they tried to bring about their Great Peace by waging war against the Han. The Han's generals and armies called upon to suppress such insurrections did so successfully. But in the process, they became more powerful than the Han Emperor himself, and brought about his imperial dynasty's demise. Whirlwinds of warlords filled the Han power vacuum with local
military dictatorships. These were consolidated into the Three Kingdoms, ruled by regional overlords whose iron fists barely fended off anarchy. Their infighting introduced the Six Dynasties (222–589), with capitals on the Yangtze River, which came to divide the northern land-backed powers from the southern naval ones, parallel to Sparta and Athens, and who like them more often than not competed violently for supremacy in the others' territories and their own. Brief periods of harmony, usually at the start of new ruling dynasties, were followed by longer discordant ones as they disintegrated, paralleling the Qin's fate. This cycle was driven by disunity and devastation due to internecine struggles and the invasions these invited, including those of the Mongols and Muslim Turks.

To counteract this threatening trend, a policy of Sinicization (Ancient Chinese equivalent of Romanization) was adopted, the idea being to align without friction the interests of those at the fringes of the Empire with its own.
²⁰
Soon-to-be rulers of bordering states were educated at the Imperial court before returning home, while colonies became designated outposts of Imperial culture as well as policy. Instead of peacefully bringing non-Chinese into the Imperial fold, Sinicization often gave hostile outsiders knowledge necessary to take over parts of the Empire and eventually the whole. Towards the end of the Six Dynasties, the reverse of the Sinicization process also took place in that non-Chinese ways were widely adopted by Chinese peoples and their rulers. As bastardized forms of Daoism like the Great Peace became a threat to social order, the elite began to throw their weight behind Buddhism as a more peaceful alternative. During the north–south split, the more rigidly stratified and traditional south reactively resisted the imported religion, while the new and now foreign powers of the north blended it with existing ideologies to end turmoil by solidifying popular support. The north's syncretic religious policy became the norm throughout China by the Six Dynasties' end, while in India warring Hindu chiefdoms and kingdoms gradually extinguished Buddhism's presence there. Ancient China was reunited by the short-lived Sui Dynasty (581–618) and flourished under the longer-lived T'ang (619–907). The first of these officialized Buddhism and, ironically, began its exportation as an integral part of Sinicization, such as to the nearby island satellite of what is now Japan.

Foreign Influences and Native Peace in Japanese History

In 1588 CE, during Japan's Warring States period, the Sengoku, an Imperial decree was issued ordering the surrender of weapons to the
Emperor's agents. It is the first Eastern weapons ban explicitly restricting firearms, developed in and imported from outside the Empire: