Shidetang Xiyou Ji and the Syncretic Movement in the Late Ming

This thesis focuses on the relation between Shidetang Xiyou Ji and the religious landscape in the Late Ming. Religions in the Late Ming were characteristically syncretic; their syncretism was prevalent not only in the intellectual milieu but also in the cultural atmosphere of the period. An attempt to put Xiyou Ji in this religious context is significant as to understand its historical meaning. The main argument of this thesis is in three parts. It begins with a careful reconstruction of the close connection between Xiyou Ji and the philosophy of the Mind (xin xue). I argue that such connection can only be fully appreciated when one delineates the meaning of the philosophy of the Mind in the Late Ming. This delineation is carried out by reexamining the change of the way in which the Confucians from the Mid to the Late Ming articulated Buddhism and Daoism. The examination gives rise to the argument that when these Confucians characterized Buddhism and Daoism as the intellectual counterparts of Confucianism, they were constantly led to inquire into the nature of Confucianism; some of them even attempted to escape from being alluded to the label of Confucianism. This by no means indicates that the pillars of Confucianism were shaken. On the contrary, it should be taken as a course in which the Confucians incorporated the syncretism in conceiving their multi-subjectivity. The second part of the argument emerges from this context. Although Xiyou Ji seldom addresses the content of Confucianism explicitly, an analysis of its description of the genesis of cosmos and the idea of the Mind, as well as its plots about the Confucian ethics and its concept of language, reveals that the author of Xiyou Ji consciously participated in the transformation of Confucianism in a distinct style and genre that has to be distanced from the strict intellectual discourse. Moreover, this part also inquires the possibility for one to contemplate the way in which Xiyou Ji might have reacted to the reality in which the Confucians live. In the third part, I probe the relation between the three teachings in Xiyou Ji through analyzing the plots about “name and reality”, the deployment of the Daoist elements, and its interpretation of The Heart Sutra. I argue that Shidetang Xiyou Ji is highly concerned with the problem of hermeneutics in these three teachings. It brings to mind a sandbox game in which readers can freely play with the elements of the three teachings and acquire different meanings in this play. But readers are not autonomous sovereigns, as the text also poses questions for readers to ceaselessly reflect on what they have grasped in the course of play. In this sense, reading Shidetang Xiyou Ji in the context of syncretic movement renders that Xiyou Ji can be seen as a book that meticulously reflects on the core issue of hermeneutics in the Late Ming. This in turn leads to the last, but by no means the least point. This thesis underlines the hermeneutic meaning of “play(遊)” in Shidetang Xiyou Ji.