Have you ever attended a University graduation?
If so, you will know that they tend to be full of ceremony and ritual.
Well... mostly, but not always.
My son, Ben Haddon Mansfield, went to a specialist arts college in Los Angeles - drama, animation, music, that sort of thing. And its graduation ceremony was a little... erm... different.
One person went on stage dressed as a crab. Another wore nothing more than a snare drum, hung around his waist. A third took this lack of clothes one step further and accepted his graduation certificate whilst completely naked. The whole ceremony was creatively anarchic.
But, in its own way, even at that graduation, there was ritual. The ritual may have differed from most graduations, but it had its own internal, equally rigid, sense of ceremony. If someone had suggested that everyone should wear gowns and mortarboards, there would have been uproar.
Ritual was central to Confucius' thinking. He lived around 500BC, at a time when China was split by warring factions. His solution to the disunity in his country was to advocate the use of ceremony. He believed that ritual would bind his people together around common beliefs and practices.
Ritual remains central to our lives. Pre-COVID, most of us would get up at the same time, leave our houses at the same time, get to work at the same time, have coffee at the same time, and so on. The pandemic disrupted those rituals, but most of us quickly developed new ones. In my case, it mostly involved working for the first two hours in a dressing gown.
Rituals provide the reassurance that we are in control, that things are in the right place. They help us at times of stress and grief. They enable teams to perform better and (if used well) they draw families closer together.
Rituals have always formed an important part of all the world's religions. They are rich and full of meaning. They remind us of specific virtues such as forgiveness, love, togetherness, community, joy and celebration. In his book, Religion for Atheists, Alain de Botton argues that atheists too should develop rituals. The ceremonial baby should not be thrown out with the supernatural bathwater.
But rituals can, of course, be abused. They can be used to manipulate, as happened in 1930's Europe. Rituals can also be used to differentiate between 'us' and 'them'. The rituals that one group finds comforting may exclude others.
Confucius dealt with this problem by developing the concept of Ren. Ren is untranslatable and Confucius himself refused to describe it. However, it has very loosely been described as 'humaneness'.
Ren is a bit like those old cartoons, "Love is...". For example, "Love is... where you want to be". The point of those cartoons is that you cannot define 'love'; you can only give examples of it.
So here is the Confucian equivalent - Ren is... "wishing to be established, we seek also to establish others; wishing to be enlarged, we seek also to enlarge others."
Ren hints at the motivation that needs to exist behind the ritual. For Confucius, ritual is not about maintaining a social hierarchy. His form of ritual is not about pomp and circumstance, ermine and feathered hats. For Confucius, ritual was all about developing a sense of concern for self and others. Without Ren, ritual limits humanity; with Ren, it enables humanity.
Ren is like a spice that infuses any meal with flavour, or a scent that fills the air. It can be applied no matter what your belief system and whatever your ritual. In that sense, Confucianism is not a standalone belief; it is an influence, an approach to life that can benefit anyone.
So, do you have rituals? If so, do they enlarge you? And do they encourage you to enlarge others? If the answers to those questions are all 'yes', then Confucius might nod sagely and then say something enigmatic that might just hint at the possibility that you might potentially - maybe - have Ren.
Next: D is for Democracy
Written by Pete Mansfield
