Zhu Xi's Meditative Reading and Lectio Divina: A Comparison Revisited Primary tabs View

As a contribution to the growing body of work on Confucian contemplative practices, this paper seeks to build upon previous scholarship in which Zhu Xi’s meditative reading practice has been compared with the Christian monastic practice of lectio divina (“divine reading”). Two such studies serve as points of focus: Daniel Gardner’s “Attentiveness and Meditative Reading in Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism” contributed to the 2004 collection Confucian Spirituality, Volume Two, and Peng Guoxiang’s “Spiritual and Bodily Exercise: The Religious Significance of Zhu Xi’s Reading Methods,” an English translation of which is found in the 2015 volume Returning to Zhu Xi: Emerging Patterns within the Supreme Polarity. 

To begin, the paper briefly notes the major similarities and differences both scholars identify between Zhu’s practice and lectio divina. In Gardner’s case, three parallels are first highlighted: (1) “Each prescribes for its follow­ers a core curriculum: the one based on the Confucian classics, the words of the sages, and the other based on scripture, the Word of God”; (2) “Each devel­ops an elaborate religious hermeneutics, urging readers to approach the texts in an attentive, ‘prayerful’ manner, memorizing their every word, savoring fully their flavor, and thereby making the texts and the truths in them one’s own”; and (3) “each takes as its ultimate end more than mere comprehension of the texts, seeking instead the union of reader and ‘author’” (Gardner, 114). Peng likewise claims the “immersive” nature of Zhu’s reading method “has a strong resonance with meditatio” in lectio divina, and his second similarity echoes Gardner’s third: “The distinction between lectio divina and “Bible Studies” in Christianity is similar [in that] lectio divina is not about knowledge, but is rather a way of ultimate transformation” (Peng, 336). Beyond this, Peng also observes a therapeutic dimension to Zhu’s reading qua “spiritual and bodily exercise,” which he finds resonant with effects claimed by some practitioners of lectio divina. 

While Gardner and Peng raise these parallels to highlight certain elements of Zhu Xi’s approach to meditative reading, even more significant are the points of difference they claim can clarify other aspects. Gardner, for instance, argues that Zhu’s meditative reading strives for union with the sagely yet “fully human” authors of the Confucian classics in a way that “brings to perfection the humanity, the truth, and the under­standing ontologically endowed in the reader”; in contrast, he contends, lectio divina is better understood as “a quest to know and participate in the divine, in the ‘otherly,’” for “God is other and, so, not ontologically conterminous with the reader” (Gardner, 114-5). Peng similarly argues that the Christian notion of God as transcendent is fundamentally at odds with the Confucian view of sages, that Christian belief in the Bible as the divinely revealed “Word of God” is incompatible with the Confucian view of the Classics as “the words of the sages,” and that “lectio divina leads to a worldview in sharp contrast between what the Confucian masters maintain and a cosmology of creatio ex nihilo” (Peng, 337-8). For both Gardner and Peng, therefore, these purported contrasts with lectio divina serve to emphasize a critical point: Zhu’s practice is aimed at nothing other than “union with one’s true self” (Gardner, 115), a “consummation of one’s humanity” (Peng, 339). 

Despite the valuable insights these similarities and differences raise, one of the substantial weaknesses of both studies is the lack of attention given to the diversity of approaches lectio divina has entailed throughout Christian history. Instead, both scholars speak of the practice univocally and generally, as if it has been understood and practiced in the same way through its many centuries of existence. While this is understandable given the purpose of both studies – i.e., to clarify points of Zhu’s practice, not to perform an in-depth comparison or an extended study of a Christian practice – this paper argues that a more theologically and historically nuanced look at lectio divina can yield even greater insights with respect to Zhu. For the sake of brevity and focus, one particularly compelling example is raised: the gradual development of lectio divina from a primarily vocal practice in late antiquity to a more internalized, silent practice in later centuries – a shift that contemporary observers argue brought a marked change in the relationship between reader and text. Most significantly for this paper’s purposes, then, noting lectio divina’s historical development in this regard can prompt a closer examination of the relationship between external, vocal recitation and silent, interior reflection in Zhu’s practice as well. 

Indeed, while both Gardner and Peng acknowledge vocal recitation as a component of Zhu’s practice of meditative reading, neither explores in sufficient depth how the relationship between recitation and reflection is implicated in the concomitant relationship between reader and text. However, as this paper will conclude, a closer look at some of Zhu’s recorded sayings suggests a striking relationship between these aspects of the practice, a relationship which can be described as both dynamic and dialogical. In fact, while recognizing the nature of this relationship between exterior recitation and interior reflection does not necessarily contradict claims made by Gardner and Peng, it does provide a significant caveat: even if we grant that Zhu’s practice of meditative reading is aimed ultimately at “union with one’s true self” in the sense that the words of the sages ensconced in the Classics come to be internalized as one’s own, the mystagogical process involved in attaining this goal implies a greater emphasis, at least initially, on the externality and objectivity (one might even say “otherness”) of the Classics than either scholar grants in their attempts to differentiate Zhu’s practice from lectio divina.