21 Facts About Xiong Shili

Xiong Shili was a Chinese essayist and philosopher whose major work A New Treatise on Vijnaptimatra is a Confucian critique of the Buddhist Vijnapti-matra "consciousness-only" theory popularized in China by the Tang-dynasty pilgrim Xuanzang.

Xiong Shili felt it could provide a guide for the country during its tumultuous period following the May Fourth Movement in 1919.

Xiong Shili felt that national survival was predicated on a sense of community, which in turn could only come from trusting commitments from the people involved.

Xiong Shili believed that the most urgent task for the educated elite in China was to raise the cultural awareness and sensitivity of the people that the clash between the West and China was not solely a clash of economic strength and military might, but a conflict between basic human values.

Xiong Shili was born to a poverty-stricken family in the Huanggang, Hubei.

Xiong Shili's father was a village teacher who died of tuberculosis when Xiong was ten years old, forcing him to work as a cowherd for his neighbor to support his family.

Ouyang Jingwu recommended Xiong Shili and passed Liang Shuming a draft on which Xiong Shili had been working entitled An Outline of Consciousness-only.

Xiong Shili felt that his mission was to assist China in overcoming its social and cultural crisis, and simultaneously to search for truth.

Xiong Shili felt compelled to find and develop the dao of Confucius to meet the force of Western culture.

The first edition of the New Treatise was written in Classical Chinese, and in 1944 Xiong Shili published a Colloquial Chinese version which was in actuality a complete rewriting of the original work.

Xiong Shili was subjected to physical abuse at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

Xiong Shili felt that the meaning of human life is not confined to the elimination of the negative, but involves the cultivation of the brighter aspects of human nature.

Xiong Shili found Confucianism to uphold original human goodness; an original benevolence is insisted upon in Orthodox Confucianism.

Xiong Shili felt that the human dao lies in expanding the good root of the original mind and having it grow daily.

Xiong Shili admits that they should be described using different terms, and can be spoken of as such, but are not actually two separate entitites.

Xiong Shili uses the metaphor of the ocean and the waves to illustrate this point.

Xiong Shili believed that the world is in a state of constant change, and that the ability of changing into all things is exactly what characterizes original reality.

Xiong Shili refers to original reality as "eternal transformation" or "the ability to change".

Xiong Shili speaks of calculative understanding as fit for seeking reason in the external world, the physical world.

Xiong Shili says that original reality can be comprehended, differing from Kant on this point.

Xiong Shili stated that we must realize that original reality is in each one of us, and that we cannot seek to know it in external things.