Xiong Shili

Xiong Shili was a Chinese philosopher from Hubei, one of the founders of twentieth-century New Confucianism. After studying Yogācāra Buddhism in Nanjing, he taught at Peking University and turned against the Yogācāra system in his New Treatise on Consciousness-Only, drawing on the Book of Changes to develop a Confucian metaphysics. He held that reality is a ceaseless creative process, in which substance and function are not two, and that the original mind is identical with this reality. His students included Mou Zongsan and Tang Junyi.

Key ideas

• Substance and function are not two: reality is fully present in its ceaseless activity.
• Reality is a process of 'closing and opening' (xipi), contraction and expansion.
• The original mind is identical with ultimate reality and is known by inner realisation.
• Yogācāra wrongly divides reality into seeds and manifestations.

Major works

• New Treatise on Consciousness-Only (Xin weishi lun 新唯識論, 1932; vernacular version 1944)
• Treatise on Substance and Function (Tiyong lun 體用論, 1958)

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