Title

Mind-body Relation in the Wu-hsing P’ien 

Author

Chun-chieh Huang 

Genre

Article  

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Abstract

    This essay aims at a study of the views on the mind-body relation in the on Five Elements (Wu-hsing P’ien) which contain the Lost Volumes No.1 and 4 to the Lao Tzu manuscript A excavated in December of 1973 from the Ma-Wang-tui Han Tomb Three in Ch’ang-sha of Hu-nan province. The problem of mind-body relation is considered in terms of the background of intellectual history in ancient China. Special attention is devoted to the connection between the Mencius and the on five elements. 

    In stressing the continuity within various dual poles – mind-heart and body, mind-heart and Heaven, one and five, deliberation and virtue, human way and heavenly way, morals and Nature, inner and outer, self and society, this world and the beyond- on five elements take over and develop the insights of Mencius on the cultivation of human self in all its emphasis on human, social, and cosmic dimensions. 

    In emphasizing value priority of one pole over another of various 

kinds-mind-heart over body, one over five, deliberation over senses, and at the same 

time putting value directionally to it-body serving mind-heart, five converging to one, 

moral efforts culminating in continuity with the beyond, Mencius’s thoughts were 

again exalted and expanded.