英文摘要
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According to Confucianism, moral accomplishment is called ”cultivation of morality.” If a person's speech and actions, including seeing, hearing, speaking and acting, are not out of ”courtesy,” his/her behavior is deemed improper. Mencius regards human body as physical nature, which is Heaven-bestowed. Besides advocating the idea of ”putting physical nature into practice,” he believes that human body carries moral implications. For Mencius, human nature, mind, energy (or Qi, 氣) and form are intermingled with one another, but they have also been stereotyped and restricted in a person step by step in his/her life time. Human body refers to ”small body,” whereas the mind, corresponding to both Nature and Heaven, is ”big body.” Mencius considers that the life of human beings entangle in reality both the energy of mind and that of body. Ethical practices exist in ”holding on to the will and not exposing the energy;” that is, the small body should be dominated by the big body. In Neo-Confucianism, body, or physical nature, is also called ”being obtained from energy.” As far as the relationship between mind and body is concerned, Wang Yang-Ming's viewpoints are basically similar to Mencius'. Nevertheless, Zhu Xi emphasizes the importance of disciplining oneself by ”courtesy;” ethical standards are therefore extrinsic. This paper deals with Wang Chuan-Shan's theory on the efforts to perform communication between mind and body from three aspects: first, both holding will and cultivating energy are complementary; second, restricting mind and appropriately handling things are keeping up each other; and third, engaging in erudition and constraining oneself by courtesy are mutually helpful. When elucidating the doctrine of Wang Chuan-Shan, we should not only pay attention to the intrinsic cultivation of mind but also notice the extrinsic gentle habits and acts-an endeavor to achieve propriety both from outside and inside.
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