Life and Death In ancient China
The concept of the Soul
The concept of the ancient Chinese idea of the soul was dualistic. The p’o soul was an earth pound soul that would come into existence at the time of conception while the Hun, the heavenly aspect of the soul emerges at the time of birth.
In Ancient Chinese culture it’s understood that the hun soul is the spirit of a person’s vital force that is expressed in consciousness and intelligence and the p’o soul is the spirit of a person’s physical nature, expressed through bodily strength and movements. During one’s life both the souls of hun and p’o require the nourishment of the essences of the vital forces of the cosmos to stay healthy. When a person dies his or her hun soul gradually disappears into heaven or a special underworld and the p’o spirit will return back to the darker realms of the cosmos. This philosophy of the souls mirrors that of the cosmos, which was created after the integration of light and dark.
The concept of the ancient Chinese idea of the soul was dualistic. The p’o soul was an earth pound soul that would come into existence at the time of conception while the Hun, the heavenly aspect of the soul emerges at the time of birth.
In Ancient Chinese culture it’s understood that the hun soul is the spirit of a person’s vital force that is expressed in consciousness and intelligence and the p’o soul is the spirit of a person’s physical nature, expressed through bodily strength and movements. During one’s life both the souls of hun and p’o require the nourishment of the essences of the vital forces of the cosmos to stay healthy. When a person dies his or her hun soul gradually disappears into heaven or a special underworld and the p’o spirit will return back to the darker realms of the cosmos. This philosophy of the souls mirrors that of the cosmos, which was created after the integration of light and dark.
In Ancient China the ‘yin and yang’ elements represent the two vital forces of the cosmos. This metaphysics of the Chinese belief is constructed on the polarity of negative and positive; the ‘yin and yang’; the two fundamental principles of the universe. In the Ancient Chinese belief of the universe the Yin is the receptive, consolidating, and conserving female element, and yang is the active, creative, and expanding male element, that together they give rise to the multiplicity of things through their continuous and dynamic interactions. Their philosophy primarily teaches us, that each human being is an amalgamation of the ‘yin and yang’. These two elements are together during the lifetime of an individual, but at the time of death, the two souls will separate and go in different directions.
In the spiritual realm of the Chinese cosmos, the idea of the soul is closely associated with the two related concepts of the Kuei and Shen. Shen, commonly translated as "spirit" in modern Chinese, etymologically conveys the sense of expansion; Kuei, on the other hand, means contraction. The soul that expands belongs to the yang force and is associated with heaven and the soul that contracts belongs to the yin force and is associated with earth. Cary Baynes, a Jungian writer of modern day philosophy summarized this concept in the following way: “In the bodily existence of an individual are two polarities, a p'o soul and a hun soul. During the life of the individual these two souls are in conflict with one another, each striving to gain supremacy over the other. Upon death, they separate and go different ways, while the p'o sinks to earth as Kuei or ghost; the hun rises and becomes shen, a spirit or god.”