Chinese Bamboo Grove Communities in the Warring States Period

Discussion

Hiram Crespo:

"Yang Chu lived during the Warring States period of Chinese history. The parallels with the Hellenistic Era and the struggles for power among states are many.

Master Yang used the wei-wo (for oneself) argument to resist the practice of warlords of recruiting young men into their army, often to fight petty wars for expansion of territory. Many young Chinese men died needlessly in these conflicts, which had nothing to do with them in most cases.

In order to avoid these recruitment drives, people began to move away from urban spaces and into rural spaces, away from the cities and states that were in conflict. This led to the period of the “seven sages of the bamboo grove”. These were antinomian philosophers, artists, musicians (some of their compositions are still on record and are among the oldest known Chinese classics) who were heavily influenced by Taoist philosophy in general, and by Yang Chu in particular, and who ran away to the Bamboo Grove (a type of Daoist “Epicurean” Garden) in order to evade military recruitment."

(https://hiramcrespo.substack.com/p/yang-chu-on-non-violence-we-are-bodies)