Individual Autonomy and Responsibility in Late Imperial China By ...

the outside world. The latter, instead, expresses a constant condition of instability or weakness, often presented to criticize strict moral rules. Another important theme is the changing of seasons, in particular the coming of spring:

Spring flowers and the autumn moon conduce to love and venery.¹⁸²

Conditions related to the cosmic energy, season, and social environment influence people’s lives, customs, and moral conduct. However, they do not exempt people from their moral responsibility, as responsibility is brought back to the Confucian theoretical discourse on the relation between conditions due to uncontrolled destiny and what depends on human will and self-cultivation.

Karma does not correspond to Confucian fate and destiny, but it contributes to the discourse of responsibility. Although these arguments are outside the Confucian doctrine, there are many cases of hybridizations, especially in popular religions and in fiction. For example, the case presented in “A Marriage Predestined to Awaken the World” (Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan 醒世姻緣傳) provides fictional evidence of how retribution works in Buddhist perspectives at the popular level, with several instances where various moral transgressions are punished and good behavior is rewarded with miracles. Here marriage is predestined in the sense that it is seen as a means for karmic retribution. This does not only imply that harmony or violence in the family is unpredictable but also that the behavior of characters may be influenced by previous karma. Exemplary is Sujie 素姐, who expresses the repulsion she feels for her husband Di Xichen 狄希陳 and his family: “I don’t know how, but the anger explodes beyond my ability to control” (我不知怎么，由不的我只是生氣哩).¹⁸³ She tries to find an answer:

[B]ut the moment I see my husband I lose control of myself, as if there is a deep enmity between him and me, and as if I cannot coexist with him for a single moment […]. I understand perfectly