ABSTRACT
The art of Confucian religious naturalism might be described as discovering one's cosmological being amid daily affairs. For the Confucian the ordinary is the locus of the extraordinary; the secular is the sacred; the transcendent is in the immanent. The means of self-transformation is through cultivation of oneself in relation to others and to the natural world. Among the world's religious traditions Confucianism has the distinction of being the tradition that is least understood as having religious or spiritual aspects. Religious naturalism in the Confucian context is that which gives humans a comprehensive and defining orientation to ultimate concerns. Confucianism is more than the conventional stereotype of a model for creating social order and political stability sometimes used for oppressive or autocratic ends. The creativity of Heaven in the Confucian cosmological worldview is paralleled by the vitalism of the natural world. Confucian religious naturalism, affirms change, as is manifest in the creativity of Heaven and in the vitality of Earth.
