Beginnings with early Chinese thinkers such as Mencius, personal desires and emotions have been identified as something that obstructs personal cultivation. Li Ao further developed with point in his Essay on Returning to the Nature. The influence of Buddhism on Li Ao’s idea of how to become a sage becomes quite clear. He says:
That which may make a man a Sage is his Nature. That which may make a man betray his Nature is Feeling. Joy, anger, pity, fear, love, hate, and desire: these seven are all the operation of Feeling. When feeling obscures, the Nature is thereby drowned. This is not the fault of the Nature, but because, owing to the endless revolution and intermingling of these seven, the Nature is unable to gain its fulfillment. When…show more content… The concept of feeling described in the quotation is similar to the Buddhist idea of passion and craving. According to Ch’an Buddhism, all beings posses the Buddha-nature but their Buddha-nature may be covered by passions and desires. Li Ao interprets people’s blindness to their fundamental nature when they indulge themselves in feelings. In traditional Confucianism there was a great emphasis of sages of the past. These sages appeared in Confucian texts as teachers of antiquity, original sources of the Way, and models of virtue. Reaching sagehood was restricted to the elite and unattainable for ordinary people. During the emphasis of Neo-Confucianism in the Sung Dynasty, sagehood obtained a new connotation. Li Ao combined the idea of metaphysical absolute and Mencius’ notion of human nature as good to create a new image of sagehood that was obtainable to all people. This new interpretation of the sage was based on the fundamental idea that all men are equal and have the ability to develop themselves to reach the state of sagehood. Buddhist and Taoist teaching mirror this view of equality among men. In Buddhist teachings, it is stated that all men have Buddha-nature in them and there fore could become Buddhas. Similarly, in Taoist teachings it is said that all men posses Tao in their nature and therefore could attain
