Heaven, Ghosts and Spirits, and Ritual

This chapter concerns Zhu Xi’s views of Heaven, ghosts, spirits, and rituals. He tended to identify Heaven with pattern-principle, thereby contributing to its gradual transformation into a more secular philosophical concept. But Zhu’s conception of Heaven was more complex and nuanced; although Heaven was not a person, it possessed consciousness that was faithful to pattern-principles. Similarly, many of Zhu’s claims about ghosts and spirits reduce both to different modes or phases of qi in the functioning of all things. Nevertheless, he taught that sincere offerings of food and wine refreshed the vitality of an ancestor’s qi, and thus he offers a philosophical justification for rites to venerate the dead. In addition, he believed that hungry ghosts arose when a person’s qi was strong or enraged by violent death. Zhu followed and further developed Cheng Yi’s idea that ritual is synonymous with pattern-principle. Nevertheless, he refused to reduce ritual to pattern-principle.