The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1030 page)

Hsün Ch’ing
:

see
HSÜN TZU
.

 
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Hsün Tzu (Xunzi)
.

An important work of early Chinese philosophy attributed to Hsün Tzu or Hsün Ch'ing (b.
c.
300 BCE). His interpretation of
Confucian
teaching, which became canonical (to be studied by court officials) during the former Han dynasty (206 BCE–9 CE), remained largely dominant until the rise of the
Neo-Confucian
movement in the 11th cent.
The book teaches that people are by nature ‘evil’—not in any metaphysical way, but in the practical sense that without proper education people cannot rise to full participation in culture and society. At the root of this doctrine is a distinction between human ‘nature’ (
hsing
, ‘that which cannot be learned or acquired by effort’) and ‘conscious activity’ (
wei
, ‘that which can be acquired by learning and brought to completion by effort’, B. Watson tr., p. 158).
Hsün Tzu
stresses the importance of
wei
: people are not fully human until they have become imbued with a sense of moral and ritual propriety, and they are not born with that sense but must be taught it.
Hsün Tzu was influenced by the legalist school of his day, which stressed the necessity of law and coercion for maintaining social order.

 
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Hsü-t’ang Chih-yü
(Jap., Kid
Chigu
;

1189–1269).
Chinese Ch'an/Zen master of the
Rinzai
tradition. He was the teacher of Sh
my
who took his
dharma
teaching to Japan. His discourses are collected in
Hsü-t’ang ko-shang yü-lu
(Jap.,
Kid
osh
goroku
), and contain
k
ans
still used in Rinzai training.

 
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(Chin., On the Conversion of Outsiders). Taoist work,
c.
300 CE, describing the missionary work of
Lao-tzu
‘to the west’, i.e. in India. Its main polemic claim is that Lao-tzu instructed the
Buddha
.

 
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